Most computers made in the last several years have a hidden hard drive partition that lets you easily reinstall Windows and blow everything back to factory state. When you start the computer press Esc or Del (or sometimes F1 or F12- whatever it says on the startup screen) and choose the option to repair your PC.

Actually, Windows Defender nowadays rates pretty high as an anti-virus

True, but if he's as non-techie as he claims, he might need a little more step-by-step than just "hit DEL or ESC" or whatever :). Getting at the recovery partition is not as straightforward as it could be (to keep from starting it by mistake), and he could wind up with a nice fresh install and no data.

I'm not 100% sure about the above, since I've never done it, but I'd advise to check out the procedure carefully before just saying "Sure - go ahead".

I ran Cat 6 to every point a device with wired access exists. Tivos, Apple TV's, desktops, etc.

I've decided to do a "Reinstall". @BigLar, you nailed the concerns that I have. After watching many YouTube videos on the subject, its the recovery partition that still confuses me. I will watch more videos to get a better understanding of it.
Before I reinstall, I will definitely backup ALL my files.
Thanks for helping out, everyone!

It's probably worth installing a security suite once you've reinstalled (you may have to remove any other suite that may get automatically installed as part of the reinstall).

Bitbefender recently won the "Best in Category" in the PC Pro awards (a UK magazine). They have a deal on at the moment for a 15 device, 2 year license for £29.99.

https://store.pcpro.co.uk/p35662-bit...15-device_2-yr

You may be able to get similar better pricing in the US.

My first thought would be malware.

Thank you all for the suggestions!
I have good news to report. I had done the Re-Install without touching the personal files and apps. Thanks to what I thought was a very good YouTube video. I followed it faithfully. After 57 minutes, my computer was rebooted. So far, everything seems to be working normally. Thanks again!
Link is shown below:

New Thing!
 

Getting back to the overall thread topic, today I pulled about 100' of cable through conduit using a pull string. Now my friends who have a B&B have a new POE-powered switch in their garage that in turn powers the wireless access point there. And we pulled another 100' or so through conduit from there to the house next door they bought and are renovating into a day spa, so they will have internet there all on one happy network!

Today I also learned that Ubiquiti's data sheets are garbage. The data sheet says the USW-Flex has a POE budget of 8W if powered from 802.3af. But it refused to power the access point until I set it to think it was being powered from a POE injector. Even so it's still only drawing 8W of the 15W available in 802.3af.

My latest...

As part of my (soon to be ending) job, I need to have multiple VMs with different versions / configurations of a software package. I have all these on a pretty powerful Macbook Pro with 16GB / 1TB. If I'm working at home, I'd copy the VM onto my iMac and copy back when finished. Of course, sometimes I'd forget where I was up to, and I do not know which was the latest version.

"Use the cloud!!!" I hear you shout. I would, but it gets very expensive when you need 8-12GB Ram and 200GB drives as well as a relatively beefy processor.

Anyway, as I've got a server at home (with Windows 10 Pro), I've now moved all the VMs onto that, so I have my own cloud. It's got 32GB RAM, and I can run 3 VMs at the same time (I was pretty much limited to 1 VM on the laptop). Everything gets backed up to iDrive overnight, and I also have Acronis TrueImage that takes a local backup to a 1TB NVMe portable drive.

The PiVPN lets me get in remotely, and I've been using my MacBook 12 as a client (the MacBook Pro is going back to my company when my redundancy kicks in). The MacBook is pretty low powered, but it does the job fine.

So, I've now got my own personal cloud. God knows why I didn't do it sooner. Of course, this relies on me having internet access...

Great idea for a thread! I've enjoyed reading what others have been up to. Gave me a few ideas.

Tricked out my Home Assistant (HASS) setup (this is pretty much continuous at my house). Added some custom python code and now have about 80 devices connected to HASS doing various tasks. Lights change colors when ring cameras detect motion, when the garage opens, and on other events. Motion detection turns on lights all over the outside. If you haven't used HASS (home-assistant.io), I highly recommend it.

Added an SSL certificate from LetsEncrypt and had a lot of fun trying to point my HASS docker image to that path (outside the container). Took me the better part of a day and I learned a lot about debian docker containers in the process. Now I love docker. Also added Node Red (another docker container) to HASS, and now I'm really dorking it up.

Saw pi-hole mentioned in this thread, so I set that up in another docker container (on a different debian VM due to some port conflicts). Had it working great, then in the process of googling how to trick it out, I realized there's a pfblockerng package for pfSense (my router SW) that does pretty much the same thing, but doesn't require me to open a bunch of ports on my different VLANs to reach pi-hole. So I installed that and just have it listen on every (internal) interface. Worked so well, that the wife actually complained that some of the links she was clicking on no longer worked. Apparently she likes the ads. So I removed the interface from her VLAN (moved her to our IoT VLAN) and set it back to opendns. Too much trouble to add all the exceptions needed for the stuff she clicks on. Lesson learnt. I'll stay on my more strict VLAN and let her hang with the IoT devices.

Other stuff, not necessarily techie in nature:

• Ran some Cat 6 to support two more outdoor PoE Hikvision cams that connect back to an NVR. Boring and tedious, but needed.
• Roughed in and then finished out electrical work in an unfinished basement room.
• Installed a landscape lighting system with Ring transformers (didn't know they were a thing, and was amazed at how cheap they were, comparatively)
• Re-arranged my home office (twice). Considering a new monitor to replace my 34" 4K LG monitor that's 3-4 years old. May go with a two monitor setup, or perhaps a large 5K one (for MBP 16"). Looking at maybe the Dell UltraSharp U4919DW Dell U4919DW, or the next gen LG LG 38NM95C-W . Curious if anyone had experience with either of those.
• Considered buying a third UAP-AC-PRO to enhance wifi, but then decided against it. I think I'll wait for the next gen of wifi before doing anymore upgrades

Have you tried Firefox Preview? I installed it on my phone and tablet a few days ago and have been very impressed with it. I can easily see it as a replacement for Chrome. You can install uBlock on it along with a few other add ons.

On another note related to this thread, I upgraded two 6+ yr old laptops with new RAM and SSDs. Each upgrade was under £100 and it has made a huge difference. I didn't want to spend more for a new laptop as none of them are used for any heavy duty games, or other CPU intensive work.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...f2ddfa7a2b.jpg
Got the blood pressure app working on my Samsung Galaxy Active 2 smartwatch. Kinda cool, but my BP seems too high. Need to call the doc.

Also added a second Asus AiMesh router to my home to overpower the wifi my neighbor installed.

My understanding is that those devices leave something to be desired in accuracy.

Also, any wrist-mounted blood pressure reading will only be accurate if you hold your arm so your wrist is at heart height. With your arm extending down like it usually rests the reading will be high due to gravity.

I've been trying to get all my old emails from my company account to somewhere where I can store and search them after I leave the company later this week.

A search for "Email Archiving Solutions" brought up a few products, of which MailStore seemed to be well regarded. I downloaded it, only to find it's Windows only - so no good for me. I tried a few Mac equivalents, none of which were any good.

My next alternative was to copy everything into my Gmail account, so everything would be under proper tags (folders). I created the tags in Gmail, and then went to copy using Outlook Mac. In their wisdom, Microsoft have removed the copy functionality to Gmail accounts. Nice one.

OK - fire up Mac Mail and set up my accounts. After all the messages were downloaded, I started to copy, folder by folder. It all seemed to be going OK, except the messages weren't uploaded to Gmail. So, all the messages were in Mac Mail, but the tags on Gmail were empty.

Next... I looked for alternative email clients that would work on a Mac. EmMail seemed to be well regarded, so I downloaded the trial of that. It's all very nice and fast, and I started copying everything across. All was going well and I left it overnight. However, at some point it stopped uploading, so only half the messages are present. I restarted the client today, and it's uploading again. So, it seems that this will work eventually.

However, EmClient now seems to have stopped synchronising new messages from Gmail :( Let's see what happens once the uploads have finished!

You could use Thunderbird and set it to store all email locally.

Update - I think you're working too hard. All you need is an email client that allows you to store all emails locally.

Update 2 - Anybody else amused that some of the best technical support on the web comes from a travel discussion board?

I'm working the calibration now. Your points are good. I am finding the results to be decent compared to the cuff. Now I need to figure out how to sideload the ecg function that was released in Korea.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...865800d6d.jpeg
My old 34 inch wide-screen died, so I decided to improve the work from home setup as I'm not traveling @ the moment. New Dell 49 inch


Also, I decided to do some more experimentation into running dual sims on my Pixel 4XL. I'm running FI and Verison's Visible service side-by side and it has been great thus far.

What’s the picture? West end of Catalina looking south?

Did you try MailSteward? I have all my personal email going back to 2006 in there.

You may want to check with your companies lawyers before you try too hard, if you haven't already. Keeping copies of those email is likely against policy and could potentially get you sued - especially if you happen to be going to work for another company that could in any way be considered a competitor...

The issue is that I have multiple computers & tablets, so I need some sort of online access.

You know what? That actually came up on my search. I discounted it because it said "multiple mail accounts from Apple Mail or Postbox". I assumed (wrongly) that only Apple Mail or Postbox were supported.I should have read the details more closely. :)

more than likely as it is the standard background for the Mac OS Catalina

Yeah. The standard Catalina wallpaper. I've been too lazy to switch it.

Is that the U4919DW? What do you think of it? I'm considering it as well.

Yes it is! Good eye.

I use it w/ my 2015 MacBook pro (with discrete) graphics card) as well as a crappy HP x360 I use on occasion. So far I love it!! Some words of warning:

• It's Yuge!! Make sure you have the desk space.
• It ain't a gaming monitor. It doesn't have the high-refresh rate gamers want. OK for me as I'm using it for work, where it is FANTASTIC.
• Some Macs with built in intel graphics don't support full resolution on it (at least not easily).
• It will make you incapable of working on your regular laptop screen ever again. :) I'm so spoiled now.

Good for you. I certainly wouldn't want my graphics card blabbing about what goes on in my office. :)

I've got two Dell P4317 monitors... also makes it hard to work on a single small screen ever again.

haha ok. You got me.

Ham radio is techie stuff, right? I spent most of the past few months (when I wasn't working from home for my day job as a software developer) finally getting an HOA-sanctioned home station set up. Before now, I never thought to bother to do so because antennas aren't really a thing HOAs in general like, so I would typically travel elsewhere to operate.

Anyway, I got a magnetic loop antenna onto my 2 story building's flat roof (with a ~5ft mast holding it horizontally above the roof). This is a lot smaller of an antenna than people usually use for HF (< 30 MHz), but it performs reasonably well. The downside is that I have to retune it using an indoor control box every time I change frequencies on the radio, but I don't typically move around much when operating anyway.

I also did a fair bit of soldering and Arduino programming for an interface between a handheld RF amplifier and my portable radio. It basically communicates serially with the radio and generates voltages that the amplifier recognizes depending on what frequency the radio is on (which then cause the correct low pass filter to be switched inline).

As for computer stuff, I managed to get Let's Encrypt to automatically perform DNS validation of one of the VMs I manage for some people I know (required for wildcard certificates). I'm also thinking that I want to finally replace the last Ethernet switch that I need to replace to have the entire condo's LAN 10 gigabit capable. For that, I may try the Mikrotik CRS309-1G-8S+IN with the needed 1/10GBaseT modules as my CRS312-4C+8XG-RM has performed well since I got it.

Longer term (if there's another lockdown, which is very possible at this point), I'm thinking I may want to finally build a replacement for the FreeNAS server that we have here, with newer/more hardware/drives and using RAIDZ2 instead of what's effectively RAID10. And try to silence it altogether if at all possible, too.

OK, I'm curious - why do you need a 10gig LAN?

More of a "would be nice" sort of deal for transfers to/from the NAS. It'll probably make my Time Machine restore significantly faster once I get my MacBook Pro back from the repair people, too (SSD failed).

LOL, I'm surprised someone didn't say "Because I do".

Seriously though, I thought everyone had a 10gig LAN. 😂

Something, something, "...too rich or too thin" updated to include " or too fast."

I run a 1 gig LAN in my office. Not even sure where I would get 10 gig hardware.

ETA: I know it's out there. I read an article in the last year or so that stated the LAN in use at one (or more) of the alphabet agencies was 96 gig. Now we know why Garcia (Criminal Minds} is able to pull all that stuff up so quickly.

Correct answer should be: to take full advantage of the already-installed 10 Gbit fibre internet connection, of course... ;)

(I’m still on 11ac, does what’s needed...)

I don't think I have anything that could even transfer data at 10 Gbps, even if I connected a 10G interface to it.

Of course, I remember the early 90s when 10 Mbps ethernet was faster than most hardware could keep up with...

If I had 10Gbps at home, I'd just push data back and forth all day...because I can. :)

Yeah - I still run Win 7 and I have the Task Manager open all the time. I like to watch the internet traffic - both the graph and the bytes/sec in and out. I recall directly connecting a laptop to my RAID machine (at the time, I think I had a 100 mbs port connected to the 1 GB port on the RAID, and it was hitting 12.5 MBytes for a while. For no particular reason, I got a tickle out of that.

In normal usage (GB port to GB port, GB switch, no router involved) I have seen as high as 70-80 MBytes/sec going across, but there's a lot of moving parts (IDE or SATA drives, PCI or PCI-E slot, file fragmentation, number of different files, buffer memory in either machine, etc.) but that's fast enough for me. I was talking to one of the geeks at Best Buy, and said he went through a lot of trouble to optimize everything, but he agreed it was a ton of work (labor of love type stuff) to squeeze those extra MB/s out of everything, but he was happy.

I'm finally able to finish ripping all my cd collection.

Wow, I think two of these would burn my face off! Are you happy with the monitor overall? I've been thinking about replacing my two 24" monitors with one of these (reduce complexity, one cable, etc)

And I agree about working on a smaller screen. I really am perplexed by all these folks claiming they can accomplish productive work on 12" or 13" notebook screens at a coffee shop, that is neither effective or productive for the type of work I do. In fact, my wife and I often day dream about working remote or being digital nomads (e.g. from the beach in Mexico for a month), but honestly neither one of us can fathom how we'd be productive on a small notebook screen for a month... :(

Regards