Why isn't that website loading? Find out yourself in a couple of easy steps

When something gets lost in that complex communication mishmash that we call the Internet, it’s not always easy to figure out who is to blame. But you need to know. Because if the problem is yours, it’s not going to go away until you’ve fixed it.

Try these tests to solve the problem.

1. See if the problem is out of your hands

The website you wish to access just might not be up right now. To find out, visit Everyone Or Just Me and enter the problematic website’s URL.

If the site tells you that “It’s not just you,” you may as well relax. There’s nothing you can do but wait for someone else to fix their technical problem.

But if you’re told “It’s just you,” keep reading.

2. Try another browser

Whatever browser you’re using, try something else. There could be a conflict between your browser and the website in question.

In the long term, this isn’t a very satisfactory solution—especially if you’re attached to a particular browser. But it works in a pinch, and you can start doing some research on why that particular site has problems with that particular browser.

3. Try the IP address

Remember that a domain name is just a friendly label. The real location is the IP address. Try entering that in the browser.

But first, you have to get the IP address. Go to Whois Domain Name Lookup, make sure the Who Is tab is selected, and enter the domain name.

After you’ve proved yourself human with a simpler-than-most CAPTCHA-like test, you’ll get a screen with a lot of data. Scroll down to the second section, Geo Information, for the IP address.

4. Alter your hosts file

This file contains specific exceptions to domain names and IP addresses. Perhaps there’s something wrong here—a likely possibility if the domain name failed and the IP address worked.

Use your Windows Search tool to find notepad %windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts.

This will bring the hosts file up in Notepad. Search for the site name.  If you find it, put a hash tag (#) at the beginning of the line. Save and close the file.

5. Make sure you didn’t block the site

Search for Internet options and open the Control Panel tool. Select the Security tab, the Restricted sites icon, and then the Sites button.

If the site is on the list, remove it.

YouTube adding a paid subscription tier - No Ads

Online video giant YouTube unveiled a paid service that takes away commercials for $10 a month.

The new YouTube Red is an alternative to the free, ad-based service, which remains an option.

"The YouTube you know and love continues to thrive and will continue to thrive," Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl said Wednesday at a presentation for members of the press. "We have been working on bringing a whole new experience to fans...a new way to experience YouTube without ads."

The new tier asks the more than 1 billion people who visit YouTube each month to alter their assumptions about the worth of online video. By putting a dollar value on a site that was free with advertising for a decade, parent Google is showing it believes consumers will pay for its content and new perks. It also puts YouTube in competition with popular online subscription services like Netflix and Hulu. That means consumers more and more will need to consider how many entertainment sites deserve $10 a month out of their wallets.

"Paid membership is a really hard business to be in," Kyncl said. He added that YouTube initially focused on developing Red with desired features like offline and background viewing before deciding it should have exclusive content as well. "Every subscription service goes through an evolution, and we'll learn."

YouTube Red serves all of YouTube's videos without ads, and it lets members save videos to watch offline on their phone or tablet as well as play videos in the background. It also includes exclusive original shows and movies by top YouTube talent. Membership extends across devices and YouTube apps, including the YouTube Gaming app and a new YouTube Music app the company will make available soon.

Viewers in the US can try YouTube Red for free for one month starting October 28. It is launching initially in the US, but the company plans to expand to every area where YouTube operates.

YouTube, the Internet's biggest video site, also touted a parade of some of the site's most popular talent, who are releasing movies and shows for Red members. "Scare PewDiePie" is a reality horror series that plunks the site's most popular video creator, Felix Kjellberg (39.9 million channel followers), into terrifying situations inspired by video games. "A Trip to Unicorn Island" is a movie that follows creator Lilly Singh, known as Superwoman (6.9 million channel followers), on her world tour. "Sing It!" is a scripted series about a fictional vocal competition from the Fine Brothers (13.3 million channel followers), best known for their "Kids React to..." franchise of videos.

"This is where we want to be," Benny Fine, one of the brothers, said. The future of premium entertainment crosses different ways to watch, he added. "Only YouTube is set to do that."

YouTube's originals will eventually be available to watch free with ads after an unspecified, lengthy amount of time.

YouTube executives said they plan to focus on talent that rose to prominence on its site, rather than wooing more traditional stars to make films and series for YouTube Red. That contrasts with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, which have won critical acclaim and greater popular awareness with edgy originals cast with traditional stars.

Los Angeles-based YouTube tested the waters with subscriptions last year. In November, it rolled out a pilot version of YouTube Music Key, a $10-a-month service that lets members watch music videos and listen to songs on YouTube without ads. The service has been invitation-only so far, and it has yet to actually charge members, as the company has extended it as a free trial.

YouTube also unveiled a dedicated music app, which it plans to release later this year. The app will be free to download and use, but a YouTube Red membership removes ads and lets members play music in the background and offline. The company said the YouTube Music Key pilot taught it that people didn't want to use its features on just music -- they wanted to use them across all of YouTube.

YouTube Red subscriptions are interchangeable with Google's pre-existing streaming music service, $10-a-month Google Play Music. Subscribing to one automatically gives the customer access to the other. When consumers download the YouTube Music app, they get a two-week free YouTube Red membership; after that period, Music app users can extend their trial for another 30 days after entering credit card information.

Microsoft is ready to save your PC from huge ransomware infection

Image Source: Microsoft

TeslaCrypt doesn’t mean anything to many PC users, but there are thousands of people who have somehow contracted this infectious malware program that imprisons personal files on a computer until a monetary reward is paid. There already are tools that can deal with certain versions of this dangerous ransomware program, but Microsoft decided to step in, creating its own rescue tool.

The tool was included in the Patch Tuesday update this week. The company created the malware-removal instrument in response to a spike in malware installations detected in August. As ZDNet reports, TeslaCrypt infections grew from below 1,000 per day in late August to over 3,500 on August 25. Since then, the number of detections spiked and fell but remained higher than before that first peak, the company noted.

TeslaCrypt was first spotted in early 2015 when it started locking down computers with AES 256 encryption and demanding payment in Bitcoin in exchange for a key to unlock the files. The ransomware locked certain file types that affected gamers and also financial and tax software. As seen in the top image, the malware demanded rewards in the range of hundreds of dollars, depending on the Bitcoin-to-dollar ratio. Computers all over the world were and still are being affected by the attack.

In addition to Microsoft’s new malware removal tool, there are similar resources available from Cisco’s Talos Group, as well as a free private rescue kit. More details about Microsoft’s security tool are available at the source link.

How To Nest Folders Inside Folders In iOS 9

iOS comes with some apps that no one uses, ever. When Apple finally allowed users to move them all to a folder and put them out of sight, everyone cheered. As of iOS 7, Apple has sort of allowed users to nest folders inside folders. We say ‘sort of’ because it wasn’t easy to do back then and often required lightning reflexes. With iOS 9 it’s gotten much easier though there is still a small trick to how you nest folders inside folders. Here’s a step-by-step guide to nesting folders inside other folders iOS 9.

Step 1: Position the folder you want to nest and the folder you want to nest it into. The destination folder, i.e. the folder that you will nest a folder inside must be moved to the first page of your home screen. It must be positioned at the top right i.e. it should be the fourth item on the first row (see left screenshot below).

Step 2: Move the folder you want to nest to this same page on your home screen. You can put it anywhere you like.

Step 3: Enter home screen editing mode by tapping and holding an app or folder icon. When the icons and folders all start wiggling, tap and hold the folder you want to nest. .

Step 4: While still holding the folder, tap the destination folder (somewhere at the top left of the folder’s icon) and it will open (right screenshot).

Step 5: Drag & drop the folder on to the open folder and you have nested a folder inside another folder.

There’s a bit of a trick to getting the destination folder to open; you have to tap a very specific area which is somewhere between the status bar and the top left of the folder. It’s tricky. Try the video below to see if you get an idea where to tap.

Enable The Favorites Bar & Import Favorites In Edge Browser

This post is specifically for Customer Paul, as he is willing to put up with Windows 10 if he can get his bookmarks to show up.  Well, here you go!...

Windows 10 is here, and Edge browser is with it. Edge is Microsoft’s latest attempt at winning over the browser market. Like or hate it, Microsoft is trying to make things better with its browser offering and this is obviously the first step. The new browser ships with some new features which include a clipper, a reading mode, a reading list, and note taking. It doesn’t stray away from the basics though so if you’re giving the browser a chance, you might want to know how to get the Favorites bar to show up, and how to import your favorites (bookmarks) from a different browser.

First, to get the favorites bar to show up, click the More actions button and click ‘Settings’ at the very end of the menu that opens. Under ‘Choose a theme’ you will see a switch under ‘Show the favorites bar’ which when flipped will enable the favorites bar.

If you want to import your bookmarks from a different browser, click the ‘Import favorites from another browser’ option.

You can import favorites from multiple browsers at once. Simple check the ones you want to import from on the next screen and click the Import button.

That’s all there is to process and your favorites will be imported within minutes. You don’t need to export them from other browsers since Edge can import them directly. That said, you might want to import them from an HTML file because importing them this way doesn’t retain the folder structure as far as technical build 10162 is concerned. Let’s hope they fix it in the final build.

How to enter Windows 10's Safe Mode

Windows’ Safe Mode provides a simple, stripped-down version of the operating system. The programs that usually load automatically when you boot Windows don’t do that here. And Safe Mode only uses the most generic drivers. Thus, Safe Mode can be a big help for diagnosing certain problems. For instance, it’s a great place to scan for malware.

But the old-fashioned way to get into Safe Mode—booting the PC and pressing F8 at the exact right moment—seldom works on PCs running Windows 10. These techniques will:

If you can successfully boot into Windows, booting into Safe Mode is relatively easy—if you know the trick.

1. Click or tap the Start button, and then the Power button. Hold down the Shift key when you select Restart.
   
2. In the resulting, full-screen menu , select Troubleshoot>Advanced options>Startup Settings.
   
3. In the Startup Settings screen, tap the Restart button. The PC will reboot, and bring you to a Startup Settings screen.
4. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to select Enable Safe Mode or Enable Safe Mode with Networking.

But what if things are so bad that you can’t successfully boot the operating system?

Try booting anyway. If you can get to the login screen, you’ll find a power icon in the lower-right corner. The instructions above work there.

But what if you can’t get to the login screen? In that case, chances are that Windows is so messed up that it couldn’t boot into Safe Mode anyway. But here’s a trick that might work:

You’ll need the Windows 10 Recovery Drive, which you should make now, while your PC is still healthy. You’ll need a flash drive that you will use only for this purpose. Any files already on that drive will be deleted.  To create the Recovery Drive, plug in the flash drive, open Control Panel’s Recovery tool, click Create a recovery drive, and follow the prompts.

You might want to test this before you’re in a difficult situation: Boot the Recovery Drive and select your keyboard layout. Then select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Command Prompt. At the command prompt, enter these three lines, making sure to hit Enter at the end of each one:

• c:
• bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy
• exit

Select Turn off your PC. Boot the computer and repeatedly press and release F8 until the Advanced Boot Options menu pops up. Then you can select Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Networking.