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I know I am late to the party but please hear me out.
With all the energy and time you invested in your problem it might have been more time economical to bite the bullet and do a full re-install from a newly downloaded current Windows version. For this you’ll need an empty 8GB flash drive (USB stick), plugged into your computer.
Naturally you need a complete backup of all your data before you even start on this.
Go to the MS Windows download page at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10, scroll down to header Create Windows 10 installation media and click the big button Download Tool Now.Follow the prompts and you’ll end up with a bootable USB drive based installer for the Windows version you had chosen.
I have done that many times in situations similar to yours and it has worked every time.
I put that out here to eventually help others that may run into similar situations around the “upgrades” to Windows 11 or whatever.
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You are totally correct.
The keyword here is “…they strip away most of…”.
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Mr. Will,
Yes, I love Linus Sebastian as well and I have learned lots from him.
BUT:
Your article simply is THE BEST about home made computers I have ever read!
And I am “in computers” only since 1964!
Thanks a lot for your “voice of reason”.1 user thanked author for this post.
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Well then abandon Windows
doriel,
I wish I could. I love my Linux Lite system. That was the distro I settled on when I was looking for something easy to transition to coming from Windows. Remember what my customers said about themselves?But the vast majority of my customers “naturally” run Windows, so I must have it and “know” it. How else could I help them?
And despite my advanced years the additional income is highly appreciated by my wife and me.
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Firefox YES,
Everything else NO.
Many hundreds of customers over the years, by far most of them “computer illiterate” (in their own words). Every single one of them gets installed Firefox with
“uBlock origin”, ‘WOT – Web Of Trust” and “Facebook Disconnect”.AND: If a web sire does not work well with/in Firefox I tell my customers to NOT USE THIS WEB SITE instead of using Chrome or any of the other browsers.
Works 99.99% of the time.I don’t recall anymore when and how I learned that Google can’t keep their extensions store clean – plus I don’t want to feed the by now probably biggest information gathering machine.
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Been there, done it. But done it only for a day or two.
Then I created a non-admin account that ever since I name GRANDKIDS. I have that on all our computers, no admin rights and ONLY Firefox with “uBlock Origin”, WOT and sice it came out “Facebook Container”. The price my wife and I have to pay is not telling them our passwords and logging off before we get up from any of our computers. Never had a problem with this setup; common sense and discipline do it, for me/us at least.
Definitely NOT Google Chrome for the g-kids, whatever they say.
If I interpret the 941 in your handle correctly I am 539 :-))
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I come a bit late to the discussion but here I go:
Over the last 15 years, 10 of them as the “computer guru” on a monthly call-in talk show on a local radio station, I have assembled over 10,000 customers.
Yes, in Wind XP times it was reasonable if not necessary to use third party AV programs and for times there were some IMHO quite usable free programs around. But their makers all too soon learned to monetize their software and overly burdened the programs with too much added functionality. They did it to the point that systems like those from Avast and AVG became major workloads for normal, below average configured cheap home computers. These cheap computers were about 90% of the machines out in actual households!
I have seen more than a few computers that began to “run normally”again after removing all but one of the installed “free” AV programs.
I was lucky to mostly have avoided Vista but since Windows 7 I have recommended to RUN ONLY MS Security Essentials and eventually use Malwarebytes occasionally run manually. The same stayed true for MS Defender on Win 8 and 10.
Please be aware that the vast majority of my customers called themselves computer illiterate – and they were/are.
With a little coaxing and very few explanations nearly all of them have over many years managed to keep their computers “mean, lean and clean” without needing to upgrade for more CPU power just to cater to a bloated third party AV system.
My vote clearly goes to MS Defender plus eventually an occasional manually run scan with Malwarebytes Free. If you apply a bit of common sense while surfing the web and while reading emails you’ll be fine with Defender and Malwarebytes.
Although the sad truth is that common sense ain’t that common; or is it? ‘-)
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Just to be complete:
Here is a screen shot of the email I got. It clearly states “Free Edition” and behaves accordingly.On the web site things are okay now, hurrah!
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Good morning!
Something has changed. I pulled up the newsletter and voila, I can access the Plus content; HURRAH!
And I can see the Master Patch list; hurrah, hurrah!
Thank you all who wrecked their brains!
Eike1 user thanked author for this post.
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