Infopackets Reader Steve P. writes: " Dear Dennis, Recently my computer updated to Windows 10 October Update (2018). Since then, Avast antivirus reports that ' You are unprotected '. I have tried disabling and re-enabling Avast, but it doesn't help. ... I have also tried to uninstall Avast (in hopes of reinstalling it), but the uninstall hangs near the 99% mark and will not progress. When I abort the uninstall, it says ' You do not have sufficient access to uninstall Avast '. I have already verified that my user account has administrator access. I have tried updating avast but received an error ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Paulina K. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am running Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007. Whenever I run Excel, it displays an error message 'stdole32.tlb' and nothing else. MS Office then launches the Microsoft Office installer ... (inside of the Excel window), which takes about 5 or more minutes to complete. Eventually I can start using the program, but the next time I run Excel I get the same 'stdole32.tlb' error message. I have tried to uninstall and reinstall Office but it doesn't work. I also tried to repair Office but that gave me the same stdole32.tlb error message. Can ... (view more)

Question site "Quora" has become the latest high-profile hacking victim, with details of more than 100 million users breached. Fortunately, the implications likely won't be as serious as some previous hacks. The site lets users post questions and ... then get answers from other users. A voting system means more helpful answers from its community means the best answers float to the top. Quora says its systems were accessed without authorization and that it discovered the breach on November 30, 2018. It says the exposed information included account information such as name, email address ... (view more)

Sources close to Microsoft suggest that the company may ditch its Edge browser as the default option in Windows 10. Its replacement would run on the same underlying code as Google's Chrome. While Edge has failed to win the hearts of most users, it ... appears the main reason behind the move is that site developers are tired of having to do extra work to make their sites work on the browser. The most recent statistics show Chrome dominating the browser market, being used on more than 70 per cent of computers, compared with just four percent running Edge. Given that Edge is the default option on ... (view more)

A hygiene company says the average smartphone is "seven times dirtier" than a toilet seat. People using them in bathrooms could be the cause. The company says it swabbed 50 phones with a device that lights up spots on a surface housing live ... bacteria. On average it found 1,479 such spots on a phone, compared with 220 on a toilet seat. Not all phones are equally icky however. Phones with a wipe-clean plastic covers had slightly fewer bacteria spots than the average handset. The worst offender was a phone in a leather case that doubled as a wallet and had nearly 17 times as many bacteria spots ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I came across your website while researching a postfix question. I am also a Linux systems administrator. As of late our organization has been bombarded with scam emails from 'hackers' purporting to ... have hacked our email accounts and PCs, and are demanding $800 in the form of bitcoin ('hush money') to keep things quiet. Is there any way to block all emails with bitcoin wallet requests? I would say 9.9 times out of 10, any bitcoin wallet money request through email is a scam. " My response: For the record this same bitcoin scam email is being ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Jean S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am running Windows 10 Home and I want to disable OneDrive permanently . I have reviewed many so-called guides online and it seems that you need to have Windows 10 Pro or higher to disable One Drive ... from reinstalling using the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc). Therefore, the only option for Windows 10 Home users is to uninstall One Drive manually - however, each time Windows makes a major update, OneDrive comes back and starts sucking up my data bandwidth, and slows my machine down. Is there any way to uninstall OneDrive permanently? " My ... (view more)

Security researchers have warned that nearly half of all phishing sites falsely display the browser padlock symbol commonly associated with secure websites. It's a reminder that the browser padlock symbol only covers one aspect of security. Most ... major browsers display the padlock symbol when a website uses a technology, most commonly Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), to encrypt data as it passes between the user's computer and the website, or vice versa. Such sites have an address starting "https://" rather than "http://". The purpose of the padlock symbol is to indicate to the user that the ... (view more)

Microsoft has confirmed two more bugs with the seemingly-cursed Windows 10 Update. Neither are the end of the world, but it continues to raise questions about the testing process. The first problem is with setting programs to be the default option ... when opening particular file types. While not the most exciting feature, it's one of those little things that make life much easier: without it, users have to either manually select the program they want to open every time they click on a file, or open the program itself and then open the file from there. All Microsoft will confirm at this point is ... (view more)

A seven-year-old case into Apple app pricing is heading to the Supreme Court. It's a technical case that centers on the percentage Apple takes from every iPhone or iPad app sale. The case isn't about the royalty itself, which is 30 percent of every ... sale through the iTunes store. Various legal and technical measures mean that's the only way developers can distribute iOS apps, so there's no way around paying the royalty. Instead, the legal question is whether or not consumers have the right to take legal action against Apple over the system. Such lawsuits, of which several have been proposed, ... (view more)