Cleaning Junk from an iPhone

First go to the Settings app and select General > iPhone Storage and look at how much data you are currently using. Here you can see what is using up storage space.

A good way to save space is to delete apps that you are not using. If you haven't used them in a year you probably don't need them. Go to the Settings app and select General > iPhone Storage and see how much storage each app is using and look at especially removing the larger ones.

Erase browsing & data history: Go to the Settings app Safari and at the bottom select Clear History and Website Data. You can delete more recent or all.

When you delete a picture or video it goes to a delete folder and is still on the phone. To permanently delete these photos & videos go to the Photos app at the bottom select Recently Deleted. To delete these press select at the top and at the bottom press Delete All.

On the Settings app go to Messages > Keep Messages (under Message History). By default it is set to keep messages for Forever. Change to 30 days.

Finally, you can go to the App Store and download an iPhone cleaner and that may remove even more junk files. Most of them remove duplicate photos, videos and contacts. Most of these are free to try once and then require purchasing for continued use.

See the video here

Regular Maintenance

Do these things regularly - say once a month - to keep your computer working efficiently. The primary thing is to free up storage space that is being wasted, and fix operation issues that are slowing things down.

1a. Run CCleaner:
Press Scan PC then Make it Better. Press the Registry tab then Scan for Issues. Click on Review Selected Issues... When the "Do you want to back up the registry before making changes?" window open press Yes. Now press Fix All Selected Issues and then Close.

1b. Run CleanUP!, using the Normal setting, to clean additional temp and cache files that CCleaner doesn't remove.

2. If your computer is working fine, go to the Windows search window and type "restore", and click on Create a restore point. Click on Configure then on Delete. When the warning window pops up press Continue. This will delete all the past restore points. You now need to create a new restore point, so press Create, give it a name and press Create again and press Close.

3. Again go to the Windows search window and type "%temp%", and click on %temp%. Press CTL+A to select all and press Delete. If you get a warning, check the box beside "Do this for all current items" and click Continue.

4. Open Windows file explorer and click on C: > Windows > SoftwareDistribution > Download. Press CTL+A to select all and press Delete. If you get a warning, check the box beside "Do this for all current items" and click Continue. (This deletes the Windows upgrade files that have been downloaded and installed - once installed they can be deleted.)

5. Open Windows file explorer and click on the View tab. On the right hand side click on Options. At the bottom of the window that opens click on Clear button beside "Clear file explorer history.

6. Go to the Windows search window and type "run". Click on the Run icon and in the window type "prefetch". If a warning window pops up press Continue and in the new window CTL+A to select all and press Delete. If you get a warning that some files are currently in use press Skip.

7. Again go to the Windows search window and type "disk", and click on Disk Cleanup. First click on Cleanup system files. Next check all the boxes in the window and press Okay. Note, if this may take a while to do. My first time took about 8 minutes to clear all the files.

8. If Microsoft Store is sluggish then go to the Windows search window and type "cmd", and right click on the Command Prompt icon that appears and select Run as administrator. At the prompt type "WSreset.exe" then press Enter.

9. While still in the Command Prompt window, at the prompt type "ipconfig /flushdns" then press Enter.

The above is from this video by Liron Segev

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Driver Updates

About once or twice a year it is good to check if any drivers need to be updated. A few programs make this easy. The paid version of CCleaner and Driver Easy can be used. The paid version of Driver Easy will do the updating automatically, but can be used to provide a list of drivers needing updating and a link to download the drivers (though downloads are very slow with the unpaid version).

CCleaner - download here. The paid version will download and install the new drivers.

Driver Easy - download here. The free version can be used to update drivers.

To use Driver Easy, run the program. If the file is not to large (over 20mb) use the Update button and wait for the download to complete. Select Manual installation and on the drop-down button select Driver location. When the file explorer window opens click on the file path and copy it.

Go to Device Manager and locate the driver by name. Right-click on the driver and select Install driver. Select Browse my computer for drivers. In the browse window paste the new driver location copied above. Press Next and on the new window press Install.

File downloads through the Driver Easy app are very slow. If the file is very large (over 20mb) try to find it with a Google search to get it directly from the driver manufacturer. Using Driver Easy, press the drop-down button beside a driver to be installed and select Driver details. Under Available, note the driver details of the manufacturer and especially the exact version number. Do an online search; download and install the new driver. If the downloaded driver has an ".exe" extension, just double click on it and it will self install. If the file has an ".inf" extension, right-click on it and select Install.

Online Games

A few new and old games.

Original Minesweeper

2/47 Games has a number of online games:

• 2/47 Backgammon
• 2/47 Blackjack
• 2/47 Bridge
• 2/47 Chess
• 2/47 Crossword
• 2/47 Hearts
• 2/47 Mahjong
• 2/47 Minesweeper
• 2/47 Roulette
• 2/47 Solitaire
• 2/47 Word Search

8-ball pool

PokerTH - download & install

Image and Photo Apps

Photographs, images and graphics can be created, edited and modified using various programs.

Photoshop is one of the best available for doing every kind of image editing and manipulation, but I use GIMP which is comparable and free. You can do cropping, resizing, colour balancing, background removal, etc.

Background removal can be tedious, but there is an easier way with Viznoz's online service that does quite a good job of removing backgrounds in seconds. Also try Remove.bg.

To remove selected objects from a photo try Cleanup.pictures. You use a "brush" of various sizes to outline and fill in the area to be removed. You need the Pro paid version to save pictures in full resolution; lower resolution (maximum 720px) pictures are free. These pictures were originally 4032x3024. (The cost for the Pro version is US$5 per month or $36 per year.)

To test it, I tried a simple removal of the napkin on the table beside the Kinnie drink I had in Malta. Not bad for taking only about 15 seconds.

before

after

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Identifying Unknown Photo Locations

Finding the location of a photo may be found by first looking at the metadata that is embedded in a photograph. A website like Jimpl will display all of the metadata which may include the location by name or as coordinates: 40°37′57″N x 22°56′27″E. Or you can use a Windows feature by right-clicking on a picture and selecting Properties > Details and scrolling down through the information.

If the metadata information is not sufficient, try uploading the image to Google's image search. The Bing browser also does this but has an additional feature. Using the Bing browser go to image search:

Then click on the Visual Search button...

and zoom in on distinctive aspects of the image and search again. Try this a number of times on various areas of the image. The image above is the zoomed-in section of the photograph, and Bing was able to identify the location of the photo above: Ullswater, Lake District, England.

And both Google and Bing quickly identified the above photo correctly as Aristoteleos Square, Thessaloniki, Greece.

Liron Segev has a good video describing the methods above.

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Photo Privacy

If you are uploading your photos online to public sites like Facebook or Twitter, for privacy or security reasons you may not want all of your information contained in the metadata of the photo included. This can be your name and location. There are a few ways of editing or removing your metadata. Removing the metadata also saves some storage space.

REMOVING
The Jimpl website mentioned above has the option of letting you download a copy of the image you uploaded stripped of all metadata. For JPG images you can download and run JPGCleaner. It works great for large collections of photos and is very fast. 

EDITING
Use the Windows feature noted above by right-clicking on a picture and selecting Properties > Details, and at the bottom click on "Remove Properties and Personal Information".
On the new window, select "Create a copy with all possible properties removed" and click "OK."

Windows EXIF viewer/editor (click to enlarge)

Can't Format Memory Stick

Sometimes you may get an error when trying to use a memory stick and attempting to format the drive gets the following error message:

"The disk is write protected."

Unless the disk is actual damaged and no longer working it still may be possible to format it by doing the following:

1. Press the Windows key + R to open the Run box. Type diskpart and press Enter.

2. If you receive a User Account Control prompt asking for permission to continue, click Yes.

3. At the DISKPART> prompt, type list disk and press Enter.

This will list all of the memory devices including the computers internal hard drive. Use the disk size to determine which one is your USB flash drive. In this example (shown below), we know that Disk 1 is our USB flash drive because its size is 4 GB (here listed as 3864MB).

4. Type select disk 1.

5. Type attributes disk clear readonly.

6. Type clean.

7. Type create partition primary.

Decide which type of format to use, either fat32 or ntfs. We will use ntfs here.

8. Type format fs=ntfs quick. This disk is now formatted and ready to use.

Or you can watch this video.

Virtual Box

A small program that lets you run other Operating Systems on your computer with going complicated process of a parallel installation and dual boot setup. Whether your native operating system is Windows, Macintosh or Linux, any additional system can be run.

For example, you could run Macintosh on a Windows machine or Linux on a Windows machine. Also you could run older versions of the same operating system. For example, you could run Windows 98 or XP on a Windows 11 machine.

Virtual Box from Oracle is freeware and easy to use.

Bloatware

So much on Windows systems is bloatware - unnecessary and unwanted programs that use up space and resources and can be annoying. This is often referred to as "bloatware." Some of these (to me) are Microsoft Edge and OneDrive. Other Microsoft programs you will probably never use are Microsoaft Teams.

There are two solutions: do the steps below that I have found on various websites, or use Revo Uninstaller which will do all of this for you.

The simplest way is first to go to Settings > Apps > Apps & Features. Go down to programs you want to remove, click on them and select "Uninstall."

But some programs are not listed there, so run O&O App Buster to remove the following:

• Microsoft Teams
• OneDrive
• OneNote
• Xbox
• Plus any others you think you will never use

To stop bloated Microsoft Edge from running follow the instructions found at softwarekeep.com, or the following Registry edits (for experienced users only):

Open up Command Prompt and type the following:

cd %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Microsoft\Edge\Application\xxx.x.xxxx.xx\Installer
setup --uninstall --force-uninstall --system-level

Click the ‘Search’ button on the desktop and look for ‘Registry Editor’. Open this up and navigate to the following location. (You can copy and paste this into the Registry Editor address bar):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft

Right-click on the ‘Microsoft’ folder and select ‘New’, then ‘Key’. Name the key ‘EdgeUpdate’ and then right-click on it. Select ‘New’ then ‘DWORD (32-bit) Value’ and call this ‘DoNotUpdateToEdgeWithChromium’.

Once created, double-click to open the key and change its value to ‘1’. Click ‘OK’ and it’s safe to close the Registry Editor. Microsoft Edge now should not automatically return on your PC.

Or you can simply download and run a small program like Edge Blocker.

PowerShell

You can use PowerShell to remove certain programs.

Just use the following command in the Command Prompt: Get-AppxPackage *appName* | Remove-AppxPackage

App

 

Command

Microsoft People

 

Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.People* | Remove-AppxPackage

Xbox

 

Get-AppxPackage *xbox* | Remove-AppxPackage

Weather

 

Get-AppxPackage *bingweather* | Remove-AppxPackage

Photos

 

Get-AppxPackage *photos* | Remove-AppxPackage

Sports

 

Get-AppxPackage *bingsports* | Remove-AppxPackage

Movies & TV

 

Get-AppxPackage *zunevideo* | Remove-AppxPackage

OneNote

 

Get-AppxPackage *onenote* | Remove-AppxPackage

Mail & Calendar

 

Get-AppxPackage *windowscommunicationsapps* | Remove-AppxPackage

For the experienced user the powerful bloaterware removal tool can remove all bloatware but can also remove programs you may need. Bloatware Removal Utility (BRU) 08-25-22

Resources: EaseUS - remove bloatware from Windows 10 & 11

Linux

Linux operating system have become more popular with the introduction of GUI versions like Ubuntu and Mint that operate similarly to Windows and Macintosh. Linux operating system is generally more secure than others. The most popular versions of Linux for the average user is Ubuntu and Mint.

Many programs that run on Windows are also available in Linux. The following programs are available in both Windows and Linux versions:

• Audacity - audio editing
• VLC - audio and video player
• Handbrake - DVD ripper
  
• DVDStyler - DVD authoring toolkit
• Gimp - photo editor
• Bluefish - HTML editor
• Firefox - browser
• Chrome - browser
• Thunderbird - email client
• Shotcut - video editor

Some Windows programs have substitutes available for LInux and are free:

Windows	Linux
Office Suite	LibreOffice
Windows Defender	ClamAV
PhotoShop	GIMP

A special program is the VirtualBox which lets you run Linux or Macintosh operating systems on your Windows machine.

Linux can be installed on a USB stick to use as an additional operating system or as an emergency OS for a computer that has a malfunctioning OS.

Windows Hacks

There are a few interesting utilities that can be added to Windows to make everyday computing easier. And these are all free!

1. Duplicates Cleaner - use this handy little program to check for duplicate files. Search your whole computer or selected folders. It can be documents, pictures, music or photos, and possibly free up gigs of data that you are wasting. Just go to the Microsoft store on your computer and install Duplicates Cleaner. The free version only allows a maximum of 1gb of files to be removed.

2. Searching for files using the Windows search feature is usually very slow. Instead use this free utility from Void Tools. Just download and install. Searches are fast—search items appear as you type! Use the little magnifying glass that will now be in your system tray (in the bottom right corner of the screen).

3. If you would like to have tabbed file explorer windows, the utility QTTabBar from QuizoApps does it. Just download and install. To use, have one explorer window open; click on the Options icon and select QTTabBar. Then Right-click on another folder and select Open in New Tab. There are many options you can select to customize how QTTabBar works. Right-click anywhere on an open explorer window and select QTTabBar Options.

4. You can have control of audio level on each program playing rather than just the single volume in Windows. So you could have music playing in the background while listening to an instructional video. To add this to your computer, go to the Microsoft store on your computer and install EarTrumpet. Now when you click on the speaker icon you will be able to select and control audio on any audio source as well as the master volume.

You can watch a video on these utilities by Liron Segev here.

Audio and Text Generators

There are many sites that will do text to speech and speech to text. The best Text to speech I have seen is Elevenlabs. They refer to theirs as "Speech Synthesis" and is does provide considerable adjustment in voice forming, and in multiple regional accents. One scary aspect of their software is the ability to clone voices, so that you could take a sample of someone's voice then generate speech form text that you choose!

Online Privacy & Security

Maintaining privacy & security in the online world and on mobile devices is difficult but not impossible and many solutions are free or relatively inexpensive.

BROWSER

According to security expert Naomi Brockwell, Brave, Tor, and Firefox are the best browser for privacy and security. Tor offers the best privacy and security but there can be issues with some sites. Because all traffic runs through proxy servers, bandwidth may be too limit for video streaming; also, since Tor does not allow Javascript to run, some website features may not work. Brave is available for Windows, Android and iOS. Under no circumstances use Chrome!

If you are using Firefox and use Facebook, add the Facebook Container extension to limit Facebook's gathering of information while you browse.

A few Browser Extensions add additional privacy. These are available for most browsers—just go to the Extension section of the browser.

uBlock Origin

Privacy Badger

EMAIL

Naomi Brockwell and others recommend Protonmail as the most secure email service.

SEARCH ENGINES

DuckDuckGo is often recommended as the best popular search engine to use for privacy and security—and it is good—, but many computer experts, including Naomi Blockwell, recommended Qwant as the search engine that provides the most privacy. Qwant also has an app for Android and iOS.

OPERATING SYSTEMS

Of course Windows, being the most popular, is most susceptible to viruses, malware and hacking. Macintosh operating systems are more secure (most users do not even add anti-virus protection), but it is still open to attacks. Linux is the least susceptible partly because of its limited use but also for its inherent architecture. For the average computer user Linux can be a little to "geeky" though Ubuntu or Mint. Of Linux distros Qubes is the most secure.

VPN

Many VPNs are popular like Nord and Express but I use Proton VPN and it works great.

Video Chat: Brave Talk, encrypted video calls

Messaging: Signal

I saw a security expert being asked how he uses the internet. He said he uses Qubes Linux and Qwant search engine.

For really secure browsing which will protect your computer use a sandbox like Sandboxie Plus. Sandboxes create a virtual browsing experience so that any attempted attacks from the internet are isolated in a separate section of your computer that cannot affect the computer itself.

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F-Secure is a reliable security company that offers a few free security apps and services.

Use the Identity Theft Checker to see what personal information of yours in publicly known. Just enter your email address.

They also have a Data Recovery Helper that lets you discover what information the large tech companies have on you. You can check Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Snapchat and Alexa.

Using their Online Shopping Check on their site allows you to check if an online store is legitimate.

You can use their online Password Generator to create a high quality password.

The Am I Unique website looks at your browser identity, i.e., how much of your information your browser exposes to internet.

Windows re-install

To re-install Windows you first need the Windows Product Key that you must have to authorize the new installation. Even if you have a computer that is working perfectly you should find and record the Key in case the operating system fails and no longer works. There are two ways to rerieve the Product Key on your computer.

1. Download and run a program like ProduKey and run it. You can then export this as a document.

2. Manually retrieve the key as follows:
In the Windows search window type cmd to open the command prompt, then type in the following:
wmic path softwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKey
The key should look something like this: RKYXV-YDV4G-VKAVH-P387V-T3XK3
Record this information.

To make an installation version of Windows, first download the file from the Microsoft website, either Windows 10 or Windows 11.

You then need to make a bootable version of the Windows file. If your computer has a CD drive you can burn the downloaded file to a disc then boot your computer from the disc. Alternately you can make a bootable version onto a USB memory stick with a program like Lili USB Creator.

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If you don't have a Windows key one can be purchased from secondary sellers like Keyingo.

Phone IMEI

To check if a second-hand phone you are interested in buying is stolen, logon to DeviceCheck.ca. Just enter the IMEI number. This is a unique number in every phone and cannot be changed.

To discover the IMEI number, open the Phone app and dial *#06# on your keypad.

Changing a Drive's Read/Write Status

If you find that you cannot read or write or delete files on a drive, whether a memory stick, SD card or hard drive this can be fixed in two ways. The typical method is to right-click on the drive letter (e.g., C: or E:) and on the Security tab select Edit and uncheck any of the boxes that have Deny for permission.

If that fails because those options aren't available do the following:

1. Press the Windows key + R to open the Run box. Type diskpart and press Enter.

2. If you receive a User Account Control prompt asking for permission to continue, click Yes.

3. At the DISKPART> prompt, type list disk and press Enter.

Use the disk size to determine which one is your USB flash drive. In this example, we know that Disk 1 is our USB flash drive because its size is 14 GB.

4. Select your USB flash drive with the select disk command. In this example, we want to work with disk 1, so the command is select disk 1.

5. You can list the attributes of the disk with the command attributes disk.

6. To clear the read-only attribute (making the disk writable), use the command attributes disk clear readonly.

Or, to set the read-only attribute (making the flash disk write-protected), use the command attributes disk set readonly. 

7. When you are finished, type Exit to quit the program.

Source: ComputerHope.com

Memory Upgrades

You may want to upgrade the memory on your computer, either the RAM to improve performance or the hard drive to increase storage capacity. 

First you need to find out what memory you currently have. To find this, hold down the Windows key and press the Pause key, or alternately you can go to the Start icon in the lower left of your screen (on Windows 10) then go to Settings > System > About.

Click to enlarge

The installed RAM on this device is 8.00 GB. But before you look at upgrading your RAM you need to check if expansion is possible. To do that you need to check on the maximum physical space available.

To check this first hold down the Windows key and press R; type cmd into the search box and press OK. This opens the command line window.

Next type the following and press return: wmic memphysical get maxcapacity

Click to enlarge

The number that appears is the maximum physical capacity of the computer in kilobytes. You can type or copy the number that appears and, using a calculator, divide by 1,000,000 to get the maximum capacity in gigabytes.

For this computer that would be 8388608 divided by 1,000,000 is 8.388 gigabytes, so this computer already has the maximum amount of RAM possible at 8 gigabytes.

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To find out the size of hard drive on your computer, go to the search window beside the Start icon and type msinfo32 and press Return. The window below will appear. Select the plus sign (+) beside Components to expand the menu, then do the same for Storage and select Disks. The line Size shows the hard drive capacity. So this computer has a 500gb hard drive. This could be upgraded to a 1 or 2Tb drive, but this would involve backing up all your files on the computer to another drive and then reinstalling Windows.

Click to enlarge