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JTinLV,

If your bank or credit card allows you to download transactions in OFX of QFX format you can import the downloaded file into Money.  I do this with Discover, Chase Visa, and AMEX credit cards.

One caveat is that financial institutions are pretty sloppy about conforming to the OFX or QFX standards and occasionally will make a change that results in a corrupted file.  Some Chase downloads were broken awhile back and, recently, AMEX downloads needed to be edited in Notepad to successfully import them into Money.  These issues eventually get fixed, – especially when they also affect Quicken users, – but it may take awhile.

RetiredGeek,

Gaier’s program gets its quotes from the Microsoft’s Quote Web Services.  These quotes are usually timely for things like the Dow and S&P500 indexes but are sometimes a day or two behind for individual securities.  It’s a widely reported problem and (IMHO) Microsoft is unlikely to fix it.  So if you need dependably current quotes, Gaier’s software won’t work for you.

You can see that this is the problem by looking up an investment using the the Money app (Windows 10 only?) which also uses the Microsoft’s Quote Web Services.  This evening, when I look at some of my Vanguard funds, the latest prices are as of 10/25.  Maybe it will update later tonight, – or maybe not until tomorrow, or, rarely, another day or two.

As noted above by bbearren and RetiredGeek, Microsoft Money still works fine and is free.

As for quotes, there is a utility:

https://gaiersoftware.com/Money

that can download investment prices directly into Money.  It works for any securities that are supported by the Money app, – i.e. US and UK for sure, and some others.

There is also a free utility:

https://sites.google.com/site/pocketsense/home/msmoneyfixp1/ofx-automation

that allows downloads of bank, investment, and credit card account transactions into Money.  It requires some setup but the instructions are very good.

Also, the Microsoft Money forum:

https://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=money

is a good source of help it you are just getting started with Microsoft Money or it you run into any snags.

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cellsee6, sgayner, RetiredGeek

The only way to be sure that any image is good is to restore it to a hard drive and verify that you can boot from that hard drive.

You don’t need to go through the restoration process every time you create an image, but you should consider doing it at least monthly, maybe just before the Patch Tuesday updates.  Since you don’t want to restore over your current working system drive, you will need a second hard drive.  And you also need a way to dual boot so that you can have a choice of booting to the restored image as a test, or to your main hard drive for daily work.  I use the free program EasyBCD for multi-boot capability.

This takes some time to set up, and you will need good notes to remind you of the restore and test process.  But you are assured that if you really need that image you will know that it’s good and you can restore it.

And you do back up your documents, music, videos, etc offline on a daily basis, right?

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rc primak

Not sure if this is a Patch Tuesday issue since it’s now Wednesday, but my fully patched Win 10 machine (FCU build 1699.309 – Asus Haswell era) just received a list of 27 (yikes!) driver updates from Windows update.  Maybe half of the descriptions have dates, – all in 2016 or 2017.  I hate driver updates!  Anybody else seeing this?

Installed automatically on my 1709 system with no reboot required.  Build is still 16299.125.

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Noel Carboni

Getting the updates directly from Adobe is fine for windows 7, but windows 8.1 and 10 get their Flash updates for IE and Edge via Windows Update. And, as of today, no updates have been issued. If you are actually using Edge or IE, be sure to disable Flash.

Wow, many thank for the reference to EasyBCD! Nifty program with excellent documentation. I am up and running with my backup and test process.

Surprised that there is no mention of IBM’s Lotus Symphony. This is a free suite based on OpenOffice 3.0 with an IBM-designed interface. It looks a lot like the Microsoft’s ribbon interface so it’s a good choice for those folks who prefer that look.

Turning off UPnP in your router is certainly a good idea. However, many users need LAN-side UPnP enabled in their routers. For example, playing XBox 360 online games requires this. The problem is that many routers also enable WAN-side UPnP at the same time. That is a flaw in the router firmware that is a serious security vulnerability.

There is a useful discussion of this issue in Security Now podcast Episode #389 | 30 Jan 2013 which is downloadable from:
https://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm

There is also a test for this vulnerability on the grc.com web site. Click on the “Services” dropdown and select “ShieldsUp!” or go directly to:
https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

An extensive list of the vulnerable routers that has been posted by the authors of the original white paper at:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApUaRDtAei07dFdOWXdKRUVaUTdRYndnbW5zajRyTmc#gid=0

And the original Rapid7 white paper is downloadable from:
https://community.rapid7.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/2150-1-16596/SecurityFlawsUPnP.pdf

If your router tests as vulnerable, you need to turn off UPnP. And if you need it on for some reason, you need to either get a new router that is not vulnerable or update your router with firmware that does not have this vulnerability. That said, I can’t give any advice on how to do either of those actions. Perhaps another lounge poster can help.