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Welcome

I like to think that, here on Windows 7 Help & Advice, we listen to what you have to say and respond in kind. Many of you are happy with the way your machine performs, though a lack of infallibility means that things inveitably go wrong – even with us experts. By design, Windows will give you a hint as to what you’re dealing with, but most of the time you’re looking at something unfamiliar and unfathomable. While our resident Support Squad specialists deal with a high turnover of specific computer queries, they don’t often apply to everyone, which is why in this issue I bring you the magic of our main cover feature: Solve 100 PC problems. Here we uncover the most general of Windows issues and tell you how to fix them, whether you’re plagued by a slow startup, or witnessing mystical errors. Please, do get in touch if you think we’ve missed anything though – we’ll be happy to cover it in a future issue!

Nicholas Odantzis Deputy Editor www.facebook.com/windowsmag

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Keyboards and languages > Change keyboards’. If you don’t see ‘English (United Kingdom)’ in the Installed Services box, click ‘Add’ and select it. Now click it in the list, then keep clicking ‘Move up’ until it’s at the top. If there’s a language in the list that you don’t need, choose it and click ‘Remove’. Video quality on my computer is poor Click ‘Start’, type power options and click the ‘Power Options’ link. Click ‘Change plan settings’ for your current plan, click ‘Change advanced power settings’, expand ‘Multimedia settings’ and make sure Playing Video is set to ‘Optimise video quality’. Text doesn’t look clear enough on screen Launch cttune (the ClearType text tuning wizard) and follow the instructions provided.

The keyboard isn’t working properly In an emergency, you can always click ‘Start > All Programs > Accessories > Ease of access’ and launch the on-screen keyboard. Then simply select the program you’re trying to control, return to the on-screen keyboard and click its keys as necessary with your mouse. Can I run a program as another user? Yes, if you have the right login credentials. Just hold down [Shift], right-click the program’s shortcut and choose ‘Run as different user’. Enter the username and password for that account and your application will launch. What photo-editing program is best? If you’re in a hurry and your needs are simple, give Windows Paint a try – it’s better than most people realise. You can crop images, resize or rotate them, paint and draw, and even add some fun annotations such as thought bubbles.

It takes too long to set up a new computer When a new computer arrives, you’ll probably want to equip it with browsers, Flash, a PDF viewer, a zip manager, a media player and lots more. Normally you’ll find these by browsing directly to each program site and looking for the download page. DDownloads (www.ddownloads.net), however, knows all about 900+ popular applications. Just choose a program, click ‘Direct download from page’ and it’ll automatically open a browser window and begin downloading the file you need.

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PICTURE PERFECT For simple photo editing, don’t underestimate Paint

My PC has been infected with a virus Before you try downloading a security tool, click ‘Start’, type MRT and press [Enter]. If it’s installed you’ll see the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, which may be able to help remove the virus from your PC. How can I step through a video? It’s not exactly obvious, but pressing [Ctrl] while clicking the ‘Play’ button in Windows Media Player will step forward, while pressing [Ctrl]+[Shift] will clicking ‘Play’ will step back. I can’t install a new program on my PC Close all other programs before you run the installer. Uninstall the old version, if there is one, and use the Disk Cleanup tool to clear temporary files. If all else fails, create a new user account and install it from there.

another just normally, then you’ll probably find you can’t drag and drop files between them. Run both with the same rights, and drag and drop should work. Can I stop my kids installing software? If you want to prevent other users of your system from installing programs, give Installguard a try (get it from your free disc or download it from www.completelock.com). Free for personal use, it ensures only authorised users can install software, and only programs you permit are allowed to run on the system. What tool do I need to RSHQWKLVÀOH" If you sometimes download a file and then don’t know how to open it, install OpenWith Enhanced (from your free disc or http://extensions.frieger.

I need more screen grab options Windows can capture the entire screen to the clipboard if you press [Print Screen], or just the current window if you press [Alt]+[Print Screen]. If you want more, though, launch SnippingTool.exe. It can also grab rectangular or even freehand areas from any part of the screen you like.

com/owdesc.php), right-click any file, select ‘Open with’, and the program will recommend applications that can open it.

Drag and drop isn’t working properly If you’re running one program as an administrator and

I lose data when I reboot my PC Launch REGEDIT, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\

Cover feature Solve any PC problem I can’t uninstall a program Go to ‘Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall a program’, click it in the list and select ‘Uninstall’. If you don’t see the program there, click ‘Start > All programs’, select its folder and look for an ‘Uninstall’ option. If you find the uninstaller but it seems to hang, be patient; removing an application can take a while. If the program doesn’t work first time, reboot and try again, or try uninstalling the program from Safe Mode. Sometimes reinstalling an application will allow you to uninstall it. If all else fails, Revo Uninstaller (www. revouninstaller.com) can remove many stubborn programs.

Software\Policies\Microsoft\ Windows\System, and look for the DWORD value Allow Blocking AppsAtShutdown. If you see this, and it’s set to zero, double-click it, set the value to one and click ‘OK’. Can I run a program as an administrator? Yes, and it isn’t difficult. If you can see the program executable (or a shortcut), right-click it and select ‘Run as administrator’. If you’re using the Run box, though, type the program name – REGEDIT, for example – then hold down [Ctrl] and press [Enter] to launch the program with administrative rights. How can I tell if I have 32-bit or 64-bit Windows? Some programs come in both 32- and 64-bit flavours, so it’s useful to know which version of Windows you have. To find out, click ‘Start’, right-click ‘Computer’, select ‘Properties’, and the System Type entry will tell you whether you have a 32- or 64-bit operating system. I’ve lost a Windows product key Reinstalling Windows is generally very easy, but you will need your Windows product key. It’s usually on a sticker that’s attached to your PC or Windows disc box, but if you can’t see anything then Keyfinder (from this month’s free disc or www.

magicaljellybean.com) will help you recover it. A program is hogging my CPU If an application has a high CPU usage but you don’t want to close it, press [Ctrl]+[Shift]+ [Esc], click ‘Processes’, rightclick the process and select ‘Set affinity’. Now clear ‘All processes’, select just one CPU core and click ‘OK’. The program is now unable to use your other cores, leaving them free for other applications.

Files are opening in the wrong program If double-clicking a file on your desktop doesn’t open it in the right application, don’t worry – this is easy to fix. First, launch Control Panel and click ‘Programs > Default programs > Set your default programs’. Now choose the application you’d like to open this file in the Programs list and click ‘Choose defaults for this program’. Check the file types you’d like this application to handle by default (or check the ‘Select all’ box if you’d like to use it for everything). Clear the others and click ‘Save’ when you’re done. Your files should now open in the application of your choice. Q

Nick’s verdict Windows problems can seem extremely complex, but as we’ve seen, that’s often not the case. Just tweaking a single setting or running the appropriate applet may be all it takes to get your system working again. When life isn’t so straightforward though, you’ll need to apply a few more general strategies. If you’re experiencing a new technical issue with Windows for instance, you could try using System Restore to recover your previous settings and system files. Some programs may need to be reinstalled afterwards but your data files won’t be affected. Microsoft’s Fix it Centre (http://support.microsoft.com/fixit) has a host of automated solutions to all kinds of problems. Check out the general Microsoft support site, too (http://support.microsoft.com). There are helpful text documents, tools to download, forums to get help from other users, and you can even chat live with Microsoft technicians.

Nicholas Odantzis Deputy editor

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WINDOWS TIPS

INTERNET ADVICE

Welcome Whether you’re stuck for inspiration or want to become a master of your Windows computer, our Explore section is the place to come. Each month we pack it with tutorials covering a range of subjects suitable for all levels of expertise. This month Christian shows you how to control your PC remotely using an iPad and some clever software, Matt helps you fix troublesome hardware issues, and James explains how to identify programs that are hogging your PC’s resources. There’s never been a better time to see how your PC can make your life easier than ever! Nick Odantzis, deputy editor [email protected]

YOUR DISC SOFTWARE

)ʅɸɗʙLVʤʖQɒ 24 Organise your schedule with Remember the Milk

46 Free up storage with WinDirStat

28 Access your Windows PC from an iPad

48 Identify and repair common hardware issues

32 Make your own mobile app toolkit

52 Get started with Amazon Cloud Player

36 Keep your files in sync with Skydrive

54 Create a bootable Windows 8.1 installation

38 Switch to a solid state boot drive

56 Make a folder system that works for you

42 Publish blog posts with Live Writer iCloud and make sure the slider beside Find my iPad or Find my iPhone is set to ‘On’. Whenever it’s in reach of a Wi-Fi or 3G signal you’ll be able to track your device through www.icloud. com/#find and, if necessary, remove your personal data remotely.

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Tools that record every press of a key on your keyboard. Just imagine if someone could detect every single thing you typed on your keyboard. It’s certainly not something you would want hanging over your head from a security point of view. If a software keylogger is present on your system, it was almost certainly installed as a Trojan, bundled up with otherwise legitimate software. You can remove it using an anti-virus tool.

Hardware keyloggers are also available, so check for unfamiliar devices attached to your USB ports and remove any that you don’t recognise – particularly if they are connected to your keyboard cable. If you suspect that someone has installed an internal keylogger, use an on-screen keyboard instead of a physical device to enter sensitive info such as card details.

The on-screen keyboard In Windows 7, you can access the on-screen keyboard by clicking ‘Start’, then selecting ‘All programs > Accessories > Ease of access > On-screen keyboard’. You can then click the keys to type, and any keylogging software installed on your PC will be unable to record what you’re writing.

SAFER PASSWORDS Using an on-screen keyboard instead of a physical keyboard can help thwart keyloggers, which record what you type

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Most email traffic is spam – don’t let it dominate your inbox

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pam accounted for a colossal 70.7% of all email in the second quarter of this year, according to Kaspersky’s Securelist, with 2.3% of all emails containing a malicious attachment. Trustwave puts the spam proportion slightly lower at 68.5%. Most spams are merely a nuisance, promising lower bills, more impressive erections and under-the-counter meds – all of which we’d recommend you steer well clear of, naturally. Enabling junk mail filtering is a good first defence. In Internet Explorer 10, click the Tools (cog) button, expand the Safety sub-menu and click ‘Turn on SmartScreen Filter’. You should also enable junk filtering at the ISP level if possible, and if you own a domain disable any catch-all email addresses so that only specifically addressed emails make it through. Spammers often add tracts of white text to the end of a message to help convince spam filters that the email is genuine. Multi-national computer security company, Kaspersky, noted an increase in the number of spammers spoofing greetings cards from Hallmark through the early summer this year, while the company’s head of content analysis and research, Darya Gudovka, highlighted that

“spammers have begun sending out

TAKE CARE A good way to spot spam is to check for grammatical errors, and to mouse over the links to check that their destinations are correct

emails with malicious attachments designed to look like automatic delivery failure notifications sent out by servers. Another common trick is to make malicious emails look like notifications from well-known online resources, and include links to malicious websites.”

Hover over links It’s not only online delivery failures that they’re spoofing, either. Take the above example, advising of a failed parcel delivery. Initially it looks quite convincing,

but there are several problems. The US Postal Service logo uses the right colours, but the wrong font, and the address from which it was sent isn’t USPS.com. The body of the email is missing an apostrophe and includes a couple of grammatical mistakes. It’s also embedded as a graphic rather than plain text. The big give-away, though, is that hovering over the link to print a replacement delivery label shows that it leads not to usps.com, but a Russian investment site. Always hover over links before clicking them so you can see where they lead, and don’t click them unless the destination is accurately described in the content of the email and matches the server from which the email was sent. If in doubt, open a fresh browser window and search for the page in question using Google. Whatever you do, don’t open any attachments, as these could infect your PC with a Trojan or virus. Even something as innocuous as a Word file could include executable code. Resist the urge to use the ‘Unsubscribe’ links on the bottom of an email as this will verify that your inbox is open for business, increasing the likelihood that you’ll receive more junk in the future as the spammer sells on your confirmed details to the next malicious marketer down the line.

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What they are and how to get your email client to block them

REMOTE IMAGES Some spammers use images hosted on their own web servers to find out whether you’ve opened one of their emails. This lets them know that the email address they have is real

HTML-based spam often includes links to remotely hosted images that, when loaded by your email client, confirm to the sender not only that you’ve opened their message, but also that your address is valid. This lets them more effectively target you in the future. The spammer’s server effectively mail merges a unique image URL for each recipient into a standard message and sends it to everyone on its list. Your PC requests the image from the server, which sends it out and simultaneously makes a note against your name, confirming that your address works. To protect you from this kind of attack, Outlook.com blocks images in emails by default. If you want to unblock pictures for a particular message, click the info bar at the top of the message, then select ‘Show content’.

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The web’s address system is flexible, yet highly structured and logical

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nderstanding the URL – uniform resource Locator – is key to keeping yourself safe online. More commonly known as a web address, the URL is the friendly, humanreadable equivalent of the numeric location of every device, folder or file on the internet. The first part, running up to the first single slash or port number (see below), is converted to a string of digits by a domain name system (DNS) server and is entirely case insensitive. Everything else is handled by the host server, which, depending on its configuration, may be case sensitive. This could allow hackers who gain access to the server to insert a malicious file called, for example, INDEX.HTM alongside an existing index.htm. Being directed to the capitalised file by an email, instant message or another web page could open you up to attack. Limit your exposure to scams by employing your browser’s phishing protection tools. In Chrome, visit chrome://settings, click ‘Show advanced settings…’ and check the box beside ‘Enable phishing and malware protection’. In Internet Explorer 10, click the ‘Tools’ (cog) button, expand the ‘Safety’ sub-menu and click ‘Turn on SmartScreen Filter’. These tools compare your entered URLs against lists of malicious sites and pop up a warning if it finds a match.

7ȱɏʍȾHɪNGʝʨɚ The domain name (or host name), which is the name of the server on which the resource is located. Often preceded by www, which can sometimes be omitted.

Port number. This directs your request to a specific position on the remote network if the default web traffic port – port 80 – wouldn’t resolve to the server you need. You don’t often actually see this.

http://example.com:8080/pages/index.html The active protocol. Browsers default to HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol) so you can leave it off, but alternatives include, among others, FTP, SMB and HTTPS.

Specific path to the requested resource. If the server is set up with default filenames, omitting the part after the final slash loads the default file for the selected directory.

6ʅEGʝPʋʖɚVFʋPɡ http://www.barclays.co.uk.stealingyourdata.ru/login Subdomains can be used to redirect you to directories on a remote server. http://news.bbc.co.uk, for example, redirects to www.bbc.co.uk/news. Always read the complete domain to ensure you really are accessing the domain you think you are. A link to www.barclays.co.uk.stealingyourdata.ru, for example may look like it’s sending you to Barclays, and the pages to

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which it leads could be designed to reinforce that impression, but any data you enter will be captured by the owners of www. stealingyourdata.ru in this case. Look for the domain name immediately preceding the first slash (reading left to right, ignoring the double-slash in the protocol); that’s what you’re actually connecting to, and if it’s not what you expect, stop.

Scramble your data to make it pretty much useless to hackers

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he NSA and Britain’s GCHQ “have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – ‘the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet’,” according to documents leaked to The Guardian by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Check for the padlock What this means, in effect, is that either of these agencies – and likely their counterparts in other countries – can now intercept your credit card details and other personal data, even over an encrypted connection. Before you panic, though, this is only possible because they have billion dollar budgets and banks of supercomputers, which means that in pretty much any other instance encryption still affords an effective level of protection against regular hackers for browsing, email, and Voice over IP (VoIP). You should therefore use an encrypted connection wherever possible – and certainly when shopping online. Check your browser URL box for a padlock to verify this. It’s on the left in Google Chrome, and the right for Internet Explorer. Safari for iPad puts it on the page tab, while the iPhone adds it to the browser title bar. It’s not only shopping sites that offer encryption. Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook.com all offer encrypted versions of their email services. Gmail has employed strict SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) as default since December 2012; Outlook.com switches to a secure connection as

soon as you visit the login screen; and you can enable it in Yahoo by clicking the cog icon in the webmail interface, picking ‘Mail settings’ and switching to the security tab. There, enable the SSL option and click ‘Save’. The site will refresh to the secure version. SSL encryption uses a pair of keys – one public key used to verify the identity of the server and a second private key that’s used to scramble the data that passes between that and your own computer. Only when it reaches its destination will the data be decoded, which makes an encrypted shopping site an

“Use an encrypted connection where possible – certainly when partaking in online shopping” exponentially safer connection over which to pass your credit card details than plain email, since anyone who intercepted the data in transit would be unable to read it without the resources of GCHQ. The longer the encryption key in bits, the more secure it is. “Strong encryption, at 128 bits, can calculate 288 times as many combinations as 40-bit encryption. That’s over a trillion times stronger,” says Symantec. “At current computing speeds, a hacker with the time, tools, and motivation to attack using brute force would require a trillion years to break into a session protected by [a 128-bit certificate].”

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The padlock symbol isn’t the only clue that you’re using a secure connection; the protocol identifier at the start of the web address will also change to HTTPS, which stands for hypertext transfer protocol secure. Don’t log in to any shopping site that doesn’t include this prefix, and don’t become complacent later in your browsing session just because you saw it on the password page. An HTTPS-prefixed page that redirects you to regular HTTP for any other page after you’ve logged in won’t keep you secure because the rest of your session will be unencrypted. SSL certificates only last for a specified period, and need to be renewed by the certificate holder from time to time. They are issued by certificate authorities, in return for a per-year or multi-year fee. They can be revoked prior to the end of their life if they’ve been compromised, in which case they are added to a blacklist that browsers can interrogate using the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) which allows the browser to throw up an alert if you’re about to visit an unsigned or insecure site. All browsers since Firefox 3 – plus all editions of Safari and Chrome – support OCSP. You can check the validity of the certificate in use for your current session – and its strength – by clicking the browser’s padlock icon. If you’re browsing an online store and you can’t see a certificate in place, then it’s either been revoked or it’s expired. If this is the case, then there’s only one piece of advice we can offer you: shop elsewhere. It’s just not worth the risk.

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A strong password is your first line of defence against data capture

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ow many accounts do you have that require a password? Email, instant messaging, bank accounts, utility accounts, dating sites… the longer you sit and think about it, the longer the list will become. If you use the same password for even two accounts, miscreants who hack into one account get easy access to the other – and that’s a big risk when we have so many tasks online. The average online Brit had 26 online accounts by the middle of last year according to research conducted by Experian – a number that’s set to increase, with most of us signing up to six or more new accounts every month. No wonder a quarter of us use the same password for each one, with the 10,000 most commonly used passwords likely to open 99.8 per cent of all online accounts – a disturbing and worrying statistic – according to data published by security researcher Mark Burnett at www.xato.net. It shouldn’t be any surprise, then, that even those of us who take better care of our online defences often fall back on a rather predictable list. In the number one spot, according to August 2013 research conducted by Google Apps, is your current pet’s name, which considering how frequently cats and dogs pop up on Facebook and Instagram, shouldn’t be

too hard for anyone else to uncover. The word ‘password’ sits in the 10th spot, with such staples as a place of birth, child’s name and favourite holiday destination in between – each of which is very likely to be within reach of an identity thief after a short trawl through your social networking history. The answer is to pick a different password for each service – however, remembering each of them would quickly become an issue, and although writing them down would help solve that problem it leads to another one: anyone who finds your written list has all the keys they need to your whole digital world.

machine on which you’re running 1Password (or rival tools such as LastPass and KeePass) because you won’t have memorised any of your passwords. However, that also means that it isn’t always a suitable option, and it doesn’t get around the problem of dealing with randomly requested data, such as a single field that can change between login attempts to request different pieces of personal information, such as a place of birth, first school or mother’s maiden name. This is a tactic often employed by banks to keep your account secure.

Get a password manager Password manager applications can help. 1Password for Windows, Android, OS X and iOS not only stores passwords and other form data such as credit card numbers for any site but can also generate super-secure random passwords that mix characters, numbers and punctuation. They’re almost impossible to remember, but by delegating the task of storing and submitting them every time you need to log on, all you need to do is remember a single password to unlock the 1Password utility and it’ll take care of the rest. The problem comes when you need to log in to an account away from the

SAFETY IN NUMBERS When it comes to new password requirements, work within them, but be sure to include letters, digits and punctuation

7ZɛIDFWʝɠʋXʃȱʑQʤLFDʤLʝɚ Dig an extra moat around your castle of important data

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wo-factor authentication adds a second level of security to your online accounts, requiring that you use a supplementary device to verify your identity when performing certain actions. If you have an online bank account you’ll almost certainly have come across it already, with many banks supplying customers with a calculator-like keypad that generates a unique sequence in response to a specific code that you’ll have entered from the bank’s website. Google uses a mobile phone to authorise changes to key account data and to restrict the computers through which anyone can log in to your account in

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a very similar manner. It calls the process ‘2-step verification’. To set it up, start by logging in to your account at www. google.com, clicking your user icon in the upper-right corner and picking ‘Account’, followed by ‘Security’. Scroll down to ‘2-step verification’ and click the ‘Edit’ link, followed by ‘Start set-up’. You’ll need to provide a valid mobile phone number to which Google can send an authentication code. If you’ve previously provided a number through the general Account Security settings, it’ll be used to pre-populate the form. Choose whether you’d prefer a text message or automated voice message containing the

Help & Advice | February 2014

code and click ‘Send code’. When the code arrives, tap it into the new box on your screen and choose whether or not you want to permanently associate it with your current browser. If you do, you won’t need to wait for a new code to be sent to your phone every time you log in, but anyone who tries to access your account from a different browser or machine will. Not all of Google’s services can use twofactor authentication. Picasa, for example, isn’t compatible, and you won’t be able to access Gmail from an external client like Outlook until you create applicationspecific passwords for each one. Point your browser at https://accounts.google.

The best advice, then, is to use a password manager for those services where it is an effective tool, and rely on traditional password selection methods in all other cases, perhaps employing a personal two-tier system with unique passwords for sensitive sites such as bank accounts, and half a dozen shared but personally memorable passwords for everything else. Wherever possible, mix regular characters with digits and punctuation and, where permissible, spaces and underscores, to build up phrases or even entire sentences. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that swapping out letters for numbers – such as 5 for S, 1 for I or L, and 9 for G – is an effective remedy. This is a well-known trick and one to which the crackers are entirely savvy. Some sites require passwords to be constructed in a specific manner – for example, a minimum of eight characters comprising both letters and numbers – but where you’re given the freedom to define your own rules, go wild. If you’re a proficient typist it won’t take you much longer to tap out a whole sentence to gain access to your email account than it would a regular eight-character password, but will take a hacker much longer to crack it. Confining yourself to eight characters would let you generate 6.1 quadrillion

passwords, according to Deloitte research directors Paul Lee and Duncan Stewart on www.wsj.com, but unfortunately this still gives you less of a head start on the malcontents than you might expect. Reporting on the Passwords^12 conference in Oslo for www.security ledger.com, Paul Roberts wrote that researchers running password-cracking software distributed across five servers were able to churn through a whopping 348 billion password combinations per second. At that rate, as conference organiser Per Thorsheim explained, a 14 character Windows XP password would fall in just six minutes. If the futurists get their way, the problem of choosing and remembering passwords might well soon solve itself anyway as we move closer towards using biometric identifiers – such as the new fingerprint recognition we’ve seen announced for the Home button on the new iPhone 5s. IBM fellow and speech CTO David Nahamoo wrote on the IBM Research blog in December 2011, “Over the next five years, your unique biological identity and biometric data – facial definitions, iris scans, voice files, even your DNA – will become the key to safeguarding your personal identity and information and replace the current user ID and password system.”

“Don’t fall into the trap of believing that swapping letters for numbers is a good way to make a secure password”

0RVɢXȿHɍ SDVʣZʝUGɡ As compiled by SplashData from lists of stolen passwords posted online by hackers, the most common passwords in use in 2012 were:

1 ........................................ password 2 .............................................. 123456 3 .........................................12345678 4 ...............................................abc123 5 .............................................. qwerty 6 ............................................ monkey 7 ............................................. letmein 8 .............................................. dragon 9 .................................................111111 10......................................... baseball 11 ......................................... iloveyou 12 ......................................... trustno1 13 ......................................... 1234567 14 ........................................sunshine 15 .............................................master 16.............................................123123 17 ........................................welcome 18...........................................shadow 19 .............................................. ashley 20 ..........................................football 21..................................................jesus 22 ..........................................michael

com/IssuedAuthSubTokens and enter a name for the first service for which you want to create a password – say, Gmail in Outlook. Click ‘Generate password’ and Google will display a randomly generated character string. Use this to change the password for one of your Google services, and repeat the process for each one. Apple uses two-factor authentication to secure iCloud accounts. To set it up, you need a device that can receive four-digit codes by SMS, such as a mobile phone, or you can use Find my iPhone. Point a regular browser at http://appleid.apple. com, logging into your account and picking ‘Password and security’. Follow the instructions by clicking ‘Get Started’ under Two-Step Verification.

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Beware of hijacked Twitter accounts, and don’t click links in random spam mentions. These often come through almost immediately in response to something you’ve posted, and include your username so that they appear in your mentions and are visible not only to you, but also anyone following your conversation. If your Twitter client lets you report spam directly, get into the habit of doing this right away, and the sender will be simultaneously added to your block list.

Beware shortened links Keep in mind that shortened links with obscured URLs like those appearing in Twitter posts won’t always take you where the covering tweet might indicate, so click them with caution if you don’t know or follow the person who sent them and, if necessary, copy the link and paste it into a browser using Private Browsing (on Safari) or Incognito mode (Chrome) or InPrivate Browsing Mode (Internet Explorer) so that the destination site can’t write any permanent data to your computer. Once you reach the destination, examine it carefully. During the appeal for funds for the Japanese tsunami victims in 2011 for example, one widely shared link claiming to be for the Red Cross actually sent money to a private user’s webmail account.

Once you’ve hardened your online apps and services, do the same to your home network

S

afety begins at home, and nowhere in the digital world is there more truth in that statement than where your wireless network is concerned. A strong signal can pass well beyond your walls – particularly if you happen to live in a flat – and stray into neighbouring properties or even out into the street, taking your network traffic with it. Unless you’ve secured the connection, it would be all too easy for a third party to interrogate that data and extract from it whatever they choose. Start by enabling wireless encryption on your network. Most routers offer a range of options here, with WPA2-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access II Pre-Shared Key) the best option, and its predecessor, WPA, a viable fallback. Avoid using WEP, because this has been shown to have vulnerabilities. If this is the only option available on your router, however, it’s time to upgrade your hardware, either through a firmware patch or, if there isn’t one available, by replacing it altogether. WPA and WPA2 employ a passphrase system to encrypt traffic on the network.

Think before you post Regularly review your list of authorised client applications and be sure to deauthorise any of the ones that you don’t use any more, in order to reduce the risk of your account being hijacked should any of them develop security flaws. The same goes for web-based apps, such as those that run inside your Facebook account. Finally, bear in mind that social media is far from a walled garden. Be careful what information you give out because it is, to all intents and purposes, a public forum. Posting lots of pictures to a social media account when you’re on holiday, for example, may be enough to alert a potential housebreaker to the fact that your home is empty, and is easy prey.

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This is commonly written on the side of the router if you haven’t changed the default, and is also the password you use to access the network when first making the connection. As such, you shouldn’t divulge this phrase to anyone who shouldn’t have access to the network or the stuff on it. If you’re choosing your own passphrase, then ideally it should be at least 13 characters long to minimise the chance of it being cracked using automated means.

Stay hidden If your router allows it, hide the network name, also known as its SSID (service set identifier). It won’t then appear in lists of detected networks on Windows, OS X or mobile devices, even though a network sniffer will still be able to detect the presence of a Wi-Fi signal in its vicinity. Don’t stop there either, or you’ll leave the job half-done. Router manufacturers routinely recycle network names, so there’s a fair chance you’re running a network called linksys, belkin54g, ZyXEL, NETGEAR or something else

that’s fairly generic. So well known are these names that you can find a list of the most common Wi-Fi network names online. Unless you change your SSID to something unique, obscuring it will do nothing to prevent third parties cycling through the list until they find a match. Next, turn your attention to the security guarding your router’s admin pages. These are routinely protected by a set of easily-guessed credentials. Many usernames are set to ‘admin’ or ‘user’, and the password is often ‘admin’ too, if not ‘password’ or ‘pass’. Once a third-party gains access to your network they’ll be able to detect the router address from their internet settings, and by referring back to the default network name, they’ll also be able to look up the default username and password and walk right in.

Router address To change your login details, you first need to find your router address – you can do this in Windows 8 by opening ‘Network and Internet’ in Control Panel, following the link to ‘Network and Sharing Center’, and clicking the option ‘Change adapter settings’ in the sidebar. Doubleclick the active connection, then click the ‘Details’ button on the ‘dialog’. The router address is the four sets of digits beside ‘IPv4 Default Gateway’. Typing this address in a browser will show you – or a hacker – the router login screen, allowing them potentially easy access if you haven’t yet switched away from the default settings. You need to log in yourself, navigate to the router settings

and change the login details to avoid this. Most routers are set up so that client devices are automatically assigned a local address on the network using DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol). This makes it easy for first time users of the network to start sending and receiving data straight away and also reduces the amount of work that the home user has to do to maintain their network. However, it also means that any rogue network interlopers will be assigned an address

“Amend the security guarding your router’s admin pages; many default usernames are simply set to ‘admin’” along with legitimate users. Put another barrier in their way by disabling DHCP, and making a note of the router address and subnet mask that applies to your network – from the router configuration pages – so that in the future you can enter them manually on each machine that needs to connect. Also make sure to implement your router’s MAC Authentication feature. This uses a list of unique identifiers associated with the network adapter on

each machine to ensure that only those that have been specifically permitted are granted access. You can find the MAC address of the network card in a PC by returning to the Network Connection Details panel from which we obtained the router address above and copying the six pairs of letters and digits beside Physical Address Once you’ve obtained your address, add it to the list of authorised clients on your router configuration screens.

Disconnected If you aren’t using any wireless devices, then consider shutting off the router’s wireless connection altogether. Even if your desktop machines aren’t all in the same room as the router itself, it’s easy to pass data around your home without sending it through the air by turning your domestic electric cabling into a wired network. Devices conforming to the Powerline networking standard can transfer data between machines and access points at up to 500Mbits/sec, which is plenty for online gaming and HD movie streaming, and because the signal won’t pass beyond your fuse box or a modern consumer unit it won’t leak out into the world.

Get stronger network protection It’s easy to think of your network password as just that – a password to grant access – but it’s actually something far more important. All the data on your Wi-Fi network is encrypted using this phrase, meaning that even if someone could intercept ‘sniff’ the traffic, it would be unintelligible gobbledegook unless they also had this key with which to decrypt it. WPA2 provides stronger network protection than WPA and WEP. It

comes in two flavours: WPA2Personal (sometimes denoted WPA2-PSK) – which uses a passphrase system to gain access to the network and encrypt traffic passing between the base station and its clients – and WPA2Enterprise, which authenticates users with reference to a list maintained on a centralised server. Check for the Wi-Fi Alliance’s logo on any packaging or detail sheets when purchasing a new router.

WATCH OUT Look for the Wi-Fi Alliance logo on the packaging of any new router to ensure it’s compliant with WPA2 encryption

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Fort Knox or Hard Knocks? Test your defences with our safety quiz How many of your passwords appear in the list of the 22 most commonly used passwords on page 33?

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e’ve run through a number of ways in which you can try to improve your online security, but how much of it have you actually downloaded? The following questions are aimed to analyse your awareness with regards to keeping your data safe from the sharks while surfing. Pick answers from the multiple choice options and add up your total using the scoring system at the bottom; no cheating now – after all, it could be more than your pride that’s at stake here.

(a) More than half of my passwords. Is that a problem? (b) Fewer than half of my passwords, but that’s not too bad, right? (c) Are you crazy? None of my passwords are on that list. (Or: I use a password manager.)

(a) Ignore it if you haven’t bought anything from abroad. (b) Deal with its contents before the end of the tax year. (c) Report it to HM Customs and Excise as soon as possible.

(a) Irrelevant; I don’t use any Apple devices, so it doesn’t apply to me.

2

I’ve just worked out what my ‘pornstar name’ is. It is:

(a) Pretty funny, actually! Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine? (b) A potentially useful tool for hackers who could use your mother’s maiden name to reset your passwords. (c) Available for everyone to read on my blog, Facebook wall and Twitter stream.

When should you check for a padlock in your browser address bar?

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(a) Whenever you’re shopping or doing online banking. (b) When looking at mucky sites you’d rather not have made public.

(b) It helps me to identify my machine on a network. (c) It lets me authorise my Mac to connect to my router and blocks all other wired or wireless devices.

Which of the following should I not make public on my wireless network?

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(a) The password. (b) The SSID (network name). (c) Both of the above.

Which of the following is the most appropriate kind of wireless security for a home or small office network?

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(a) WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access). (b) WPA2-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access – Pre-Shared Key mode). (c) WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy).

(c) When working with sensitive data or logged in to a password-protected site.

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Which of the following options would offer the most secure level of encryption?

(a) Your full system spec and details of your email provider.

4

(a) A 40-bit key. (b) A 128-bit key. (c) A 256-bit key.

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When reporting spam to a sender ’s ISP, what should you include:

(b) The complete set of headers associated with the email. A (c) covering note explaining why you believe the note to be spam

(a) Back up all of your personal data. Losing it is unthinkable. (b) Research the best prices on eBay. People will pay top dollar for one, so why miss out on some easy money? (c) Restore its default settings.

WHATS YOUR SCORE? Top notch. Your security set-up could give the Alcatraz a run for its money. Why not treat yourself to a little reward while you’re at it? (Be sure to check for the browser padlock if you’re buying it online – but you already knew that.)

11-20

Good, but not great. You’re pretty savvy, but still a soft target for a hardened hacker. There are still a few extra steps to take that’ll do a lot to bolster your defences.

1-10

Poor show. Security doesn’t only apply to jobs and blankets, you know. Check out our tips again and think again about the simple changes you can make to keep yourself – and your computer – safer online. O

0

ANSWERS Score 2 points each if you selected: 1c, 2b, 3c, 4c, 5c, 6c, 7b, 8b, 9c, 10c Score 1 points each if you selected: 1a, 2a, 3a, 4b, 5b, 6a or 6b, 7a, 8c, 9b, 10a Score no points for any of the following: 1b, 2c, 3b, 4a, 5a, 7c, 8a, 9a, 10b

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How can knowing your MAC address help you keep your wireless network secure?

You’ve received an email from [email protected]. What should you do?

When selling an iPhone or iPad, what is the most important step to do?

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THE PERFECT READ FOR THE PERFECT READ!

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REASONS YOU SHOULD UPGRADE TO WINDOWS 8.1 Left cold by Windows 8? The new 8.1 edition is a much better proposition!

1

SMART SEARCH

By default, the new Smart Search in Windows 8.1 includes relevant results from Bing alongside files from your computer and SkyDrive. It won’t work for every search – and you can disable it if you don’t like it – but it’s a useful tool to have at your disposal. Music searches show tracks on your computer as well as band information pulled from the web, for example, and there are better image search capabilities and improved website previews. You can now see images of sites in your search results, which helps you see which are most likely to be relevant. All search results are presented in a neat visual way that makes it easier than ever to find what you need.

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FIND IT FAST With the new Smart Search tool, you’ll get relevant information from Bing alongside your usual search results. Why waste time opening a web browser?

Feature Upgrade to Windows 8.1

2

IMPROVED APPS

FIND A FILM The new Netflix app lets you swipe through films easily, and you can start watching on one device, then resume on another

3

Microsoft’s own built-in apps, including Mail and Photos, are getting better all the time, and third-party developers are also starting to up their game. The Start screen Netflix app is actually an improvement on the web interface, for example – particularly if you’re using a larger screen. App docking has been improved in Windows 8.1 too, making it easy to have Start screen and desktop apps running alongside each other. You can even have three or four apps running simultaneously if you have a larger display.

CLOUD CAPABILITIES

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© THINKSTOCK.COM

SkyDrive might not be called SkyDrive for much longer thanks to a legal challenge, but no matter what you call it, the service is here to stay. Microsoft’s cloud-based file storage system is better integrated into Windows 8.1 than Windows 8, which was something of a halfway house. You no longer need to download a Skydrive app – the updated operating system has effortless syncing and backup built in, and makes it easier to share files online too. If you prefer to use Dropbox to store and share your files online, there are free official desktop and Start screen apps available that will work with Windows 8.1.

CLOUD COVER It’s easier than ever to store files in the cloud, so you can access them on any device with an internet connection

4

DESKTOP TWEAKS

If you’re using Windows 7, Vista or XP you may well want to spend most of your time on the desktop, and you’ll be pleased to know that Windows 8.1 has made improvements here too. Microsoft has introduced a Desktop Display Scaling function to enhance performance on larger and smaller screens (or systems with two displays of differing resolutions), simplified the File Explorer utility with a ‘This PC’ view that replaces ‘Computer’, and added extra commands to the right-click Start menu (including ‘Network Connections’ and ‘Shutdown’).

LOOK AND FEEL

You now have far more control over the look and feel of your Start screen than you did in the original release of Windows 8. There are more colour and background choices, additional tile sizes, and the option to have a slideshow instead of a static image on the lock screen. You can even replace the Start screen with the Apps page, if you’d prefer to see all your programs at once rather than scrolling through their tiles. You can make your desktop applications appear first on the list too, if you prefer. On the desktop, you can change the functions of the ‘hot corners’ if you don’t like the way they work by default. February 2014 |

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BOOT TO THE DESKTOP

The iconic Windows 8 Start screen isn’t going away any time soon, but Microsoft has acknowledged that it’s not to everyone’s liking, and you can now bypass it when you log in – Windows 8.1 lets you boot up to the Start screen, the Apps page or the desktop. What’s more, you can keep the same wallpaper on both the desktop and the Start screen if you want to make the change less drastic. If you’re on a tablet, it’s easier to stick to the Start screen; if you’re on a traditional computer, it’s easier to stick to the desktop.

7

TAKE YOUR PICK Find the apps you want in seconds with the new look Windows Store

8

SKYPE FRONT AND CENTRE

Like SkyDrive, Skype is an essential part of the Windows experience in 8.1, bringing together video calling, audio calling and instant messaging under one virtual roof that’s only a click or a tap away –and replacing the Messages app at the same time. It’s easier than ever to search for your contacts, and you have more control over how much of your screen the app uses. Microsoft promises that Skype will now be “front and centre”. That might sound either appealing or off-putting depending on whether you prefer Google Hangouts!

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When it was first introduced, the Windows 8 Store felt a little half-baked and wasn’t always as intuitive as we would have liked. In Windows 8.1, it works and looks much better. Having all of your software under one roof is a convenient way of working, and apps update automatically now as well. The Store has a new look too, with at-a-glance descriptions and ratings that make it easier to sort through recommended programs and games so you can spot the best of the new apps on the platform.

EASIER CONFIGURATION

More tech-savvy users who enjoy having a poke around in their computer’s settings may have decided to give Windows 8 a miss because of the hodgepodge created by the combination of the Start screen PC Settings app and the familiar desktop Control Panel. Windows 8.1 has a much more comprehensive Settings app, so most of the options you’re going to need are available from both places, and tweaking your machine is more straightforward, whichever interface you’re using. There are lots of new options to explore, too.

CUTTING EDGE Windows 8.1 is packed with exciting new features that will help you keep up to date with new technology, including 3D printing and much more

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A BETTER STORE

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FUTURE TECH

Windows 8.1 includes a host of more minor improvements and tweaks that make it future-proof, including built-in 3D printing capabilities. This means you can use 3D rendering software to design an object, then simply connect a 3D printer to your PC and select it as you would any other printer. There’s also support for Wi-Fi Direct printers, so you can hook up your wireless device without any extra software. It’s also worth checking our the updated and enhanced Fresh Paint digital artwork app that Microsoft has been showing off recently. If you’ve been wondering whether to upgrade to Windows 8, now is the perfect time to make the jump! Q

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WINDOWS HELP HARDWARE FIXES SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS INTERNET TIPS Windows

MOVING TEMP FOLDERS

Do you have a PC problem? Get in touch… Email full details of your problem to the support team and we’ll do our best to help windowsmagazine@ futurenet.com

Q I would like to make my main

Windows 7 partition as static as possible in order to keep the junk off it, as well as to help reduce the size of the snapshots I take using a program called RollbackRX. Is there some way to relocate such items as temporary internet files and other non-essential functions to another drive? Ken Wood

TEMP SHIFT Move your temporary folders to another drive by changing environment variables

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Adam’s solution The answer to this question requires you to tread a fine line, moving genuinely non-essential files off the system partition without going too far and potentially causing major problems further down the line. Ken is correct in assuming that temporary internet files can be safely moved away – we’ve answered this question separately in the step-by-step guide on p80 –

but we’ve identified four more areas worth exploring. First, disable the Hibernation feature if you don’t need it. To do this, open a Command Prompt as an administrator from the Start menu or Quick Access menu, then type powercfg.exe /hibernate off and press [Enter]. Second, switch off System Restore if it’s not required (RollbackRX replaces this anyway in Ken’s case) via the System Protection tab of the System Control Panel. Third, move the paging file to another physical drive. To do this, click ‘Advanced system settings’ in the System Control Panel. Click ‘Settings’ under ‘Performance’, switch to the Advanced tab and click ‘Change’ under ‘Virtual memory’. First, untick ‘Automatically manage paging file size for all drives’. Select your system partition (typically drive C) and choose ‘Custom size’. Set both initial and maximum sizes to the same figure – 200MB if you have 4GB RAM or less, 400MB if you have 4-8GB, and 800MB if you have more than 16GB – and click ‘Set’.

Support Technical help

FIND THE SOLUTION! WhoCrashed This free program – available from www.resplendence.com – allows you to view Windows crash logs in more detail.

Quickfire questions About a month ago, a friend’s Thunderbird client started printing out two pages of unwanted information at the top of every email. Reg Marshall Open the View menu in Thunderbird and check the Headers entry. Setting this to ‘Normal’ reduces the amount of header information printed along with the email itself.

COMPATIBLITY SOLUTION VueScan lets you keep using your trusty scanner in Windows 7 and 8

Now select your second drive, choose ‘System managed size’ and click ‘Set’ followed by ‘OK’. Follow the prompts to reboot your PC. Finally, return to the Advanced tab and click the ‘Environment variables’ button. You’ll see TEMP and TMP entries for both your own user account and for the system itself. Select each one in turn and click the ‘Edit’ button to type in the location where you’d like these folders to reside (you’ll need to create these folders on your second drive manually before doing so). All of these actions will help free up space on your system partition, thereby reducing the size of the snapshots taken by RollbackRX. Hardware

RUNNING OLD DEVICES IN WINDOWS 7 Q I’ve just upgraded my PC from

Windows XP Pro to Windows 7 Home Premium. Could you help me get my old HP Business Inkjet 1200n printer with duplexer to work correctly in Windows 7, please? The automatic duplex function isn’t currently working. I’ve also got an old scanner that no longer works (it was designed for Windows 2000, but did work in XP). Keith Hooker Simon’s solution By the time I got in contact with Keith he’d solved his first problem by fitting a parallel port add-on card to his new PC – once the printer was connected via that rather than the USB port, it was able to print automatically on both sides of the paper again. When it comes to getting older scanners to work with newer versions of Windows, you have a few options. If you have a spare, unused copy of Windows XP around, you can install that into

a virtual machine using VMWare Player (available to download from www.myvmware.com/ web/vmware/free – registration required) and then connect the scanner through that. A simpler solution – but one that will cost you around £25/$40 for a year’s free upgrades – is to use VueScan, a trial of which you’ll find on the cover disc. This works with thousands of older scanners, and could be a cost-effective alternative to purchasing a new scanner. Keith opted for the VMWare Player route, and was pleased to report that it allowed him to access his scanner once more.

For the last couple of months I’ve not been able to get any Windows Updates for my laptop. It just keeps spinning the little blue circle. Emma Clark Emma’s issue was fixed with our first suggestion: open Action Center, then click ‘Troubleshooting’ and select ‘Fix problems with Windows Update’. Running this as an administrator (click ‘Advanced’) found and solved the problem

Jargon buster! DoD 5200-22.M This is a special algorithm, approved by the US Department of Defense, for securely deleting files.

Security

UNWANTED TOOLBARS Q I have three unwanted

toolbars on my laptop that are giving me grief in Google Chrome: Certified Toolbar Search, Amazon Smart Search and Metacrawler Search. Every time I close them in Chrome they come back on the next launch, and I can’t find any reference to them in Programs and Features to allow me to uninstall them. Microsoft Security Essentials doesn’t find any infections, either. They’re slowing down my PC and I hope you can help me remove them permanently! Bill Richards

NO EXTRAS Unchecky helps you avoid accidentally installing unwanted tools

Duplexer A device that makes it easy to print on both sides of a sheet of paper by feeding through a second time.

Nick’s solution Thankfully, all three toolbars – although installed sneakily by other programs – proved relatively easy to remove once I pointed Bill in the right direction. Open the Chrome menu and choose ‘Settings’, then select ‘Extensions’ in the left-hand pane. The toolbars should be visible from here – my guess is you’ll see an ‘Installed by a third-party’ notification next to them on the right. Getting rid of them should be as simple as February 2014 |

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Quickfire questions I’ve just upgraded my RAM to 32GB, but Windows 7 Home Premium says ‘Installed memory (RAM) 32GB (16GB usable)’. What does this mean, and how do I fix it? Mark Sadly it’s a limitation of Windows 7 Home Premium – upgrading to Windows 7 Pro or Windows 8 will lift this restriction. Windows 8 Standard supports up to 128GB RAM for example. How do I stop HP Photo Gallery asking for a disc every time I try to open some photos on my computer? Kevin Lawson As HP Photo Gallery comes pre-installed, you should be able to resolve the problem by looking for a repair option under the All Programs entry on the Start menu. I’ve received some files from a friend in MSG format – how do I read them without Outlook? Adam Eaves MSG files can be read outside of Outlook using a free program called MSGViewer, which requires Java – see http://bit.ly/18kcw2k for details, and to get started.

clicking the trash can next to an unwanted toolbar and clicking ‘Remove’ when prompted. Repeat for the other toolbars and then restart Chrome – on doing so, Bill confirmed all three had removed themselves from his PC. To avoid this happening again in the future we recommend installing a free, unobtrusive program called Unchecky from the cover disc (ignore any warnings that your security program may flag up – it’s completely safe). Unchecky sits quietly in the background looking out for program installers that attempt to sneak these types of add-ons on to your PC and will alert you should you be about to install one. You can, of course, ignore the warning, but it does at least mean you won’t ‘accidentally’ install one potentially unwanted program (PUP) on your PC.

SECURE WIPE Always clear data completely from your PC before passing it on

Security

CLEARING OLD DATA FROM HARD DRIVE Q I’m about to dispose of an old

HP touchscreen machine, and would like to know what program I should use to safely clear it of data before I dispose of it. Something efficient and simple to use, but not too expensive please! Tessa Davies Adam’s solution To keep things simple, we’d recommend you use a Windows-friendly data-shredding tool to delete existing data on the drive, and wipe any free space to ensure previously deleted files are destroyed too. Install File Shredder from your free disc, then launch the

program. Click ‘Shredder settings’ and select to the Algorithms tab to make sure DoD 5200-22.M is the selected algorithm. Click ‘OK’. From here you can add files or folders still present on your hard drive, then click ‘Remove all’ to delete them securely after clicking ‘Shred files now’. Finally, click ‘Shred free disk space’ to securely wipe all empty space on the drive, which should remove all traces of previously deleted files. Once complete, restore Windows to its factory settings using your recovery partition or discs, then consider installing File Shredder and running Shred Free Disk Space one last time to wipe any other free space left over. Hardware

CAN’T USE COMPUTER’S LINEIN SOCKET Q I’m trying to connect my

old music centre to my Windows 7 64-bit computer in order to record some old vinyl discs. Unfortunately, despite the presence of a line-in socket on my

MOVE BROWSER CACHE Q Hi, I’d like to free up some

space on my system partition by moving my temporary internet files onto another drive. Can this be done easily? Jeremy Sixsmith Matt’s solution Yes, although the method obviously depends on the web browser you use – Chrome users should visit www.essayweb.net/ miscellany/chrome.shtml for a detailed guide, and users of other browser users should check out the step-by-step tutorial instead.

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Explorer 1 Internet Click the ‘Tools’ button and choose ‘Internet options’, then click ‘Settings’ under ‘Browser History’. Click ‘Move folder’ to choose where the new Temporary Internet Files folder is created. Finally, click ‘OK > OK > Yes’ to log off and move the files.

Help & Advice | February 2014

2 Firefox Install Configuration Mania from http:// addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/4420, then choose ‘Options > Configuration Mania’ from the Firefox menu. Select ‘Browser cache’ under ‘Browser’ and click ‘Browse’ to pick a new folder before clicking ‘Select folder > OK’.

Support Technical help motherboard, no line-in option appears under ‘Control Panel > Sound > Recording’. It seems the computer doesn’t recognise it. Hopefully you can help. Simon Rutter James’s solution This can usually be traced to the sound drivers – in Simon’s case, he had an Intel D945PVS motherboard that had been designed pre-Windows 7. The standard Windows 7 sound drivers had been installed, which is fine for basic use, but he needed dedicated drivers to unlock the features he required. A quick trip to the Intel website revealed Windows Vista 64-bit drivers, but no dedicated Windows 7 driver. I pointed Simon to the free DriverEasy tool, which you can find on your free disc, or download from http://www.drivereasy.com. This scanned his system and found 27 driver updates, including the all-important sound drivers. Once installed, the line-in socket appeared in the Sound Control Panel and Simon was able to access it in Audacity (http://audacity. sourceforge.net) to start digitising his record collection.

has now been discontinued, so I will either have to renew my subscription to Norton or choose another product. My regular antivirus scans only turn up adware cookies, and I use the internet daily, but not continuously. My question is, can I rely on Microsoft Security Essentials to give me all the protection I need from viruses and malware, or are there weaknesses that would make a commercial product a better choice? Thanks very much. Alan Elsegood Nick’s solution My personal view is that free antivirus software is adequate only if you take precautions to minimise your risk of infection, whether that’s vetting websites before you visit

using a free browser plug-in such as MyWOT (www.mywot.com), or downloading and installing programs only from reputable websites and after investigating them thoroughly. As for Microsoft Security Essentials, there are better, more thorough free tools out there, such as Avast (www.avast.com). However, if you want added protection, then I still recommend paying £25 a year for a Norton subscription (www.norton.com) – after all, I’ve been using it for the past six years! Additional features such as automatic screening of all downloads and warnings when you’re about to visit potentially dangerous websites means it’s there to catch you when you slip up, but if you trust your own vigilance, then free software is perfectly sufficient. Q

Do you have a PC problem? Get in touch… Email full details of your problem to the support team and we’ll do our best to help windowsmagazine@ futurenet.com

Security

IS FREE PROTECTION ADEQUATE?

EXTRA PROTECTION Norton vets all downloads and warns you if it spots anything suspicious

Q I’m running Windows 7, and

have been using Spyware Doctor as my antivirus protection for several years. The product

“My personal view is that free antivirus is adequate only if you take precautions to minimise your risk of infection” Jargon buster! Environment variables Specially named variables that point Windows to specific system folders.

(new) 3 Opera In the new version of Opera, locate the program shortcut, right-click it and choose Properties. Click inside the ‘Target:’ box and add the following line: --disk-cache-dir=D:\ Folder, where D:\Folder points to where you would like the cache to be stored.

(old) 4 Opera If you’re still using Opera 12.16 or earlier, type opera:config into the address bar, then search for cache directory4. Change its value to the location of your desired folder (which you must have already created) and click ‘Save’ to finish.

Paging file A place where Windows can temporarily store items that aren’t currently being used. PUP Potentially Unwanted Program – an additional program or add-on offered when installing an application on your PC.

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NEW HARDWARE

ESSENTIAL ACCESSORIES

The days of your computer being a grey box on your desk are long gone. You can now take your PC with you everywhere you go, ready for whenever you want to type out a report or relax and have fun. If you’ve just bought a new album or one of the latest games, you’ll want to make sure it sounds as good as possible. We’ve got a roundup of the best new headphones that will be music to your ears. We’ve also put two new portable PCs through their paces – Microsoft’s new and improved Surface 2, and HP’s chic but budget-oriented Pavilion 15. Enjoy! Nick Odantzis Deputy editor [email protected]

LATEST GAMES

84 Gaming headsets

86 Microsoft Surface 2

88 HP Pavilion 15

92 Batman: Arkham Origins

Comfortable and stylish headphones that deliver fantastic sound whether you’re playing a game or enjoying some music.

If you’re looking for an affordable laptop and don’t need too many bells and whistles, this simple offering from HP could be ideal.

The successor to Microsoft’s first Windows tablet has arrived, with more power and fantastic battery life for working on the go.

The Dark Knight goes back to his roots in this prequel. Expect a cracking story featuring Gotham’s infamous villains.

Our review guarantee

Our awards… Only the very ÀQHVWSURGXFWV receive our Best On Test Award. These will have excellent marks for quality.

We use only acknowledged experts to review products, so you can use our ratings with full confidence to make your buying decision

How we review

One of the key tenets of our review philosophy is that hardware should be compared against like products wherever possible. It is only when you pit WKHÀQHVWSURGXFWVRIDFHUWDLQ type against one another – at the same time – that you can UHDOO\FRPHXSZLWKDGHÀQLWLYH

RATING EXPLAINED

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verdict as to which is the very best in that category. The pace of development in computer hardware means that it is very GLIÀFXOWWRFRPSDUHVFRUHV from today with those from, say, six months ago. Magazines and websites that review a new product on its own run the risk of confusing or misleading. Superb

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Very good

We guarantee to test every piece of hardware rigorously and thoroughly, using only acknowledged experts to establish the worth of a product. We always review from the viewpoint of our readers; the day-to-day practicality and quality of a product is paramount. Good

Our Best Value Award is given to products that quite simply represent the best value for your money.

Disappointing

Poor

Upgrade What’s inside…

84 Turtle Beach XP510 84 Creative Sound Blaster Evo Zx 84 Tritton Kunai 85 Razer Kraken 7.1 85 Plantronics Rig 86 Microsoft Surface 2 88 HP Pavilion 15 90 Battlefield 4 92 Batman: Arkham Origins

86 Microsoft Surface 2: a second-generation Windows tablet with a sleek new look

94 Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag 96 Call of Duty: Ghosts

88 HP Pavilion 15: an affordable laptop that would be perfect as a second PC for the family

“You play a rogue who loves money enough to leave his girlfriend in port and sail to the West Indies in search of a vast fortune” 7ʦ ʢɚWɛSDȰɏ

Our promise to you…

We’ll introduce you to new stuff

The Upgrade section is your key to finding out about the latest products, all designed to help you get more from your PC

You can trust our reviews

Our expert reviewers are 100 per cent independent, with years of experience in the world of computing. Our rigorous testing procedures mean that only genuine, high-quality products are awarded high star ratings. Further, very few are handed our Best Value or Best on Test Awards. If you see an item of hardware bearing one of these marks, \RXFDQEHFRQÀGHQWWKDWLWLVDQH[FHOOHQW product. Always check when the award was given, to ensure it is still up-to-date.

We choose the best products

Thousands of new products for your computer are released every year and choosing between them can sometimes be an impossible task. Our experts select only the best hardware and software to feature in this magazine, making your decision on which one to choose easier. Even better, our awards and star rating system make it VLPSOHWRÀQGWKHEHVWSURGXFWVIRU\RXU needs, with our recommended products section giving you a fast, trustworthy guide to a wide range of hardware and software.

Wherever we can, we review new hardware comparatively, pitching it head-to-head against other similar products. (Full details of our policy can be found in the opposite page, under ‘Our review guarantee’.) Of course, this isn’t always possible with new products and part of our duty to you is to introduce you a wide range of fascinating new hardware, software, services and games. The reviews of standalone hardware and software are just as thorough as our comparative reviews. However, we do not allocate scores to them because this can often be misleading. The only exception to this rule is on our games reviews, where the pace of change is a lot slower and single scores can be genuinely useful.

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Tritton Kunai

Price £50 | $60 (www.trittonaudio.com)

Turtle Beach XP510

Price £230 | $290 (www.turtlebeach.com) Other wireless headsets will happily pipe the sound of gunfire to you, but if you want to chat to your mates you’ll need a wired connection. Not so with the XP510. A Bluetooth dongle plugs into your PC so you can enjoy full 360-degree surround sound and talk at the same time. The XP510 can also connect to your phone, and has the oomph to deliver quality sound for movies and music. It’s perhaps a little light and plasticky, but in terms of features, there’s little better.

Creative Sound Blaster Evo Zx

Price £160 | $250 (www.creative.com) This PC-only headset connects simply via Bluetooth and NFC, with some nifty playback controls tucked away on the side. The sound quality from the 40mm drivers is decent enough – you are able to feel the boom of battle – but it’s not mind-blowing. You can customise the balance to suit your tastes, but overall it remains a bit too polite. The ear cups are a little on the firm side too, leading to some soreness after a few hours. There’s good connectivity here, but a little more sonic attack would be nice.

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The Kunai is Tritton’s entry-level wired headset, but offers solid build quality and sound that easily rivals some higher-end headphones. The in-line remote lets you mute your fellow players if you need to give the game your full concentration. The Kunai is compatible with PCs and almost all games consoles but it can be fiddly to set up, and long stretches of use prove uncomfortable due to the small ear cups.

Upgrade Gaming headsets

Whether you’re rallying the troops or organising a heist, these gaming headsets will make your voice heard

Razer Kraken 7.1 Price £90 | $100 (www.razerone.com)

A typically militaristic-looking Razer product aimed directly at PC gamers, this is remarkably well built for a sub-£100 headset. It’s a bit weightier than you’d expect and can become rather sweaty after several hours of gaming, but the ear cups remain comfortable long-term. The main selling point here is the virtual 7.1 surround sound, which can be adjusted using Synapse 2.0 software. It’s good, but very bass heavy – great for noisy games, but less ideal if you want to watch a Woody Allen film or listen to Allo Darlin’ records. The retractable mic is a nice touch, though.

Plantronics Rig

Price £120 | $130 (www.plantronics.com) The Rig is a wired headset, so you can’t wander far from your computer, but it’s so comfortable, with a large ear cup design and soft felt cushioning, that you won’t mind the reduced freedom of movement. An optical digital audio input is a welcome addition, even if the ability to feed your smartphone’s audio into the mix is interesting but somewhat less necessary (unless you can’t live without those Twitter alerts). Hook the Rig up to an Xbox 360, PS3 or PC, and the sound is all-encompassing thanks to the digital input and great audio processing. Strap them on; load up your favourite game; don’t unplug for many, many hours.

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Microsoft Surface 2 £359 | $449 www.microsoft.com

Can Microsoft’s new Surface make Windows RT a joy to use?

B

ack in 2012, Microsoft launched its Surface devices and just about succeeded in bringing Windows to the tablet form factor. They were as thin as an iPad, came with full-size USB ports and almost the whole Office suite, had kickstands to hold them up, and could be clipped to amazingly thin keyboards. Sadly, they lacked the range of apps available for iOS and Android, and the impressive feature set didn't translate into impressive sales. Now, Microsoft has launched its next-generation tablets, the Surface Pro 2 and this, the successor to the Surface RT. The Surface 2 has a new screen, a two-position kickstand, USB 3.0, a faster processor and new keyboard options. It has the new features of Windows 8.1, including Internet Explorer 11, SkyDrive integration and more Snap window sizes. There are two versions of the Surface 2. Both have a 1.7GHz Nvidia Tegra 4 chip with 2GB of

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RAM behind the 1,920 x 1,080 pixel, 10.6-inch screen, but you can choose between the £359 32GB model we tested and a 64GB version for £439. Those prices compare favourably with iPads of equivalent capacity, and Microsoft is keen to point out that as well as its hardware having superior connectivity, you also get Office, which now includes Outlook. If you need more storage space, Surface 2 still has a microSD slot. It also provides 200GB of SkyDrive storage that’s free for two years, along with a year of free Skype landline calls and hotspot access.

Looks familiar The Surface 2 retains much of its predecessor’s style, with a big black bezel, angled sides and rounded corners, but the matte blastedmagnesium alloy chassis is a pale silver-grey rather than almost black. It attracts marks that wouldn’t be noticeable on the original Surface’s

black edge. Making the Surface 2 thinner has also led to the removal of the lip of metal that ran along the top of the old model’s screen, between the plastic and the glass. The Surface 2 is much the same weight as the original Surface RT. At 676g it's a tiny bit heavier than last year's iPad 4 (which has a smaller 9.7-inch screen), but it’s positively hefty compared to the new 478g iPad Air. It feels well-balanced though, and is reassuringly sturdy. It's comfortable to hold in one hand or two. Its light enough to carry around without weighing you down, and it still packs more useful ports into the case than just about any other tablet. As with the original Surface, the power button is on the top right (or bottom right in portrait mode), and is conveniently placed in either orientation. Thanks to the twin speakers, headphone jack and tiny Mini-HDMI port in the top corners, the volume keys are a little further

Upgrade Microsoft Surface 2 KEY FEATURES Microsoft Surface 2 Supplier www.microsoft.com Operating system Windows 8.1 Processor Nvidia Tegra 4 quad-core 1.7GHz Storage 32GB or 64GB RAM 2GB Graphics Nvidia Tegra 4 T40 Connectivity 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI, USB 3.0 Weight 676g Screen size 10.6-inch touchscreen Display resolution 1,920 x 1,080 Full HD

down the left-hand side than you might expect. The most useful port is the full-size USB port, which is now the speedier USB 3.0 variety. Network options again come from Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11n Wi-Fi. However, the latter features an extra-powerful antenna that can find more wireless access points than the original Surface. It can get online when even laptops can't find a connection. Models with 4G connectivity are expected soon. The new kickstand gives you the choice of having the screen

although text is crisp and smooth, it can be a little small on the 10.6-inch screen. The stereo speakers crank out impressive sound given how thin the Surface 2 is; volume is good and details are crisp. The original Surface rarely felt slow until you tried a demanding game, but the Surface 2’s 1.7GHz quad-core Tegra 4 chipset and 2GB of RAM make even the 32GB model feel much speedier. This Surface 2 runs Windows RT 8.1. Windows RT has been much maligned, but apart from not being

“Windows RT remains a problem. Things just aren’t joined up yet because of the limited app support” mostly upright or leaning it a bit further back. This can help you avoid glare from an overhead light, touch the screen at a more comfortable angle, and balance the device more securely on your lap. However you look at it, the new full HD screen is beautiful, though not obviously in the same category as Apple's Retina display. It's brighter, crisper and more vivid than the original Surface’s screen – and the original Surface Pro. Reds and greens are more intense but yellows and whites stay bright and clean, and the colours you see are more accurate. The screen’s 1,920 x 1,080 resolution is great for movies, but it also means you’ll keep the DPI and zoom settings turned up, because

able to install any desktop software (beyond the built-in Office desktop programs and Internet Explorer), it's indistinguishable from the full-fat Windows 8.1. Overall, Windows RT isn’t that bad, but the major problem is that we’re all used to the way desktop programs work and the functions they perform. The apps available from the Windows Store don't yet fill the gap left by that the lack of desktop software. Measuring battery life is always dependent on what you're doing; are you using Wi-Fi, running a lot of web pages, transferring gigabytes of data or playing Solitaire? Microsoft claims the device can play video for up to 10 hours on a single charge, and we got 12 hours of playback in some of our tests.

You can get nine or 10 hours of web browsing, depending on the sites you visit; multimedia content consumes more power than simple text pages. When the battery runs down, recharging is fast; you get about one per cent charge a minute, so you have well over half your battery life back after an hour. The cameras on the original Surface and Surface Pro weren’t that impressive, but the 1080p Surface 2 cameras are a definite improvement, especially in low light, thanks to the much larger sensor on the 3.5-megapixel front camera. Since you’re most likely to use the front camera for making a Skype video call, that's probably the most important improvement, but the picture quality is also substantially better. The rear 5MP camera is also improved, but it is a basic phone camera. Surface 2 is priced as a premium tablet, especially when you have to buy Type and Touch Covers separately. That’s fair, but there are far cheaper options (if you don’t count the value of Office and 200GB of SkyDrive storage). The new screen, the improved kickstand, the much-better battery life and software with far fewer rough edges add up to an impressive product. But Windows RT remains a problem. Things just aren’t joined up yet because of the limited app support. However much you think you won't need desktop apps, you will undoubtedly find something that compromises your experience. That’s a shame, because the hardware is superb. Q A fantastic device that’s held back by the limitations of its pared-down operating system.

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HP Pavilion 15 £349 | $765 www.hp.com

This budget, general-purpose laptop is more than enough for most needs

T

he HP Pavilion 15 is a budget machine designed for everyday computing. It’s a straightforward proposition, yet an area of the PC market that is extremely competitive, with a huge number of options to choose from. The selection includes everything from tablets (of all guises) through to Google’s new Chromebooks and netbooks (which some say are set to make a comeback), and a healthy chunk of budget laptops, just like this one, all jostling for your attention and access to your wallet. The benefit of the HP Pavilion 15 over many alternatives is that it runs Windows – specifically Windows 8 – so you can use all the applications that you are familiar with. And unlike something like HP's own Pavilion 14 Chromebook or any of the Windows RT tablets, you're not limited to a tiny range of apps either. You can run everything from Microsoft Office to Photoshop and other high-end tools.

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This is a budget-focused laptop from the ground up though, and as such sacrifices have had to be made. It certainly isn't a machine that will answer every single one of your computer needs. Even so, if you're looking for a general machine for the home, then there's nothing wrong with such a goal in the first place.

Quality components Key to a low-cost laptop like the HP Pavilion 15 is the processor at the heart of the machine, which is also budget-orientated. This is the second machine we've looked at recently that is built around AMD’s A4-5000 APU, with the first being the Lenovo G505. This is an APU as opposed to a CPU, which is AMD's way of highlighting the fact that it boasts a graphics core inside the chip alongside the more traditional processing component. The A4-5000’s architecture boasts four logical cores and an

operating frequency of 1.5GHz, with 2MB of cache to help keep those cores full. These cores aren’t powerful enough to compete with those in Intel's latest-generation Core processors, but the chip is considerably less expensive than anything Intel has to offer. The graphics processor is a Radeon HD 8330. Its specifications paint a positive enough picture, and it will happily handle the latest games – at least in theory. There are a few problems though, which we’ll come to shortly. There’s 4GB of DDR3 RAM, which is frustratingly all on one of the APU's two channels, providing only half the memory bandwidth that you should get. The machine is also home to a 750GB hard drive, a DVD+RW drive and plenty of USB ports, so there’s enough storage space for your photos, music and other files. The 15.6-inch screen is bright, although as it is a TN panel it suffers

Upgrade HP Pavilion 15 KEY FEATURES Asus Transformer Book TX300 Supplier www.hp.com Operating system Windows 8 Processor AMD A4-5000 Storage 750GB HDD RAM 4GB DDR3 Graphics AMD Radeon HD 8330 Connectivity 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, HDMI, USB 3.0 Weight 2.35kg Screen size 15.6-inch Display resolution 1,366 x 768

from polarising when not viewed at the perfect angle. The resolution of 1,366 x 768 should be seen as the bare minimum for laptops today, but you can use the integrated HDMI connector to show things on a Full HD television or monitor. Build quality is reasonable, although tapping the chassis produces hollow rattles, especially around the optical drive. The Pavilion 15 doesn't feel as solid as many more expensive machines, though it is pleasing enough to look at. The metallic red finish

latest DirectX 11 games – in theory. Unfortunately this APU lacks the raw power to handle demanding titles at anything like smooth frame rates. Of course this is a budget machine, so how does it fare when you knock the settings down a little? Not brilliantly. Even with every setting as low as it will go, you're still looking at less than 20fps in the vast majority of titles in our suite of games. But it’s not all bad news. In general use, the machine is very responsive. The battery life is also

“There’s not enough power to do the kind of tasks that you might expect from a modern machine” helps it stand out from the crowd, and system cooling doesn't get too loud while the laptop is in use.

Modest performance In our tests we found there’s not a lot of power going spare. In fact there's not enough to do the kind of tasks that you might expect from a modern machine. You’ll be waiting for your videos to output, for your photos to get that final layer of polish, and for pretty much anything that takes serious processing power to finish. Still, for many simple computing tasks you’ll find that it does enough. As we mentioned earlier, HP has built the Pavilion 15 around an AMD APU, and as such it boasts a graphics core that will handle the

incredible. In testing under PCMark08, which stresses the machine's capabilities in website creation among other things, you're looking at five hours and 22 minutes of continued use, which is incredible. When you consider that you should see double this when you're out and about, then you're looking at a system that will last a day's commute easily. If you need to travel away from a power connector for long periods, this alone might tip your decision in the Pavilion 15’s favour. Anyone in the market for a budget laptop, either as a generalpurpose machine for the family, or as a PC that will handle school work, should certainly consider the HP Pavilion 15 simply because on

the surface it offers such great value for money. The processor and graphics performance aren’t stellar, but if you set your expectations a little lower than normal, you’ll be pleased with what it has to offer. The general styling is to be commended too. While there’s not a lot of cash for flourishes at this price point, this is an interestinglooking laptop. The screen is bright, but shift your head slightly and you’ll lose colour reproduction and contrast will go out of the window. With Apple redefining what we expect from portable devices thanks to their IPS screens, this is one aspect that holds the Pavilion 15 and other budget laptops back. The fact that HP has populated only one of the machine’s memory channels is frustrating, because it means the APU has to wait for data unnecessarily. Our advice here is to upgrade the laptop’s RAM as soon as you receive it. Overall, the HP Pavilion 15 isn’t a machine for everyone. We think it would work best as a second PC for the home that everyone can grab as needed. It isn’t powerful enough for a primary machine unless you only need it for simple tasks, but if that’s all you demand of it, and you’re looking for a straightforward laptop on a tight budget, this is one of the best. Admittedly you won't be playing the latest games on it, and doing anything else that is processor-intensive will take a while, but it’s not a bad little machine at all. And at this price, some might say it’s a steal. Q Its performance won’t set the world alight, but if your demands are modest, it could be ideal.

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Play this…

Feel those engines roar

Four new games available to play on your Windows computer

Beams of light are dazzlingly beautiful in BF4

Battlefield 4 A lot of buildings get broken, but not much new ground Price £45 | $60 Developer DICE Publisher EA Multiplayer Up to 64 players DRM Origin, Battlelog Web www.battlefield.com Recommended specs Quad-core processor, 4GB RAM, GeForce 680 or Radeon AMD 6850

Battlefield 4 wants you to break it. Demolition has been, to varying degrees, the series’ distinguishing feature ever since Battlefield: Bad Company 2. In BF4 it takes the form of massive, shatterable centrepieces in each multiplayer map. A concrete dam you can ruin. A dentable radar telescope. A crippled navy destroyer that can be run aground in Paracel Storm. At some point though, we stopped caring about toppling tower blocks. The ‘sky scrapers’ we love are the jets.

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The sound they make is the best sort of distracting. It’s a ragged crackle of bass, like a thunderstorm being dragged against its will. Effects such as this continue to be one of Battlefield’s most enjoyable traits. The disastermovie destruction is initially novel, but it’s the incidental moments of wonder that hold up over time. The blur of wind as you base-jump off a roof. The growl of an ATV as its tyres chew grass. The clink of an M40A5 bolt shifting back into place. DICE is the Mozart of war, and its mastery of sound continues to define

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Battlefield’s moment-tomoment richness.

Déjà vu But this is nothing new, and neither is a lot of BF4. It’s still a 64-player, infantry-driven FPS fought on expansive outdoor maps, with a garage of air, ground and sea vehicles to taxi you between capture points, and the weapon roster is essentially untouched. We understand why DICE wouldn’t deviate from its design – why change weapon handling that continues to rest comfortably between accessible and nuanced? Why

throw out modes that already suit the maps and mechanics? All the same, you should factor in this familiarity if you tired of BF3 quickly. BF4 will probably age faster than its predecessor. Keeping some of that sameness at bay are features like Commander mode – a strategic role returning from BF2142 that one player per team can assume instead of fighting. Commanders view the match omnisciently through a fullscreen map, issuing attack and defend orders while phoning in what are essentially killstreaks as they’re earned by squads. These ‘commander assets’ are powerful in the right hands, as they can do everything from air-dropping ammo and health to temporarily spotting all enemy infantry or summoning an AC-130 gunship. The latter makes you feel like Zeus: lobbing cannon rounds from on high is a wonderful break from being boots on the ground, and it takes real skill. Outside of this strategic role, there’s a new hybrid bomb-

Upgrade Play this… BF4 carries on the series’ tradition of combat across expansive maps

The insurance companies will never pay out on this one

Wheeeeeeeee!

In-game hand signals are restricted to pointing

planting and capture-point mode that we like. Obliteration joins the compact Rush, longer-form Conquest and team deathmatch modes. It’s a meat-grindery back-and-forth that occasionally resembles rugby more than it does Battlefield, but in a good way. The vehicle set is mostly unchanged, save for a neutral MLRS truck that spawns on a few maps. Controlling it gives your team mobile artillery to knock out hunkered-down defenders or disrupt vehicle advances. The truck is balanced with a limited firing arc and long ammoregeneration timer, and by separating the driving and firing positions. BF4’s ‘Levolution moments’, as EA calls them, are presented as the main attraction. These scripted setpieces only subtly influence matches, which we appreciate. One of the better events in Paracel Storm isn’t the wrecked warship that you can run aground, but how the sky shifts from a clear, tropical postcard to an oily hurricane.

Paracel Storm is a sight to behold

The ocean gets choppy, and travelling on jet skis and boats becomes more of a chore. At the less ambitious end of the Levolution spectrum is Golmud Railway. Its dynamic element is a small train that’s also one of the six capture points. This might’ve been a nice idea on paper, but the train is easily intercepted and has almost no strategic value.

Hotel Hainan Gimmicks aside, the layout and look of BF4’s maps is great, with some standing alongside the series’ best. Hainan Resort is a highlight – a tropical bay overlooked by a hotel. LAVs inevitably stack up in the courtyard at the resort’s lip, generating excellent cat-andmouse between armour and engineers while gunboats harass from the shore. Naval combat is more abundant in BF4, expressed in maps such as Flood Zone, where you fight on the rooftops of apartments submerged in 50 feet of

swimmable water. And Golmud Railway, while a drag in Conquest, is fantastic in Rush, which shrinks the map to a concentrated attack-anddefend format. The exception to the well-designed map rule is Operation Locker – a flat, bottlenecked bunker. If you enjoyed BF3’s Operation Metro you’ll love it, but we believe that BF doesn’t play well in compact spaces. Even with just 28 players, an Obliteration round on Locker devolved into a 40-minute meat grinder, with small crowds gathering at narrow tunnels to die in piles. The campaign is better than BF3’s dismally generic offering, although it’s still singleplayerby-numbers. You’re a marine, leading an elite team of tactical experts who all continually need your help to open doors. Amid political strife in China, you’re sent to extract a VIP. It goes awry, sparking open conflict with the US. The action never deviates from the whack-amole game of plunking down February 2014 |

pop-up guards, punctuated by cutscenes and the odd helicopter or tank kill. On the technical side, it was frustrating that we couldn’t widen the field of vision from around 70. We also found the inclusion of kill counters in singleplayer strange. DICE is certainly guilty of taking an ‘if it ain’t broke’ attitude, but BF4’s refinements and excellent maps make it one of our favourite FPS games. A cynic would call it a map pack in sequel’s clothing. If that’s your judgment, know that BF4 has enough variety, depth and quality to survive a year of intense play. Q Very similar to Battlefield 3, but improved by Commander Mode and diverse maps.

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The cinematic camera when you take out the last goon in the room never gets old

Batman: Arkham Origins The Dark Knight plays it safe in a disappointing prequel Price £40 | $50 Developer WB Games Montreal, Splash Damage Publisher Warner Bros Multiplayer Up to 8 players DRM Steam Web www.batmanarkhamorigins.com Recommended specs Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB graphics card, 4GB RAM

Arkham Origins joins Batman in his angsty teenage years. He’s not the stoic, Kevin Conroy-voiced Bats of Asylum and City, but a hot-headed vigilante who punches first and asks questions later. It’s an interesting twist on the Arkham formula, but despite the change of tone and era, this is a timid retread of Rocksteady’s games. It’s Christmas Eve, and skull-faced mobster Black Mask has given the caped crusader an early present in the form of a $50 million

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bounty on his head. Eight assassins have been hired to claim the prize, including Bane, Deathstroke and Killer Croc, plus a parade of low-rent DC villains. You also see Batman’s first encounter with a youthful Joker, and other cameos that we won’t spoil. Rest assured, you’re never short of people to punch or be punched by. The city is noticeably bigger than before, but less visually interesting and less fun to navigate. There are too many dead ends that break your flow as you’re gliding, and the new island is a grey,

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uninspiring industrial sprawl. To compensate for the increased size, you’re able to fast-travel with the Batwing, but transit points have to be unlocked by hacking communication towers. Otherwise, getting around involves liberal use of the grapnel boost, which pings you into the air when you grapple onto something.

Odd jobs The Riddler is back, known to Batman as ‘Enigma’, and has scattered ‘extortion files’ (basically the same as previous games’ Riddler trophies)

around Gotham. Reaching some of them involves solving environmental puzzles, but none as complex as those in City. Other side quests include defusing bombs set by terrorist Anarky, destroying weapon and drug caches, and intervening in street crimes. A lot of it feels like the usual open-world game filler, and it varies in quality, but there’s a good chunk of stuff to do between missions. The world-building is much better indoors. Locales are nicely crafted, with the same clutter and richness of detail that pervaded Rocksteady’s worlds. The level design doesn’t match the strength of the art, though. The missions are formulaic and linear, with none of the previous games’ careful pacing. There’s too much fighting, and not enough exploration of those beautifully-detailed

Upgrade Play this… Batman infiltrates the Gotham PD building

The crime scene reconstruction is nice-looking, but shallow

“How do we make this sinister illegal drug lab even more sinister?”

environments. You feel like you’re being hastily pushed between predator challenges and fights, rather than progressing organically, at your own pace. At first the combat seemed unchanged, but the more we played, the more aware we became that it is worse. The controls and animations are the same, but the tempo is wrong. Rocksteady’s original system was influenced by rhythm action games, the enemies attacking almost to a beat, but in Origins, their attack patterns are more sporadic, which has destroyed that precise, rhythmic flow. A likeable new feature is the Devil May Cry-inspired rating system. After each fight, the amount of XP awarded is dictated by your performance. If you used a lot of variety, mixing gadgets and combos, you’ll earn more. Then there are the boss battles. Facing off against this shopping list of famous Batman baddies should have

New villain Copperhead receives some bat-justice

been a highlight, but they’re probably the worst thing in the game. Most involve learning and exploiting a handful of very basic patterns, while regular enemies are occasionally thrown into the arena in a half-hearted attempt to add variety. But they’re frustrating, repetitive, attritional slogs. That’s not to say there’s no new content. Detective mode has been reworked, enabling you to reconstruct crime scenes with holograms and ‘scrub’ through them for clues. It looks great, but it’s pretty shallow. You’re still just holding a button to scan things. Batman does the detecting; you just tell him where to look. Multiplayer sees two three-man teams of thugs battling each other while a third team, Batman and Robin, tries to take them out. The thugs fight over Battlefieldstyle control points, and can call upon Bane and the Joker to help out. It’s enjoyable

enough, and the predator system works well against real players, but after only a few hours we didn’t feel any urge to return to it. New gadgets join old favourites. The shock gloves can be used in combat to deal extra damage, and to charge up generators to open doors. They only make your strikes slightly more powerful, but zapping enemies with electrified punches is very satisfying. It’s never explained why Batman has access to gadgets he only started to use in Asylum and City, so try to suspend your disbelief. The best thing in Origins’ utility belt is its story. It’s nothing we haven’t seen in a thousand films, games and comics before, but it’s confidently written and well-acted, and it takes influence from established mythology without copying it.

Steam forums continues to grow, some of which corrupt saves or halt progress. One bug, seemingly isolated to the PC version, trapped us in a room, and required the use of another bug to bypass it. The leap from Asylum to City was dramatic, if not entirely successful, but Origins is so similar to City (to the point of repeating some moments verbatim) that it feels more like an elaborate expansion pack than a proper sequel. Yearly sequels can bleed a great concept dry, and the Arkham series deserves better treatment. Q Enjoyable but blighted by bad bosses, sloppy design, and a lack of new ideas.

Bugged out As we go to press, a playercompiled list of bugs on the February 2014 |

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Set captured men free to lower your wanted level

Diving kills from a ship’s rigging is endless fun

Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag The grand pirate adventure you’ve been waiting for Price £40 | $60 Developer In house Publisher Ubisoft Multiplayer Four player co-op DRM Steam, Uplay Web www.bit.ly/AssFlag Recommended specs Dual-core CPU, Nvidia GeForce GTX470 or Radeon HD 5850, 4GB RAM

Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag doesn’t really want to be an Assassin’s Creed game, and we don’t blame it. It seems keen to shrug off the convoluted lore surrounding the aeon-long Assassins vs Templars power struggle, which reached new peaks of ludicrousness even after that bit in the second game where you punch the Pope unconscious in order to access an alien hologram.

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You play as Edward Kenway, a rogue who loves money enough to leave his girlfriend in port and sail to the West Indies in search of a vast fortune. In the opening scenes he steals an Assassin’s hooded garb and wristblades and accidentally falls in with a crowd of Templars – a team of comically evil caricatures led by a bearded grand master and backed up by a platearmoured man-ogre who throws axes at people. They’re

Help & Advice | February 2014

searching for the Observatory, an ancient device that enables its user to see the location of anyone in the world at any time. The Templars desire it to make coups easier, the Assassins want it to stop the Templars, and Kenway wants it because it’s the most valuable thing on the planet. If that sounds a bit removed from piracy and plunder, don’t worry. After the two-hour tutorial – mercifully shorter than in previous games – the

story refocuses on building the pirate paradise of Nassau. Kenway isn’t exactly an Assassin. He has all the free-running, jumping and killing skills of the sect – a genetic bonus, it’s implied – but his relationship with the morally ambiguous order of murder-monks is fractious. That keeps the plot’s severest absurdities at arm’s length and lets you just be a pirate and do pirate things. Sail across the ocean, rob ships, fight the British, capture forts, harpoon whales, explore coastal cities and raid Aztec ruins for treasure. All this in a beautiful tropical open world that’s at its hyper-detailed best on PC.

Treasure islands On land, much is familiar. Hubs such as Havana and Nassau are large, but there are no urban spaces to match the size and spectacle of Rome or Constantinople. A shame, but there’s still a huge amount to explore. As always, you have to climb to high perches to scout sections of towns, revealing chests, stores and

Upgrade Play this… Kenway’s killing blows double up as dance moves

Freerunning through Black Flag’s jungles is a joy

Flaming vessels won’t sink until you deliver a final shot

sidequests. These objectives lie in open areas patrolled by British or Spanish forces, and you’re invited to solve problems creatively. Stealth has been tightened up too. Jungle foliage offers constant cover and targets can be marked using Kenway’s ‘Eagle Vision’ mode, which lets you track guards through walls – a serious advantage, yes, but you no longer have access to the silent, ranged instant-kill throwing knives that made similar challenges trivial in previous games. Instead you have the blowpipe, which can temporarily render enemies unconscious, or send them into a berserk rage. Snipers are a pain, perched on high guard towers with long-range muskets. The blowpipe is the obvious counter, but the short duration of its sleeping effect can lead to comical races to kick its victims back into unconsciousness before they raise the alarm.

Cannonisation There’s plenty to do on land, but you’ll spend half your time

on your ship, the Jackdaw. The archipelago map operates in a similar way to the smaller city ones, in that you’re unable to see all of the available activities in an area until you’ve conquered a region’s fort. Once that’s done you’ll be able to identify whaling spots, convoys and sunken shipwrecks. You can use a diving bell to investigate these underwater ruins, while dodging sharks to reach the treasures within. Sailing is lifted almost wholesale from Assassin’s Creed III, with some concessions to accessibility – by which we mean your boat handles like a bus. Wind direction has little meaning, and you can stop without dropping anchor and magically taxi sideways into ports when docking. We say this to pop any assumptions you might have about Black Flag as an authentic sailing sim, rather than to suggest that it isn’t good fun. You improve your weapons and armour using materials and money earned through

You see a manta ray, Kenway sees a new belt

piracy and by hunting animals. Upgrades enable you to take on larger ships, which present different challenges at the naval and close combat level. Bigger ships come with advanced weaponry, and carry captains, crow’s nest snipers and other tough enemies. As you commit more acts of piracy, your wanted level increases and you’ll be pursued by hunter ships with ominous red sails. At the highest level, you can take on huge ‘legendary ships’ hidden on the map. It’s a good system, designed to gate a series of escalating challenges, not to provide padding. Black Flag will try to waste your time a little bit. The near-future sections make an unwelcome return, and are more pointless than ever. The gormless Desmond Miles is gone. Now you wander around the smug offices of evil corporation Abstergo in first person, as an employee tasked with digging through Desmond’s genetic memories to find fun pirate exploits to stick into its latest February 2014 |

entertainment product, which you happen to be playing. It isn’t half as clever as it thinks it is, but thankfully these bits only take up about five minutes for every few hours of main-mission progression. Black Flag is best regarded as a collage of the many games and technologies Ubisoft has cultivated over the past decade. By brute force, those varied components merge beautifully to create a rich and constantly interesting world. Forget the Assassins, the Templars and their nonsense war. Spend your time looting, pillaging and stealing instead. The rewards are so much greater. Q A gorgeous, open-world piracy simulator packed with interesting rogues.

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The space stuff is fantastic, but is over too soon

Call of Duty: Ghosts Stay frosty and keep moving Price £40 | $60 Developer Infinity Ward Publisher Activision Multiplayer Up to 18 players DRM Steam Web www.callofduty.com Recommended specs Dual-core CPU, 8GB RAM, DirectX 11 graphics card

The multiplayer is about flanking, out-flanking, and milliseconds of animation that determine who lives and who dies. The maps are circular arenas dressed in grey military garb, pulling assets from the dullest bits of the campaign. Instead of a space station or tropical shipwreck, the maps are Busted Up Train Yard and Overcast Snowy Place.

Call of shooty Call of Duty: Ghosts will be damned if you peek away from your screen. Boredom is absolutely not allowed as it pelts you with action vignettes – including a scene ripped from the opening of The Dark Knight Rises – and repeats its mantra ad nauseam: “Keep moving!” In rare instances, we were able to part from our squad, flank the enemy and wipe them out with the advantage, but that kind of tactical planning was a sparsely present treat. It appeared once more in a jungle mission that

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separated us from our squad with a columns of guards, and providing only a silenced pistol and sensor to detect nearby enemies. That was also the only time we were given a goal without explicit instructions to achieve it. It was the only occasion on which we were equipped with a magic bad guy sensor. That’s another of the campaign’s failings: it fires off interesting ideas, then forgets them. Near the start we were introduced to our canine companion, Riley, and able to mark targets for him to de-jugular. We did that once, when ordered to,

Help & Advice | February 2014

but never again. Later, we used a remote-controlled sniper rifle to clear out a stadium. It’s a great gadget, but it failed to rematerialise too. Both tools are like toys you can play with in a shop, but never take home. But we get bored of toys that we acquire, whereas if we stay in the shop, poking at everything that requires batteries, nothing needs to do more than light up and make noise to keep us entertained. Ghosts’ novelties are similarly loud and bright, and they are whisked away before they can be broken open.

The guns are plentiful and nuanced, but every vital stat is experienced in milliseconds of surprise action. Players swirl around like flies, and you either catch glimpses of feet under collapsed steel girders, or run face first into foes as beelines intersect, reacting with spasms more often than cool tactical awareness. At a pub-game level, Ghosts’ multiplayer is whack-a-mole to Counter-Strike’s chess. An exception is Search and Rescue, which gives teams bomb and defend objectives, and players one life per round unless a team member collects

Upgrade Play this… It’s okay, CoD jumped this a long time ago

A lot of multiplayer happens at a distance

Riley likes to stick his head out of the tank

So yeah, this is a thing that happens

their dog tag to revive them. That encourages teammates to stick together, generating group engagements at range that are preferable to darting around like an armed insect. We enjoyed the Ground War mode. It features bigger maps with 12-14 players, giving you more room to breathe and more teammates to rely on. Still, even in the modes that we liked, we didn’t want to stay for long. In previous Call of Duty games, the drive to unlock a new weapon might have kept us going, but that’s been replaced with Squad Points. Accrued through good play, these can be spent to unlock any weapon at any time. This is more respectful of players’ time, as well as returning CoD fans’ desire to get right to the gun they’re happy with, but it nullifies any sense of accomplishment that used to be provided by the progression system. Just like the campaign, multiplayer is about constant momentum, and matches go

by too fast to develop a rhythm or personality. We never encountered a nail-biter, witnessed heroics, or developed a rivalry during a round. There were no brilliant shots that we’re eager to show off on YouTube, with the exception of one accidentally impressive grenade throw. The cooperative Extinction mode is much better: four players versus waves of aliens, where you earn money for each kill, and there are weapons and defences to buy. It’s a healthy application of a formula we’re used to, but it doesn’t do anything we wouldn’t rather do in Left 4 Dead or Killing Floor, and it feels like a side note compared to the effort put into the campaign and competitive multiplayer modes. When we began, the keys used to buy special items weren’t even bound. Options were shown with a four-way cross that looked like it was intended for a D-pad, and when we bound the keys, the

menu referred to them as ‘killstreak rewards’.

Call me maybe That doesn’t damn Ghosts as an icky console port though. The only technical problem we encountered was sudden frame rate dips in the menus – it didn’t happen during play, though. We’ve heard that some people experience sudden spikes in mouse sensitivity during multiplayer, but we didn’t see this. The netcode in multiplayer is as robust, but no better than previous Call of Duty games. There were still a few times where we swear a hit registered before we saw our opponent’s character model round a corner. These details have become a part of serious CoD play – some complain, but others master the nuances to gain an advantage. What’s bothersome is how cold Ghosts feels. We haven’t touched on the campaign’s story much, but its attempts to tug heart strings with the boys February 2014 |

and their Ghost dad are cringeably cheesy. And even the multiplayer seems bored with itself, changing systems just so they’ll be different from Modern Warfare. We don’t doubt that every gun, perk and reward in Ghosts was implemented and tweaked with fine-brush precision, but painting in every eyelash of the Mona Lisa wouldn’t make it a better picture. With a broader brush, Activision might stop noodling around in the corners of Modern Warfare’s greatness and paint something that is actually modern. Q A passively entertaining but forgettable campaign, and multiplayer is perfunctory.

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Your disc

FULL PRODUCTS

HANDPICKED TOOLKITS

Hello and welcome to your free disc, exclusive to Windows 7 Help & Advice. This month’s packed CD-ROM features great programs to help you get the best from your computer, plus essential resources for every Windows user. This month’s disc will help you get your PC running as well as it did when it was new – or maybe even better! We’ve also got a brilliant set of free imageediting tools that are just as good as professional software, and lots more besides. Enjoy! Jeremy Ford Disc editor [email protected]

ESSENTIAL RESOURCES

18 Remove unwanted browser toolbars with AdwCleaner

28 Use TeamViewer to access your PC remotely with an iPad

32 Make a bespoke mobile toolkit with PortableApps

46 Let WinDirStat take the hassle out of cleaning up your hard drive

Step-by-step How to use your free disc

started 1 Get Place your free disc into your computer’s disc drive. The

AutoPlay prompt should appear on your screen and once this has happened, click ‘Run OWV.exe’ to start up the disc interface. A new window appears, telling you some important information. Read it, then click on ‘I agree’ to continue.

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the categories 2 Browse Click on one of the categories in the menu underneath the

magazine logo to discover all the programs that are contained in each. Simply click on an app’s name to find out more about it. Full commercial products usually have information about how to register. To try out an app, just click the ‘Install Now’ button.

Your disc Make the most of it!

FIND THE SOLUTION! How to get your disc to play If the disc doesn’t start automatically, hit the Windows key, then click Computer. Now double click the DVD drive to get going.

‡ AdwCleaner ‡ Anvi Browser Repair ‡CCleaner ‡ DesktopOK ‡ DNS Angel ‡ DOSBox ‡ InstallGuard ‡ KeyFinder ‡ LastActivityView ‡Media Preview ‡ OpenWith Advanced ‡ Process Hacker ‡ Q-Dir ‡ QuickSystemRestore ‡ ShellExView ‡ ShortcutsMan ‡ Touchfreeze ‡ Touchpad Blocker ‡ UnDeleteMyFiles Pro ‡ Windows Error Lookup Tool ‡ Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector

If you have a problem…

the program 3 Install When you begin to install your chosen applications, the

Please visit www. futurenet.com/support. To contact our reader support team, email [email protected] or call 01225 822743, quoting the magazine name and issue. We are only able to provide help with this disc, not the software contained on it.

disc brings up another message window to take you through the installation process. Each one of these is different – just follow the prompts until you get a message telling you that the installation is complete. Now it’s time to try out your free apps – have fun! February 2014 |

‡ Blender ‡ DoubleCAD XT ‡ GIMP ‡ Inkscape ‡ Lightworks ‡ Plastic Animation Paper ‡ Raw Therapee ‡ SketchUp ‡ Sweet Home 3D ‡DriverEasy ‡ExMplayer ‡File Shredder ‡PortableApps ‡TeamViewer ‡The Form Letter Machine ‡Unchecky ‡WinDirStat ‡And more! Help & Advice |

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