Computer Shopper - UK (2020-01)

HELPFILE&BUSINESSHELP

ISSUE383|COMPUTER SHOPPER|JANUARY2020 121

Irecently went to open iPlayerin

Chrome.Ityped ‘iPlayer’and

absentmindedly hit Enter,and

before Iknew it ended up at some

awful spammy sitethat wanted

me to install adubious Chrome

extension. Retracingmysteps, I

realised I’d accidentally accepted

the search suggestion of ‘iplayer.

co.uk’,which is clearly being

squatted by miscreants.

No problem, except that now

Chrome has remembered that

result, and it always appears

above the correct iPlayer address

(bbc.co.uk/iplayer)inthe Omnibox.

Youcan highlight and deletethe

suggestion, but it always reappears.

Is there away in which Ican strike

it off forever?

Jenny Franklin

Youcan remove it permanently by starting

to type iPlayer,using the arrows to select

the ‘iplayer.co.uk’ suggestion, then hitting

Shift-Del. This should stop the annoyance,

but if you find yourself repeating your

Omnishambles

original mistake,you mighttry blocking the

URL. There are many ways to achieve this,

but the simplest is to install the Block Site

extension from the Chrome store.You can

add any URLs you don’t want, and if you

accidently visit them you’ll see anotification

to remind you that they’re blocked.

Simplified,

or dumb?

My wiferecently received an email

purporting to come from Tesco,asking

her to update her account details. It

looked genuine at first, but on closer

inspection there were acouple of typos

and some un-businesslike language,sowe

deleted it. Itold her that next time she

received adubious email, she should view

the email’s header.

We useOutlook forour email on aPC,

Android tablets and Android phones. Ican

still find the‘View message source’option

on my Windows PC, but not on the other

devices. Am Imissing the option, or is it

not possible to see the message source in

the Android Outlook app?

Martin Simpson

Viewing an email’s header information can

provide agood additional check on its

authenticity.Unfortunately,however,many

mobile apps tend to be simplified to make

them easier to use,resulting in the loss of

useful features. It appears that Microsoft

hasn’t included the message source option

in Outlook forAndroid, and it’s also

missing from the mobile version of the

Outlook web interface.

Youcan usually get around mobile web

limitations on Android by opening the

Chrome menu and selecting Desktop site,

but in this case that just appears to cause an

endless loop between two redirecting URLs.

Consequently,the only thing we can suggest is

that if you or your wifereceive asuspicious-

looking mail, wait until you’re able to use the

Outlook client or web interface on acomputer,

and view the message header from there.

⬆Want to avoid visiting the wrong websites in Chrome?

Trythe Block Siteextension

About 18 months ago,Ibought an
Acer Spin 1convertible tablet,
which is currently running
Windows 10 version 1903. Imostly
use it to explore the web,which it
does well, but it has no wired
network port. There are times,
such as during Windows updates,
when it would be useful to
connect it directly to my router,so
IboughtaSyncwire SW-AD061
USB Ethernet adaptor.However,
when Iconnect this to the tablet Iget a
‘USBnot recognised’ message.The adaptor
works without aproblem on my two other
Windows PCs. Can you suggest acure?
Glyn Foster

There’s no reason we’re aware of why your
Syncwire adaptor wouldn’t be compatible with
an Acer Spin 1, so we assume that the error is
down to aconfiguration or driver issue.
Unfortunately,without more information,
it’s hard to narrow down adefinitive cause.
We’d start by trying to address any corrupt
or missing drivers by reinstalling both the
Syncwire adaptor and the tablet’s USB drivers.
Open the Start menu, typeDevice
Managerand run Device Manager from the
results. Look under the Network adapters
heading and deleteany devices with an
exclamation mark next to them. Now expand
the Universal Serial Bus Controllers heading

Network adaptorinaspin

and deleteevery device from within it, then

unplug the Syncwire adaptor and restart the

tablet rather than shutting it down.

After the tablet reboots, it should reinstall

the necessary drivers forits USB controllers.

Wait forthis process to finish and reboot again

if prompted, then reconnect the Syncwire

adaptor.The tablet should recognise it and

install appropriatedrivers, but if not you may

be able to help by downloading drivers forthe

Realtek RTL8153 chip that it’s based on.

First, reopen Device Manager and again

uninstall any devices with an exclamation

mark under the Network adapters heading,

before disconnecting the Syncwire adaptor.

Now visittinyurl.com/383helpfileand download

the Realtek RTL8153 driver package.Extract

the contents of the Zip file to afolder on the

tablet, then run Setup.exe and allow the

installation to complete. Finally,reboot the

tablet and plug in the Syncwire adaptor again.

⬆Installing the Realtek driver mayhelp

⬆Asimplified interface.But is it toosimple?