Kent PCs

19/12/2025

To any small business owners out there.
I just had a call from a young lady who said she was from 118 online directory. Gave a little spiel and asked if I was the business owner. I said "I am" she then asked several questions each of which could be answered with "Yes". I did not say "yes" to any of them. After about the fifth question I explained that scammer now often ask questions that require a "yes" answer and they record it and use the "Yes" as your agreement to whatever they want and that I will not answer in the affirmative to any of her questions. She said I understand and hung up! So it turns out she was a scammer! So other small business owners beware.

20/08/2024

Recycling.
I have found a company that recycles IT equipment. I always found it a bit awkward with recycling. There is the transport and time involved but now it’s just collect it together and when there is enough they just come and collect. It’s so painless. So if you are a resident of Challock or Molash and have IT equipment that you want recycled I can dispose of it for you.

This is a free service for our community. Of course you can still take it down to the tip if you would prefer. But please let me know in advance before just turning up with a shed load of knackered computers. 🙂 If you would like to know more details of the service just give me a ring.

15/08/2024

PC Warranty
If you have a reasonably new computer or Laptop that develops a fault check as it might still be under warranty. You will need the serial number off the machine. I have found (given my failing eyesight) that the best method is to take a photograph of the relevant area of the PC or Laptop then zoom in. Most manufacturers have an area of their website where you can check the warranty of your device. But as I say you will need your serial number.

15/08/2024

Extended Warranty
One other note about warranties, remember to register your machine. It is becoming common practice that the 5 year warranty is only activated if the machine is registered. Otherwise it reverts back to just one year.

01/05/2024

Printers
We all print things but what if your printer develops a fault? Well I am afraid the prognosis is not good. Virtually all faults on a printer fall into one of two categories, either you can fix it by fiddling with it or switching it off and back on again or it’s fatal. The reason for this is the manufacturers deliberately making printer repair uneconomical. The price of spares is very expensive therefore it’s not cost effective to repair a printer. Therefore nobody repairs them. Therefore even if you decide you love this printer so much cost does not matter, you still can’t get the spares anyway as nobody stocks them.

Even the cost of the printer does not really make any difference as the parts are priced accordingly.
If it’s an inkjet you are restricted to the cartridges anything else and you may as well get a new printer, it will be cheaper. If it’s a laser then the situation may be slightly better. Depending on the make and model you can replace the toner and the fuser assembly then there may be other spare possibilities. A lot depends on whether a third party has decided to make spares or there is a good second-hand market.

Consumables
Now the reason they make printers impossible to repair is because they want to sell you ink. The ink cartridges are extremely expensive and that is where the printer manufacturers make their money. Then your printer develops a fault and you have to buy a new printer and guess what? None of your existing cartridges will fit the new printer!

So my advice is, as we know the printer has a limited life and you will need to replace it when it goes wrong let’s not play the manufacturers game. Do not buy their expensive ink lets buy compatibles. Compatible ink cartridges are a fraction of the price of “real” recommended inks. For example these pictures are of a set of HP 903 inkjet inks. I picked these at random they could just have easily been Epson or Canon. Now by comparison we have the HP official 903 cartridges and the eJet compatible equivalent. Now the Ejet is the XL size cartridges and they have 2,700 comments on Amazon and scored 4 out of five. The cost? £21.24 whereas the cost of the recommended HP cartridges £97.49! That is a huge saving of £76.25, as you can see it does not take very long at these prices before you have saved more than the cost of replacing the printer when it develops a fault.

26/02/2024

11/02/2024

Its interest how over the years we were told to speed up your computer add more memory or a bigger processor. Yet it turns out that the biggest bottleneck in your computer is the hard drive! If you have an older computer and want to see a huge improvement in its performance just replace its standard mechanical hard drive with one of the new SSD hard drives.
The speed improvement is astounding. Everything can be moved from your old hard drive straight onto the new drive and Ping! in one move the computer is transformed. Obviously its not quite as simple as that, the old drive must be prepared for the transfer and the new drive configured correctly. You also need to be running a minimum of Windows 7.

04/04/2023

Modern Computer Encryption - Microsoft BitLocker

What is Microsoft BitLocker ?
Microsoft BitLocker is a type of data encryption used on Windows machines. Encryption is a way of securing data. When used in a computer system is turns all your data into rubbish, meaningless one’s and zero’s that cannot be used by anyone without the special key. The key unencrypts the information so it is readable and makes sense. In modern computers this is done “on the fly” as you go. Anybody trying to access your information would not be able to understand any of it. Sounds to good to be true? Well like everything there is a downside. In the case of encryption it is if you don’t have the key you have lost all your data!

How was BitLocker enabled on my computer?
There are 3 ways BitLocker could start protecting your computer:

1. Your computer is a modern computer that meets certain requirements to automatically enable device encryption: In this case, your BitLocker recovery key is automatically saved to your Microsoft account before protection is activated.
2. An owner or administrator of your computer activated BitLocker protection through the Settings app or Control Panel: In this case the user activating BitLocker either selected where to save the key or it was automatically saved to their Microsoft account.
3. A work or school organization that is managing your computer (currently or in the past) activated BitLocker protection on your device: In this case, the organization may have your BitLocker recovery key.

Beginning in Windows 8.1, Windows automatically enables BitLocker Device Encryption on computers that support Modern Standby. With Windows 10 and 11, Microsoft offers BitLocker Device Encryption support on a broader range of devices. These include those that support Modern Standby, and devices that run Windows 10 Home Edition or Windows 11.

BitLocker encryption is often intentionally activated by or on behalf of a user with full administrative access to your computer. This user could be you, another user, or an organization managing your computer. BitLocker is enabled by the user during setup or domain configuration by an administrator. You may not be aware BitLocker is running on your computer without looking for it.

The BitLocker setup process enforces the creation of a recovery key at the time of activation. If you are unable to locate a required BitLocker recovery key and are unable to revert a configuration change that might have caused it to be required, you must reset your device using one of the Windows 10 recovery options. Resetting your device removes all your files.

If anything goes wrong with your computer you will need the BitLocker recovery key. This is normally stored in your Microsoft account but can be tricky to get to.

BitLocker encryption is often intentionally activated by or on behalf of a user. This user could be you, another user, or an organization managing your computer. You may not be aware BitLocker is running on your computer without looking for it.

If anything goes wrong with your computer you will need the BitLocker recovery key. This is normally stored in your Microsoft account but can be tricky to get to.
The BitLocker Recovery Key
If you have any issues with your computers you will need the BitLocker recovery Key. It is a 48 digit numerical “password” and if you enabled it or someone using your login did then the key will be stored in your Microsoft Account. You will need to sign in to your Microsoft Account to get the recovery key. Use this address:
https://account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey

Note: If the device was set up, or if BitLocker was turned on, by somebody else, the recovery key may be in that person’s Microsoft account

This may not be easily accessible, Microsoft sometimes requires extra security. Such as wanting to send a code to the backup email address you used when you originally created the Microsoft Account. Being helpful they will first ask you to tell them what the backup email address is. They will offer a clue like m****.com & you have to tell them what email that is then access it to retrieve the special code.

Don’t know the email or have no access? Could be a big issue as the only alternative is to change your backup email address. Microsoft will do this but there is a minimum cooling off period of 30 days, “Its company policy”.

For these reasons I always advise you access them now and back them up. Either print them off and store them somewhere securely or take a photo on your phone.
They can also be stored on a USB stick. If you are logged into a PC with enabled BitLocker you can back up the keys like so:

Tap the Windows Start button and type BitLocker

Select the Manage BitLocker Control Panel app from the list of search results
In the BitLocker app select Back up your recovery key. Select where you want the key backed up

• Save to your Microsoft Account
• Save to a USB flash drive
• Save to a file - You can save your recovery key as a plain text file on any device.
• Print the recovery key - You can simply print the recovery key if you prefer.

Select Finish

02/02/2021

Windows 10 computer backups
Windows 10 has a new backup system. It is a system they had with their server based networks that they have expanded onto standard PCs. You need a USB hard drive of a similar size to your internal hard drive.
It is simple to set up.
Plug in your USB Hard drive.
Note down the Disk letter your PC assigns to it.
Click on the “Settings” cog
Then click “Update & Security” at the bottom of the list
At position 4 on the left hand menu click on “Backup”
Set “Back up using File History” to “ON”
Go To “More Options”
Here you can select your backup drive device you noted at 2
Just leave the defaults that should give you a basic backup.

Restore and previous versions
The backup runs about once an hour and allows the “previous version” option on all files saved on the PC. It only backs up changes and changed files so is quick and unobtrusive. Previous versions gives you the ability to roll back any file you created or edited to a previous version. So if you accidentally delete or overwrite a file provided it is more than an hour old you can get back to the version before you changed it, or even older. Previous version applies to all files and folders.

To use previous versions you go to the file or folder that has the issue. So if you accidentally deleted a file you want go to the folder it was in, and right click the folder and select “properties”. When the properties pane come up the last tab at the top is labelled “previous versions” when you click on it, it will show you all available previous versions of the file or folder along with the date it was backed up. You can then restore that version back to its original place. Beware this is a one way copy once you overwrite the folder or file with the earlier version there is no way back. The simplest solution is to make a copy of the original file or folder before you start the restore process then you can check the two versions and when you are happy delete the copy you made or merge the two folders together.