Windows 10, by default, monitors everything you do on your computer and sends it to Microsoft ostensibly for marketing purposes. Some of these options can be disabled using the Privacy screens, where you can turn of most of this. However, they will silently turn themselves back on and not all spying features can be controlled this way.

One third-party product that helps with this is Spybot Anti-Beacon. In general, you want to enable all blocking options except those that you know will interfere with how you use the computer. For example, don’t block OneDrive items if you plan to use OneDrive and don’t block Bing IPs if you use anything related to Bing (i.e., home page, search engine, etc.)

If you’re finding that there is no “Outlook” option in Quickbooks’ preferences for “Send Forms” but, instead, only Web mail and Quickbooks email, the following will put it back:

Edit C:\Windows\WIN.INI and insert the following lines:

[MAIL]
MAPI=1
MAPIX=1

After saving this modified file, start Quickbooks and you will see the “Outlook” option has returned.

We had a computer which could not run Windows Update because BITS would not start (error 2147014790, but could be others.)  MSE would not update either and the Event Log also had various other errors including “The IPsec Policy Agent service terminated with the following error: The requested service provider could not be loaded or initialized.”

Resetting the IP stack fixed everything:

1. Start the Command Prompt window as Administrator
2. Netsh winsock reset
3. Netsh int ipv4 reset
4. Netsh int ipv6 reset (if you use IPv6)
5. Restart the computer

Beware of purchasing Wondershare products including: MobileGo, MirrorGo and others (www.wondershare.net.)  While their software seems to be OK, they intentionally make the ordering process confusing and they will continue to charge you annually for what should have been a one-time purchase in the hopes that you won’t notice it and pay anyway. Such nefarious behavior makes us question what else they do to the computers on which their software is installed.

When connected to a computer using Remote Desktop, you will sometimes find that the screen goes black and, after a while, you will get a “reconnecting” message and then it will return to normal.  This can happen anytime but seems to be more common when your session is minimized or otherwise idle for a while. We have seen this with both server and workstation hosts, mostly Windows 8 and Server 2008, 2012.

UPDATE: The crossed-out steps below never permanently fixed this problem, which occurred when the hosting machine (the machine to which remote users were connecting) was using a Comcast Internet connection.  Instead, what did fix it was replacing the Comcast-supplied Netgear Cable modem with an ARRIS SURFboard SB6183 DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem.  It is likely that any similar replacement modem will fix it.

Bitmap compression seems to be the culprit here.

On the RDP host:

1. GPEDIT.MSC

2. Navigate to:
Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Remote Desktop Services\Remote Desktop Session Host\Remote Session Environment

3. Enable “Configure compression for RemoteFX data” and set RDP compression algorithm to “Balances memory and network bandwidth.”

4. Click OK to save this change.

Sometimes it will also help to turn off “Persistent bitmap caching” on the RDP client (Experience tab.)

1. Log into your Office 365 organization with an Admin account.
2. Click on the Admin in the upper right hand corner and select Exchange.  Go to Mail Flow on the left, make sure you are on Rules
3. Click the + to Create New Rule.  Name it Block EXE or something you’ll understand
4. Click the More Options… link.
5. In the Apply this rule if… drop down select Any attachment has executable content
6. In the Do the following… drop down select Block the message -> Reject the message with the explanation… and type in Attachment contains an executable.  This will trigger a Transport Rule response to the sender with that explanation.
7. Leave the Audit this rule with severity level: checked drop down as is (Not specified).
8. Choose a mode for this rule: radio button should be on Enforce.
9. Now click Save.  and you should see the rule detail on the right.

If you want to stop Office 365 passwords from expiring and / or you want to eliminate the password complexity requirements you must use PowerShell as these changes are not permitted through the Office 365 admin pages

1. Download the Office 365 Online Services Module here
   https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/Windows-PowerShell-cmdlets-for-Office-365-06a743bb-ceb6-49a9-a61d-db4ffdf54fa6 and install it
2. Start the module (click the START BUTTON and type MODULE and select
   Windows Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell
   and be sure to right click and RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR
3. Connect to your Office 365 using:
   Connect-MsolService
4. Enter your Office365 username and password at the prompt
5. Set all Office365 passwords to never expire using:
   Get-MsolUser | Set-MsolUser -PasswordNeverExpires $True
6. Set all Office 365 passwords to not have any complexity requirements:
   Get-MsolUser | Set-MsolUser -StrongPasswordRequired $false
7. Enjoy not having insane password requirements!

If you want to confirm the results use:

1. Get-MSOLUser | Select UserPrincipalName, PasswordNeverExpires
2. Get-MSOLUser | Select UserPrincipalName, StrongPasswordRequired