Web Talk

In this easy guide I will show you how to uninstall and manually remove fake Windows Express Help spyware. As usual such a virus masks itself as antispyware/Windows optimizer tool with the only goal to trick you into buying the full license of the software as it is only a demo. The way you got the virus is pretty similar to what I have described in other tutorials. You were surfing a website or a blog when a window appeared on your screen. Such a window contained a fake snapshot of an antispyware that automatically started a fake scan of your system. At the end of it a warning and rather alarming message stated that you had an infection on your Windows 7/XP/Vista system as well as different security holes and that in order to fix them you needed to download Windows Express Help software. Once installed the software restarted your machine. When the computer restarted an automatic scan of your computer started without your approval. Actually the virus kept your computer desktop on ransom as you could not access to it without performing such a scan. At the end of the scan, a warning message stated that you got different  infections and that you needed to buy the full license to use the software and fix the issues. Do not buy anything with your credit card. The whole thing here is a scam, a scareware process which should finish when you buy the software with your credit card! Let’s see how to manually remove it thanks to a simple manual removal tutorial that doesn’t involve any third party software! Continue reading »

Some Firefox user is reporting a weird bug which has not fixed  on Firefox yet. Basically, History folder is blank and doesn’t work without any reason. When user clicks the History link on the top Firefox toolbar, the left History sidebar will open but it won’t work at all. Instead of the familiar list of your recently visited websites and blogs you won’t get anything. Only a blank sidebar.  Such issue is due to a small Firefox file called places.sqlite which gets corrupted. Removing or renaming it will solve the issue. Continue reading »

It is very common on Facebook to send a friend request by mistake. Other times instead you might change your mind and want to take back that friend request you sent to that person you now don’t want to be friend with anymore. Till some time ago, if that happened to you there was no way to delete such a request. However, Facebook aware of this issue has since long added an interesting feature to fix your mistakes, so to speak. The issue is that it is not clearly visible! Let’s see together where this feature is. Continue reading »

An interesting feature available on Internet Explorer 8 is the Autocomplete dropdown   in the Address bar. For obvious reasons, you might wish to delete the autocomplete history in order to save and protect your privacy. Autocomplete has got a special cache which stores all your previous searches so that as soon as you start typing something on IE8 address bar, it will return you with a complete list of your previously visited/typed URLs. Now, the issue with such a feature is that, sometimes, no matter what you clear, delete and erase. The autocomplete feature will return with your previous searches. This behaviour is due to the fact that Internet Explorer 8 uses Windows Search to index and cache your visited sites. Windows Search is a completely new feature which is not located on Internet Explorer thus it is useless to clean the browser only in order to delete your searches. Let’s see how to turn off autocomplete with a simple trick and have your Windows 7 completely wiped out from any “embarrassing” Internet data. Continue reading »

Google has just released a new interesting feature in its Google Search engine options. I am talking about the Reading Level option that aims to filter and limit search results to specific reading levels. I am going to give you a couple of example that should clarify what these reading levels are. First case scenario. A teacher is looking for specific webpages for his students. Since such students are foreign english learners, the teacher is specifically looking for webpages which have been written using a very elementary and simple English. Second case scenario.  A scientist is looking for complex reports regarding the field he is studying and researching. Since he is looking for articles and reports written from experts, he might need to filter out all those websites that use simple reading levels. In this tutorial I will show you how to turn on the Reading Level option in your Google Search page. Continue reading »

The new Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) has got a serious problem. A lot of users are complaining that they can’t play any flash video and game as well as Java applet. Let’s make a couple of example to see and understand the problem and  in what situations it is clearly visible. When Internet Explorer 9 users try to open websites or blogs containing Java applets, the area where the applet should be visible is completely blank . A white background will replace the applet. The applet that is not working is a specific Internet Explorer 9 problem as it doesn’t happen on Internet Explorer 8 which works smoothly. In other cases instead, when Internet Explorer 9 users try to open websites or blogs containing a video or a TV show for example, they won’t get anything. No sound, no image. Nothing at all. They will only get an error message or warning stating that Adobe Flash, Shockwave Player or Silverlight is not detected or installed and that they cannot play any video etc. Of course, Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight and Java are correctly installed on the machine. Let’s see  how to fix this issue. Continue reading »

A couple of days ago, a Web Talk reader (John JC) asked me to solve an issue related to Google Picasa that locks up and freezes in certain situations. Basically, as stated by John and other Picasa users, when you or a device (such as a camera or an SD card, for example) try to open the Google application to import pictures and photos, Picasa will stop working. It will lock up itself and in some severe cases it will also lock the computer up, forcing you to reboot the machine.  The issue seems to be pretty persistent and has been recurring in each Google Picasa version. I have extensively Googled to find a solution, and I have spent an hour reading Google forum threads and discussions on certain websites. At the time writing there is not any “permanent” fix, so to speak, which will solve your issue as I suspect this is a real bug and not something the final user is able to work it out by himself. However, I have found a couple of interesting workarounds that in some cases gave awesome good results. Continue reading »

If you access the Internet using your local WiFi Internet connection or outer  hotspots, you might wish to delete all the WiFi History from your computer (Windows 7) to better protect your privacy. In fact, as you know the Network you connect your computer to leave inside your laptop some kind of “fingerprints” such as Networks names etc. This might be a little embarrassing above all if you were not supposed to stay on a certain place and gain access to that particular wireless network! So, let’s see how to check your WiFi history and clear it in a couple of steps! Continue reading »