CopyQ — I’m about to make your work way easier!

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

By Deanna McElveen

Microsoft has a feature called “Clipboard History” to store copied items to paste later, but it’s … well, it’s boring.

If you like boring, type Clipboard Settings into your Taskbar search and have a bowl of plain oatmeal while you learn how to use it. If you are more a waffles-with-hot-sauce kind of person, keep reading.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.29.0, 2022-07-18).

Beyond Compare is beyond comparison

SOFTWARE

By Will Fastie

A good utility program can greatly improve productivity. A great utility program is often indispensable.

One capability that has always been essential, especially to developers, is file comparison. Surprisingly, few utilities existed to perform that task. I remember printing core dumps in octal from a machine that had crashed and comparing them, visually, to a dump from another, working machine. And I mean on paper.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.29.0, 2022-07-18).

Printer bugs squashed this month

PATCH WATCH

By Susan Bradley

If you are like me, you still print. A lot.

Just this week, I was fighting a Lexmark printer that no longer would recognize “Tray 1” and refused to print. To get someone to look at the printer is going to cost nearly as much as it did to purchase the printer.

But we’re not here to hear about my printer woes — we’re here to discuss potential side effects due to July’s updates. In yet another chapter of this sad story, we’re once again patching Print Spooler elevation of privileges. That means, once again, I’ll be keeping a very sharp eye out for printing side effects. And my sharp eye will also be on label printers, because those have been impacted by previous patches. (This has been going on for a really long time.)

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.29.0, 2022-07-18).

Sometimes you need to pull the plug

This morning I had to run to the office to diagnose why a Windows 10 21H2 workstation was not booting. It had a black screen. Normally on the weekend is when I patch and this was one of the machines I have install updates early to review the impact on machines. I’ll then log in on Saturday morning to check and make sure everything is operational. Knowing that I have a workstation backup (Macrium reflect to a large server), a spare SSD hard drive at the office, I knew I could reinstall the operating system/restore the workstation should the patching process cause undue issues, or the hard drive died.

When I got to the office, the lights were on the machine, but nothing on the screen. Knowing that there had been times when an update had frozen up the machine, I pulled the power plug, counted to five, and then plugged it back in. I pressed the power button and the system booted up to finishing up a bios update. It finalized the process and rebooted just fine.

Now normally I don’t do bios updates automatically, nor do I do them at the same time as when I’m planning to do a security update so I’ll need to investigate why they both occurred at the same time, but I’m guessing having both occur at the same time caused the bios update process to freeze up.

Updating bios software is an unfortunate, but necessary evil. Your best Windows 10 experience occurs when you keep your video card drivers and bios software up to date. At the same time, when it has issues, it’s extremely hard to be remote. You have to be there with the machine.

Bottom line, always have a backup. Consider having a spare hard drive. Know you have options. And sometimes…. just pull the plug and count to five.

Now waiting forPeach and Blackberry pie to bake in the oven, enjoy the summer!

Master Patch List for July 12, 2022 too early to patch…

I’ve updated the Master Patch List tonight for today’s releases.

It includes servicing stack updates for the older versions of Windows along with a security patch for Internet Explorer. Note this is not disabling Internet Explorer, merely patching it for security issues.

It’s too early to report on any major side effects but I have seen some folks report on major Windows 11 issues after updating (see here and here) so make sure you back up your machine and have a recovery plan.  Mind you two reports is not widespread at all, but Kevin Beaumont is a security researcher who used to work for Microsoft and always has interesting observations regarding security, so seeing him have Patch Tuesday issues causes me to call it out.

As always, thank you all for supporting the cause! Remember a mere $1 donation will give you access and if you donate $50 or more you’ll get a special code to enable text messages sent to your phone each time the Master Patch List gets updated and when I change the MS-DEFCON level.

July Windows security updates are out

Here we go again where we sit on the sidelines and watch the carnage…. excuse me review for side effects.

In the meantime check out some of the Amazon prime day deals on computers, HP computers and Chromebooks and most importantly for today, external harddrives you can use for backup. While I wouldn’t mind if you bought your way into Windows 11 (after installing start11), I’m still not giving it the all clear for those of you on Windows 10.

Also remember iOS has a beta out for version 16, so for those of you in the Apple ecosystem, expect some changes (more on that in the newsletter)

In the meantime here’s what I’m looking at in terms of security updates (more links as the analysis web pages go live, remember my post dead body recap in Monday’s newsletter:

9:58 am. – Patch Day Dashboard goes live 86 vulnerabilities, 4 critical.

Dustin Child’s write up.

TikTok steals your files, passwords, and more: FCC official

PUBLIC DEFENDER

By Brian Livingston

TikTok, the wildly popular short-video app owned by China’s ByteDance corporation, may be kicked out of Apple’s and Google’s download stores.

A US official boldly asserts that TikTok is “accessing users’ most sensitive data, including passwords, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, and personal messages.”

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.28.0, 2022-07-11).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

Choosing the right email program

SOFTWARE

By Lance Whitney

Whether you use a Windows PC, iPhone, iPad, or Android device, there are a number of options for email clients other than the usual suspects.

The email program you use depends to a large degree on the type of device or operating system you use. On a Windows PC, you may turn to the default Windows Mail client, or to Outlook if you subscribe to Microsoft 365. Those of you who own an iPhone or iPad will likely fire up the built-in Mail app. And most Android users probably stick with Gmail.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.28.0, 2022-07-11).