Tag Archive for Windows

| August 22, 2024
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Ultimate Guide to Eco-Friendly PC Disposal: Safe & Sustainable Solution

PC Disposal: Safe & Eco-Friendly GuideIn 2023, around 68.3 million tons of old or unwanted gadgets, which include PCs, were thrown out.  The United States generated approximately 11.9 million tons of e-waste in 2022.  This figure places the US as the second-largest global generator of e-waste.  The United Nations estimates that less than 17.4% of these unwanted gadgets are recycled as e-waste.  Unfortunately, a staggering 83% of e-waste ends up in landfills.  In these landfills, discarded gadgets leach toxins into the Earth.  You can help stop this by practicing proper PC disposal.

E-Waste

This improper disposal of e-waste resulted in the leaching of flame retardants, PFAS, and heavy metals into the soil and groundwater.  Some of the most hazardous chemicals found in PCs include:

  • Mercury: Exposure can harm the nervous system, kidneys, and brain.  It can also cause developmental issues in children and affect adults’ cognitive abilities.
  • Some of the most hazardous chemicals found in PCsLead: Lead poisoning can result in anemia, kidney damage, and developmental delays in children.  It affects both the nervous system and cardiovascular health.
  • Lithium: High levels of lithium can cause nausea, tremors, and kidney damage.
  • Barium: Exposure to barium can lead to gastrointestinal issues, muscle weakness, and heart problems.
  • PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are also present in PCs (PDF).  Their potential health effects include increased cholesterol levels, suppressed immune response, and risks of kidney and testicular cancer.

Proper PC disposal and your other end-of-life devices is critical to prevent the toxins in e-waste from contaminating the Earth.  Preparing for proper PC decommissioning involves several steps to ensure your personal data is safely removed and the device is prepared for its next phase, whether reuse, recycling, or disposal.  Here are the steps to follow when decommissioning a PC.

Your first step in PC disposal should be to back up all important documentsBack up your files

Your first step in PC disposal should be to back up all important documents, photos, videos, and other files saved on your computer.  You can use a USB stick, an external hard drive, or a cloud-based file-syncing service like Google Drive or iCloud.  Remember, it’s always better to back up too much information than too little

Transfer Software

You bought the software on your PC.  Ensure you have the install key to transfer any licensed software to the new computer.  Some applications offer a deactivation feature that allows you to transfer the license to a different PC.

If you’re giving your computer away, also make sure that you’ve signed out of iTunes, iCloud, and iMessage—there’s a chance your Apple ID data will remain on the drive after you reset it, and you don’t want anyone to gain access to your account.

When you wipe your hard drive it renders a computer completely free of personal information.Wipe your hard drive

After you back up the necessary files, you want to wipe the drive.  When you wipe your hard drive, it renders a computer completely free of personal information.  This is irreversible and will essentially make your computer a “blank slate,” so make sure you’re done with your computer before doing this.  Some tools to wipe your hard drive:

  • Darik’s Boot & Nuke is open-source and free.  It is probably the most popular program of this type.  However, it has not been updated since 2015.
  • KillDisk comes in two flavors: Free and Professional.  The free version only has one way to delete the data on a hard drive, but it’s still good enough for a decent hard drive wipe.
  • Apple includes Disk Utility in MacOS, which can wipe Apple’s hard drives.

Clean your PC

The last step in PC disposal is to remove any markings, asset tags, sticky notes, etc.  Next, use a lint-free cloth slightly dampened with soap and water or 70% rubbing alcohol or alcohol-based disinfectant spray to wipe down your device.  Avoid aerosol sprays and cleaning solutions that contain bleach or abrasives, and keep liquids and moisture away from any openings on the device.

CD and DVD Destruction

CDs and DVDs containing personal information should be physically destroyedCDs and DVDs containing personal information should be physically destroyed when no longer needed.  More giant paper shredders or specialized CD/DVD destruction hardware can accomplish this.  Document management firms like Shred-it offer optical disk destruction services.

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There’s no “right way” to eliminate an old computer.  PC disposal options include re-purposing it for another use, selling or giving it away, or environmentally safe recycling.  Consider organizations like Computer Aid International, which refurbishes PCs and other digital devices to bridge the digital divide worldwide.  They even use solar power in areas with unreliable electricity, benefiting over 14.5 million people in 115 countries. 

 

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Ralph Bach has been in IT for a while and has blogged from the Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that has caught my attention since 2005.  You can follow me on Facebook or Mastodon.  Email the Bach Seat here.

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| March 28, 2020
Comments Off on Why CTRL + ALT + DELETE

Why CTRL + ALT + DELETE

Why CTRL + ALT + DELETEEvery PC user has given their computer the three-finger salute as it locked up – frequently at the most inopportune time. But why CTRL + ALT + DELETE? Turns out the three-finger salute was a 10-minute hack to make programmers life easier. The CTRL + ALT + DELETE was born at IBM (IBM) in the early 1980s.

IBM PCProject Acorn was the code name for the rush project to build IBM’s new personal computer – because Apple (AAPL) and RadioShack were already selling small stand-alone computers. David Bradley was part of the team working from the IBM offices in Boca Raton, FL on the IBM PC.

Mental Floss reports that the programmers’ working on the IBM PC had to manually restart the entire system whenever the computer encountered a coding glitch. This was a waste of time. Mr. Bradley told Mental Floss,  “Some days, you’d be rebooting every five minutes as you searched for the problem … The tedious tests made the coders want to pull their hair out.”

IBM logoMr. Bradley worked on everything from writing input/output programs to troubleshooting wire-wrap boards on Project Acorn. In order to placate the programmers, Mr. Bradley created a hack. His hack was a keyboard shortcut that triggered a system reset without memory tests.

To Mr. Bradley CTRL + ALT + DELETE, was just another item to tick off his to-do list. He says. “It was five minutes, 10 minutes of activity, and then I moved on to the next of the 100 things that needed to get done.”

The engineer chose the keys by location—with the DEL key across the keyboard from the other two, it seemed unlikely that all three would be accidentally pressed at the same time. Mr. Bradley never intended to make the shortcut available to customers, nor did he expect it to become a cultural icon. It was meant for his fellow coders, for whom every second counted.

Thank IBM for CTRL + ALT + DELETE

The IBM team managed to finish Acorn on schedule. In the fall of 1981, the IBM PC hit the market. It was a dull gray box beneath a green screen monitor. Marketers predicted that the company would sell less than 50,000 units a year. IBM execs thought that estimate was too optimistic. They were all wrong. Computing would never be the same.

Statista Percent of US households with a computer 1984 - 2016

As PC sales took off – few users were aware of Mr. Bradley’s shortcut hidden in their machines. That changed in the early 1990s when Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 3 took off. Now Microsoft’s Windows PCs were crashing and the infamous “blue screen of death” plagued Windows users. A quick fix to the BSOD spread by word of mouth (this was before the WWW) – CTRL + ALT + DELETE. Suddenly, Mr. Bradley’s quick hack was a big deal.

At an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the IBM PC industry big-wigs gathered for a panel discussion. Mental Floss says that the first question to the panel bypassed Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and was for David Bradley. Mr. Bradley, who has always been surprised by how popular his CTRL + ALT + DELETE hack made him, was quick to deflect the glory. The programmer joked;

I have to share the credit, I may have invented it, but I think Bill made it famous.

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Bill Gates has publicly admitted that CTRL + ALT + DELETE was a mistake – but the company he founded continues to use Mr. Bradley’s hack. In Windows 10  the keyboard combination starts Windows Security, which lets you lock the computer, switch to a different user, log off, start Task Manager, or shut down/reboot the computer.

Stay safe out there!

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| January 23, 2020
Comments Off on PC Market Show Signs of Life

PC Market Show Signs of Life

PC Market Show Signs of LifeAfter 7 years of consistent declines – PC sales finally stopped their slide. Market researchers Gartner and IDC reported that PC sales grew during the fourth quarter of 2019, boosting all of 2019 into the positive. For the entire year, global PC shipments were up 2.7%, according to the IDC. That makes 2019 the “first full year of PC growth” since 2011.

Sick computerPCWorld reports that 2019 new PC numbers from Gartner and IDC and are remarkably similar. Gartner reported that PC sales grew 2.3% in 2019 Q4 to 70.6 million units and 261 million units for the year. Rival analyst firm IDC largely agreed, estimating that PC unit sales grew 4.8%, to 71.8 million units. IDC said that worldwide PC sales grew 2.7% for 2019 as a whole.

Among the results:

  • The top three global PC vendors—Lenovo, HP, and Dell—all consolidated their market share, reaching 65% of the PC market.
  • Lenovo logoIDC and Gartner concur that Lenovo (LNVGY) is the world’s top PC vendor for 2019. IDC reports Lenovo had a 24.8% global market share and Gartner said it had a  24.1%.
  • Globally HP (HPQ) ranked #2 with 23.9% by IDC and 22.2% by Gartner.
  • Dell was ranked #3 worldwide with 17.4% by IDC and 16.8% by Gartner. Dell’s unit sales climbing by nearly 11%, according to IDC’s estimates.

In the U.S. market the ‘Q4-19 rankings differed:

  • HP logoHP is #1 with a 31.2% market share and a modest 4.4% bump in U.S PC sales for the quarter.
  • Dell ranked #2 with a 26.8% market share and a gain of 15.9% for the period.
  • Lenovo came in #3 with a 14.9% share and 11.2% increase in share.

The tech prognosticators attributed the surge in sales to firms swapping their hardware to Windows ahead of MSFT”s Windows 7 end of support, giving new PC sales a one-time shot in the arm. Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, said in a statement.

The market will still have its challenges ahead, but this year was a clear sign that PC demand is still there despite the continued insurgence of emerging form factors and the demand for mobile computing.

Ranjit Atwal, a research senior director at Gartner, in a statement to PCWorld, cast doubt on future growth. He says,

The PC market’s future is unpredictable because there will not be a Windows 11. Instead, Windows 10 will be upgraded systematically through regular updates …As a result, peaks in PC hardware upgrade cycles driven by an entire Windows OS upgrade will end.

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Don’t do your happy dance just yet.

Gartner and IDC both predict global sales to steadily decline again over 2020 as MSFT’s drives to a subscription-based model. Other threats to the PC market include:

China – The Chinese government has ordered all PC hardware and operating systems imported from foreign countries to be replaced in the next three years.

HP- Xerox – I have covered Xerox’s maneuvers to take over HP. The possible disruption to HP by a Xerox hostile takeover could rattle the entire sector. Especially if Acer or Asus cannot scale up fast enough.

History – Data from Statista says that annual PC sales have dropped nearly 1/3 from their peak in 2011.

Year# of PC's Change YoY
2011364.0-
2012349.3-14.7
2013315.1-34.2
2014308.3-6.8
2015275.8-32.5
2016260.2-15.6
2017259.6-0.6
2018258.5-1.1
2019261.02.5
2020 *254.3-6.7
Data from Statista YoY = Year over Year in millions of units

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| August 1, 2019
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The Secret to F-Keying at Work

The Secret to F Keys at WorkWe use keyboards at home, work and the car. The first keyboard to feature function keys was the 1965 Singer/Friden 2201 Flexowriter Programmatic as a standalone word processing system. Each of the function keys was programmable. The familiar 12 F-Keys were introduced in 1984 with the second generation Model M keyboard for the original IBM PC. It had 12 function keys in 3 blocks of 4 at the top of the keyboard. Over the years, various operating systems and applications have made use of function keys in different ways.

After you learn this list of F-Key secrets, you can improve your fun at work by F-Keying around in your cube as you work on your project.

F1• F1 – Universal – Opens a help or support menu in most programs.
• F1 – Apple macOS X – Reduces the screen’s brightness.
• F1 – Some computers  – Used it to enter BIOS setup during startup.
• F1+WIN – Microsoft Windows –  Opens the Microsoft Windows help and support center.

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F2

• F2 – Microsoft Windows – Renames a highlighted icon, file, or folder.
• F2 – Microsoft Excel – Edits the active cell.
• F2 – Apple macOS X – Increases the screen’s brightness.
• F2 – Some computers  – Used it to enter BIOS setup during startup (Acer, Asus, Dell, eMachines, Gateway, Lenovo, Sony).
• F2+CRTL – Microsoft Word –  Displays the print preview window.
• F2+ALT+CTRL – Microsoft Office – Opens the Documents Library.

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F3

• F3 – Microsoft Windows – Opens desktop search feature.
• F3 – MS-DOS or Windows command line – Repeats the last command entered.
• F3 – Browsers (Firefox, Chrome and IE) – Launches the Find bar.
• F3 – Apple macOS X – Opens Mission Control.
• F3 – Other programs – Will find the next search value after an initial search is performed.
• F3+CTRL – Microsoft Word – will lowercase any highlighted text.
• F3+SHIFT – Microsoft Word – Toggles between capitalizing each word, lower case and upper case for the selected text.
• F3+WIN – Microsoft Outlook – Opens the Advanced find window.

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F4

• F4 – Microsoft Windows 95 to XP – Open find window in Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer.
• F4 – Apple macOS X – Accesses dashboard.
• F4+ALT – Boss key – Microsoft Windows – Immediately closes the current program without saving. It can be used in an emergency to close browser windows you don’t want others to see.
• F4+ALT – Microsoft Windows – When no program is running it launches the Shutdown dialog box.
• F4+CTRL – Microsoft Word – Repeat the last action performed.
• F4+WIN  –  Closes the open window or tab in the active window.

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F5

• F5 – Microsoft Windows – Reload the page, document, or contents list in a folder.
• F5 – Microsoft Office – Open the find, replace, and go to window.
• F5 – Microsoft PowerPoint – Starts a slideshow in PowerPoint.
• F5 – Browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and IE) – Refreshes a web page from the cache.
• F5 – Apple macOS X – Increases the keyboard backlight.
• F5+CTRL – Browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and IE) – Forces a hard refresh of the web page from the server instead of the browser cache.
• F5+CTRL+SHIFT – Microsoft Word – inserts a bookmark in Word doc.

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F6

• F6 – Microsoft Windows desktop – Tabs from desktop files to the taskbar and the system tray icons.
• F6 – Browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and IE) – Move the cursor to the address bar.
• F6 – Apple macOS X – Decreases the keyboard backlight.
• F6 – Reduce laptop volume (on some laptops).
• F6+CTRL+SHIFT – Microsoft Office – Opens to another document.

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F7

• F7 – Microsoft Office Suite – Spell and grammar check a document.
• F7 – Mozilla Firefox – Places a moveable cursor in web pages, allowing you to select text with the keyboard (Caret browsing).
• F7 – Apple macOS X – Can be used to rewind media content.
• F7 – Increase speaker volume (on some laptops).
• F7+SHIFT – Microsoft Office Suite –  Runs a Thesaurus check on the word highlighted.

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F8

• F8 – Microsoft Windows – Enter the Windows Start Menu, to access Windows Safe Mode (if pressed during the boot process).
• F8 – Apple macOS X – Can be used to pause media content.
• F8 – Used by some computers to access the Windows recovery system, but may require a Windows installation CD.

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F9

• F9 – Microsoft Word – Refresh document.
• F9 – Microsoft Outlook – “Send and Receive All folders” email.
• F9 – Reduce laptop screen brightness (on some laptops).
• F9 – Apple macOS X – Can be used to fast forward media content.

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F10

• F10 – Microsoft Windows – Activates the menu bar of an open application.
• F10 – Browsers (Firefox and IE) – Shows the Menu bar.
• F10 – Apple macOS X – Can be used to mute the speaker.
• F10 – Some computers – Increase laptop screen brightness.
• F10 – Some computers – Used it to enter BIOS setup during startup (Compaq, HP).
• F10+SHIFT – Microsoft Windows – The same as right-clicking on a highlighted icon, file, or Internet link pops out the context menu.

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F11

• F11 – Microsoft Windows Explorer – Enter and exit full-screen mode.
• F11 – Microsoft Excel – Adds a graph of highlighted cells.
• F11 – Browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and IE) – Enter and exit full-screen mode.
• F11 – Apple macOS X – Can be used to decrease the speaker volume.
• F11+CTRL – Microsoft Excel – Adds a new macro to the workbook.
• F11 –  Used to access the hidden recovery partition when pressed during boot (Compaq, HP, Dell, eMachines, Gateway, and Lenovo).
• F11+SHIFT – Microsoft Excel – Adds a new sheet to the workbook.

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F12

• F12 – Microsoft Office –  Open the Save as window.
• F12 – Browsers (Firefox, Chrome, and IE) – Opens browser debug tool.
• F12 – • F11 – Apple macOS X – Can be used to increase the speaker volume.
• F12 – Used to access the list of bootable devices on a computer when pressed during boot, allowing you to select a different device to boot from (e.g., hard drive, CD or DVD drive, floppy drive, USB drive, and network).
• F12+CTRL – Microsoft Word – opens a document.
• F12+SHIFT – Microsoft Word – Saves the Microsoft Word document (like Ctrl+S).
• F12+CTRL+SHIFT – Microsoft Office – Prints a document (Like Ctrl+P).

—

Newer Apple keyboards have F13, F14, and F15 keys for even more F-Keying around – in place of the Print Screen, Lock key, and the Pause key. They also have F16 – F19 keys above the number pad. Early IBM keyboards had F13 through F24 keys, but these keyboards are no longer used.

To access all the fun of F-Keying you may need to access Fn Lock key or the “Fn key”+“Fn Lock” key to strike F-Keying gold.

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Even Superman uses a keyboardThere’s nothing like F-Keying at  work to make you more efficient. It may feel somewhat strange the first time you try to control your computer from the keyboard since we’re so used to navigating with the mouse. But, you can’t beat the ability to keep your hands on the keyboard.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| June 9, 2019
Comments Off on Password Reset Practices “Obsolete”

Password Reset Practices “Obsolete”

Password Reset Practices "Obsolete" Followers of the Bach Seat know that passwords suck. And now Microsoft (MSFT) has joined me in that revelation. The boys in Redmond recently recommended that organizations no longer force employees to change their password every 60 days.

Microsoft logoIn a TechNet blog penned by Aaron Margosis, a principal consultant for Microsoft, the company called the practice – once a cornerstone of enterprise identity management – “ancient and obsolete” as it told IT, administrators, that other approaches are much more effective in keeping users safe.

Periodic password expiration is an ancient and obsolete mitigation of very low value, and we don’t believe it’s worthwhile for our baseline to enforce any specific value

Windows-10-logoIn the latest security configuration baseline for Windows 10, which allows administrators to use Microsoft-recommended GPO baselines for improving the overall security posture of a system and reduce a Windows 10 machine’s attack surface, “May 2019 Update” (1903) – (available as a ZIP file for download here) Microsoft dropped the idea that passwords should be frequently changed. Previous baselines had advised enterprises to mandate a password change every 60 days. (And that was down from an earlier 90 days.)

Mr. Margosis acknowledged that policies to automatically expire passwords – and other group policies that set security standards – are often misguided. He wrote,

The small set of ancient password policies enforceable through Windows’ security templates is not and cannot be a complete security strategy for user credential management … Better practices, however, cannot be expressed by a set value in a group policy and coded into a template.

Multi-factor authenticationAmong those other, better practices, Mr. Margosis mentioned multi-factor authentication – also known as two-factor authentication – and banning weak, vulnerable, easily guessed, or frequently revealed passwords.

ComputerWorld points out that Microsoft is not the first to doubt the convention. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) made similar arguments as it downgraded regular password replacement. “Verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be changed arbitrarily (e.g., periodically),” NIST said in a FAQ that accompanied the June 2017 version of SP 800-63, “Digital Identity Guidelines,” using the term “memorized secrets” in place of “passwords.”

Then, the institute had explained why mandated password changes were a bad idea this way:

Users tend to choose weaker memorized secrets when they know that they will have to change them in the near future. When those changes do occur, they often select a secret that is similar to their old memorized secret by applying a set of common transformations such as increasing a number in the password.

NIST logoBoth the NIST and Microsoft urged organizations to require password resets when there is evidence that the passwords had been stolen or otherwise compromised. And if they haven’t been touched? “If a password is never stolen, there’s no need to expire it,” Microsoft’s Margosis said.

John Pescatore, the director of emerging security trends at the SANS Institute told ComputerWorld;

I agree 100% with Microsoft’s logic for enterprises, which are who uses [group policies] anyway … Forcing every employee to change passwords at some arbitrary period almost invariably causes more vulnerabilities to appear in the password reset process (because there are now frequent spikes of users forgetting their passwords) which increases risk more than the forced password reset ever decreases it.

hobgoblins of little mindsLike Microsoft and NIST, SAN’s Pescatore thought periodic password resets are the hobgoblins of little minds, “Having [this] as part of the baseline makes it easier for security teams to claim compliance because auditors are happy,” Pescatore told ComputerWorld. “Focusing on password reset compliance was a huge part of all the money wasted on Sarbanes-Oxley audits 15 years ago. A great example of how compliance does not equal security.”

ComputerWorld notes other changes in the Windows 10 1903 draft baseline, Microsoft also dropped policies for the BitLocker drive encryption method and its cipher strength. The prior recommendation was to use the strongest available BitLocker encryption, but that, Microsoft said, was overkill: (“Our crypto experts tell us that there is no known danger of [128-bit encryption] being broken in the foreseeable future,” MSFT’s Margosis told ComputerWorld.) And it could easily degrade device performance.

Microsoft is also looking for feedback on a proposed change that would drop the forced disabling of Windows’ built-in Guest and Administrator accounts. Microsoft’s Margosis hedged a bit;

Removing these settings from the baseline would not mean that we recommend that these accounts be enabled, nor would removing these settings mean that the accounts will be enabled,”Removing the settings from the baselines would simply mean that administrators could now choose to enable these accounts as needed.

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We have covered this before, forcing users to change passwords over short time-frames inevitably leads to users choosing the simplest, most memorable, and most crackable passwords possible. Things have changed over the years, including technology that now enables threat actors to crack simplistic passwords easily.

MSFT is now actively pushing MFA in the enterprise so it is not surprising they are going away from this general password policy.

MSFT changing its security baselines won’t change requirements made by regulatory authorities (PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOX, NERC) and auditors. It takes years and years for them to change.

The change does not affect home users – but maybe it will make them think?

Slowly the world of passwords is starting to come under control.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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