This is also happening on Windows 8.1.  So, we restart the computer, everybody wants to update everything, wait for it…  then, wait some more.  Patience is more than a virtue at startup.

And then, waited (a lot!), Task / Notification “Area” says that an Update (Flash) is available, click… BOOM!  Adobe site, no thank you to chrome, slider/progress bar, if you have trouble click here… click… Internet Explorer explodes, checks for solutions, reloads the page… LOOP.  Yay!  The return of the Adobe Flash (maybe) 12-15 or 16 Installer problems.  Dear friend (IE, Adobe Installer Bug) we didn’t miss you.

The “workaround” (not fix):  Close IE, Task Manager (taskmgr.exe) to be sure, Internet Options from Control Panel, clear history/cache, Privacy tab and TURN OFF the Pop-up Blocker, restart the computer (if you want to be 100% sure), Internet Options again and make sure Pop-up Blocker isn’t magically back on, IE and go directly to adobe.com (if you have a ‘flash enabled’ Home/Start Page type it in the ‘search/address bar’), bottom-right corner click the Flash link…

Back to: un-[x] (or No Thank You) to chrome, toolbars, special offers and bundles, Install… today was version 22.0 – Done!

Close all IE windows again, Internet Options again, TURN ON the Pop-up Blocker.

All is well.  Those previous video problems, informative (sarcasm) “ERROR” message, hover/pop stuff all working again.

For about 8 minutes, until Adobe releases 23.x (smiley).

What happened: clients could not connect.  It would start to, prompt for credentials, show the welcome screen, then a disconnect with a message:

Your Remote Desktop session has ended.

Another user connected to the remote computer, so your connection was lost. Try connecting again, or contact your network administrator or technical support group.

The only way around it was to physically “Sign out” at the hardware.

The fix: add a password to the account (see the notes below) and enable the “Allow only…NLA” (picture) option in the remote desktop settings.

How this all happened…

First: not a very well used Windows 8 “test” computer.  When we set it up originally we didn’t put a password on it.  We must have had some old Macs or XP boxes that we tried to connect RDP clients from, so had un-checked the “Allow connections only…” option in the Remote tab.

2nd: No “pre-release” Windows X stuff.  On July 29, 2015 we had to update this computer to 8.1 before upgrading to X.  The 8.1 and the X (Ten/10) installers did not mention exactly how important a password is to these newest systems.  A little online searching tells us that it’s not Microsoft’s fault, not too many people seem to have this exact series of mistakes/user errors.

Finally: we ended up with a Windows X (Pro) computer with RDC (the new name for RDP) enabled, old un-secure clients allowed, and no “only user” account password.

How this all got fixed…

First: After reading too many online posts and pages about RDP (RDC) in general we saw “a couple” of mentions about that “Allow connections only…” checkbox.  Went to see what was up: un-checked.  Put a check-mark in there and tried again…

Second: Secure connections require minimally secure computers (user account needs a password).  When we tried to connect this time we got a “Cannot connect” error stating that “…the password is expired… …or…” (about 3 total possibilities that we didn’t screenshot).  We knew there was no password so it wasn’t “expired.”  Back to the hardware, set a password on the user account, Sign out, Sign in…

Finally:  Add the new password to the RDP (RDC) client connection dialogue and everything works fine.  RD Client connected, console user was Signed out.

This was a very “anomalous behavior incident” but if we could do it someone else probably could as well.  So, now it’s documented.

It works.  That’s all we can say.  It is difficult to set up and it is slow once it is set up.  It “can” do it, so here’s how you “can” make it do it.

We only tested from a “clean” install of Windows Ten (10, X).  The first time run of mail starts a “First Time” or “Out Of Box” experience that you will only ever see the real “first time.”  If you add an account and then delete it, Mail App then loads with an “empty” workspace and everything has to be done manually.  Throughout this post we use “click” to mean tap or click.

Here are the steps we followed – screenshots follow in order:

1. Click inside the “Search Area / Address Bar” (next to the “Start/Windows Logo”) and type “mail”. Click “Mail – Trusted Windows Store app” at the top of the menu/search results.
2. Click on “+ Add account” on the “First Time/Let’s Get Started” screen
3. Click on “Other account – POP, IMAP”
4. Put in your full email address and password. Click the “Sign-in” button.
   Note: make sure your password is correct, it is very important to not causing syncing errors and extremely long delays when finished.
5. The first time – after a pretty long delay – you will get a message that says: We couldn’t find info for that account. Make sure the email address is correct and try again.  Click the “Sign-in” button two-to-three more times until “Sign-in” changes to “Advanced”. (5th image)
6. Click “Advanced” to get to the scrolling “Internet email account” screen.
7. Give your account a name (this is what it be called “locally”).
8. Enter “Your name” (this is what you want to appear when people receive email from you).
9. “Incoming email server” should be your domain name (everything after the @ in your email address) or mail.yourdomainname.ext[ention]  (the mail. is optional)
10. Change the “Account type” from IMAP to POP3
11. Scroll down until you see “Username” and “Password” (those should be there) and “Outgoing (SMTP) email server”.  Your outgoing server is the same as your incoming server.  You can use the domain name only (everything after the @ in your email address) or the optional mail. prefix plus your domain name.
12. Scroll down to the bottom and take the check-marks out of the “Require SSL” (incoming and outgoing) boxes.  Leave the top two check-marks in place.  See: Picture 8.
13. Click on “Sign-in” and you will be returned to the “First things first…” screen.
14. Click on “Ready to go” (picture 9) and…
15. Your first “big problem and delay” appears.  It took almost 20 minutes for our test computer to “time out” and give us the “Your account settings are out of date” alert/notification. There is nothing you can do but wait it out.  Once the alert appears with the [Fix Account] and [Dismiss] buttons, click on Fix Account.  (Picture 10)
16. Fixing the account consists of clicking the “Continue” button on the “Untrusted certificate” screen.  (Picture 11)  If you click cancel nothing will work and you’ll have to figure out how to delete the account and start over without the “First things first” screen.
17. Finally, here is the importance of that password (back at step 4).  We – on purpose – entered it incorrectly to “see what happens.”  BOOM! That’s what happens.  Another 20+ minutes for the timeout on the incoming server, then again (total 40+ minutes) for the outgoing server’s timeout.  In the meantime we got “blocked” from the mail server for “Too many failed AUTH attempts”.  During that 20 minutes of “Still working on it…” the “Mail app” was trying to log in hundreds of times per second with the wrong password.  After just over 40 minutes we got another Alert/Notification that “Your account settings are out of date”.  Fix this time was entering the correct password.  Once done, the “Inbox” sync-ed almost instantly, then 20 more minutes and the same “block” from the server because “Mail app” did not “fix” incoming and outgoing servers the first time.  Alert again, fix again (this time we dismissed it and manually fixed it by clicking the “gear” icon and going to the Account Settings). Somewhere around one hour and forty-five minutes later, mail sent and received.

Of other note: The “Mail app” does not appear to delete the mail from the server.  This is good – and – bad.  It’s good if you have multiple devices checking the same account.  It’s bad if you delete mail from the server from your other devices.  The “re-sync-ing” of mail that is the Inbox of “Mail app” and no longer at the server is a very, very, very long and slow process.  We only had one message, removed it from the server via webmail, it took “Mail app” 7 minutes to “sync” (remove the one message from Inbox and do whatever background database or file “magic” it does during “Still working on it…”).

So, there it is, the pictures are next, and here is one more recommendation/reminder from us:  You can use the “Mail app” in Windows Ten (10, X) for your ComputerMedic.org hosted email (POP3/SMTP) – it is a lot easier to use a 3rd party app (or program) like Mozilla’s Thunderbird. ( https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/ )

The files are all dated May 16th but the popups began today, June 1, 2015, down there by the clock, in the “Tray.”

Get Windows X – with no “go away” button.

Is it hogging up the system resources? Is it covering the whole screen?  Singing songs?

No.  But mosquitos and flies only occupy like .0001% of your cellular mass while they are annoying the pee out of you.  And, much like those mosquitos and flies, if you land your poop-eating or blood-sucking self on my .0001% of my cellular mass – I consider seriously ending you.

/me sets the eyes on the Linux distros and the mac-cy compy.
(Only real computer nerds know what that means – hopefully MS has one they can consult with.)
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop comes to mind.

OK – since I can’t “end” MS like the other poop-eaters and blood-suckers of my life here’s the “hard way” to get rid of the “Get Windows X” nuisance.

Start Task Manager (works with or without “Run as Administrator”), find GWX.exe and “End” it.

Now you have to hurry up, because they jammed your Task Scheduler full of garbage to rebirth this thing.  And you cannot (even as Administrator) disable or delete the tasks.

Open a command prompt (that’s a DOS box for you old people) – as Administrator:
Win7: Start Bubble->Type “CMD” in the box->Wait… the list will produce “Command Prompt” -> Right-click it and “Run as Administrator” (left-click).

Win8: Right-Click the doo-hicky-Windows-cubes in the lower-left corner, left-click Administrator Command or whatever they call it (I can’t stand 8/8.1 so I still “roll with 7″)

It should open in the C:\windows\system32 “folder” by default.

Type: CD Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\Setup and then press [Enter].

There are two directories (“folders”) here that contain (on my computer) 5 different tasks.

The first directory “GWX” can be properly disposed of from here, so:

Type: DEL GWX\*.* and press [Enter].  Answer yes to the prompt.

Next type: RD GWX and press [Enter].  Poof, one down.

Now the Tricky-Sticky one: GWXTriggers – you can’t touch this from your CMD prompt. Or, can you?  If you try – like I did (see picture) – you’ll get 3 permission denied errors.

Here’s what you do:
Get “into” that directory so it is the default – type: CD GWXTriggers and press [Enter]

Now type: START .  (that’s start and a space and a period (or dot)) and press [Enter]

Windows Explorer should open up and tell you to [Continue] to gain permanent permissions to the folder – so [Continue].

Now, mark the three files, delete them (recycle or not, it’s up to you), close Explorer.

Back at your “elevated” command box, type: CD .. (CD space and two periods/dots) and press [Enter].

Type: RD GWXTriggers and press [Enter].

There, done, gone, no more popups (until tomorrow).

Someone find me an exit from this Matrix, or like the famous LK is reported to have said on Sunday 5.31.15: “When will this madness end?”