The Fake Geek

I was trying to add a ProtonMail account to my Apple Mac desktop app and I received the error “Account Already Exists”. No matter how many times I tried to add the account the error kept on popping up.

Weirdly enough this is an error that has to do with your iCloud account and not whatever account that you’re trying to add.

Here is how to fix it:

1. Click on the Apple logo in the top left corner of your screen
2. Click on System Preferences
3. Find iCloud and click on it
4. In the bottom left corner click on “Sign out”
5. Now go try to add your new email account again and it should add successfully
6. Go back to System Preferences and sign back in to iCloud

Unfortunately this is the only way to resolve whatever hiccup or backlog that is causing the issue on your system. Fortunately it’s a pretty solution.

Let me know if this fixed your issue below in the comments!

If you’ve created an encrypted folder using the Disk Utility on OS X and you’ve chosen a strong password then you’ve quickly realized that you can’t copy/paste into the password box.

If you have a very long password then this makes entering the password each time very time consuming. Especially if you’re storing the password in a password manager.

The solution is a simple Terminal command.

1. Open the Terminal
2. Type in: hdiutil attach (and don’t press enter yet!)
3. Then drag and drop the encrypted folder into the terminal
4. Then type -stdinpass
5. So your entire command should look something like this: hdiutil attach /path/to/encryptedfolder -stdinpass
6. Now press enter
7. You’ll be asked for your password and you can now paste it in

This is the only way to paste your password for an encrypted folder on a Mac. And it’s only a couple of extra steps.

You can also consider encrypted folders using a program like VeraCrypt that does allow for pasting passwords.

Here is the easy fix to login to the Starbuck’s Wifi if you’re having trouble. This fix will help if you try to connect to Starbucks but can’t see the initial Wifi agreement screen.

First I’d like you to click on “Starbucks Wifi” in the available Wifi networks.

Then:

1. Open an incognito or private tab in your browser
   1. How to open private tab in Chrome: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95464?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
   2. How to open private tab in Firefox:https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/private-browsing-use-firefox-without-history
   3. How to open private tab in Edge: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026200/microsoft-edge-browse-inprivate
2. Next go to neverssl.com
3. You should now bring up the login screen for Starbuck’s Wifi and be able to connect

Why this works: the Wifi screen sometimes needs a non-encrypted webpage in order to be triggered. Neverssl.com is a webpage that always load without TLS/SSL and so it triggers the login screen.

Many readers have sent me this issue recently. But now I’ve found the permanent fix. Here’s the issue many people are having: Outlook was working fine for months or years and then suddenly it begins to ask for a password. The user will enter their password and submit it and then Outlook will just ask for the password again!

It’s a very frustrating issue and some readers have spent weeks trying to fix it, sometimes spending hours on the phone with tech support.

The problem is related to how Outlook authenticates with Microsoft’s Exchange Online servers. To fix the issue we’re going to remove the old password from your computer, remove the old license activation, and then modify Outlook so that it authenticates a different way. Then we’ll be able to log in.

This entire process will take about half an hour to an hour depending on how tech savvy and familiar with the registry you are.

Step 1: Close Outlook and all Office applications

In order to make the changes we must ensure that Outlook and al Office apps (that includes Word, Excel, etc…) are closed.

Step 2: Remove the old broken credentials from Windows

1. Open the Credential Manager from the Control Panel: https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/4026814/windows-accessing-credential-manager
2. Click on Windows Credentials
3. Remove all Credentials that include the following: Office, Outlook, ADAL, and MSTeams
4. Close the Credential Manager

Step 3: Remove all old Office licenses/activations

Important: If you installed Office using a product key you must make sure that you have the product key saved somewhere because we’ll need to re-enter it. If you’ve purchased Office as a subscription and pay monthly/yearly then you don’t need a product key and just will need to enter your username and password in the last step.

Note: This step is not always necessary but to make sure that we solve the problem in one go please do it anyway.

1. Run the Command Prompt as an Administrator (search for Command Prompt and then right-click on it and select “Run as Administrator”)
2. If you’ve installed the 64-bit version of Office then type in: cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16
3. If you’ve installed the 32-bit version of Office (most people) then type in: cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16
4. Display the current Office license by typing in: cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus
5. Note the five characters of the product key or keys that are displayed
6. Now type in cscript ospp.vbs /unpkey:<last five characters of product key>
7. Now check if more keys still exist by re-running cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus
8. If there are more keys then delete these too. Re-run these commands as many times as you need to until no more keys are displayed when you run cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus

Step 4: Disable Modern Authentication for Outlook

Warning: For 99% of people disabling Modern Authentication will not cause any problems. If you have Multifactor Authentication enabled on your Office 365 account then you’ll need to generate an app password to log in. But if you just log in normally then disabling modern authentication won’t change anything.

1. Open the registry editor by searching for regedit
2. Backup the registry: https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/322756/how-to-back-up-and-restore-the-registry-in-windows
3. In the registry navigate to HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Identity by expanding the various parent keys until you reach Identity
4. Create a new DWORD 32-bit value and call it EnableAdal
5. Give it a value of 0
6. Next create a new DWORD 32-bit value and call it DisableAADWAM
7. Give it a value of 1
8. Next create a new DWORD 32-bit value and call it DisableADALatopWAMOverride
9. Give it a value of 1
10. Close the registry

Step 5: Restart the computer

In order for our changes to be implemented we must restarted the computer before opening any office apps

Step 6: Open Outlook

Now open Outlook. You’ll be prompted for your password. Make sure that you select “Remember my Credentials”.

You’ll also want to re-activate Office: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/activate-office-5bd38f38-db92-448b-a982-ad170b1e187e

And that’s it! Outlook should accept your credentials and that password prompt should no longer bother you.

The new Google update has made Gmail run much slower than it used to. Make Gmail faster with these 3 very simple steps.

Gmail is now much slower on some computers because Google has increased the complexity of what Gmail does. On one hand this is good for users because it means that you can do more with your email, however if you have an older computer, or a slower computer, then your computer will not be able to keep up with everything that the new Gmail now wants to do.

The solution is to turn off some Gmail features (which are not needed) and then apply a few simple speed tweaks. After applying these fixes your Gmail will run as fast as it used.

Step One: Turn off Hangouts Chat

Hangouts is Google’s chat application. It’s a very useful application however you probably don’t need it loading every single time that you go to check your email. It uses A LOT of your device’s resources which slows down Gmail. Here’s how to turn it off.

• Go to “mail.google.com” (without quotations)
• In the upper right of the Gmail window you’ll see a grey icon that looks like a gear wheel. Click on that.
• In the menu that appears click on Settings
• Click on the Chat tab
• Select “Chat off”
• Click Save Changes

Gmail will close and then re-open without Hangouts. There should be a noticeable speed improvement.

Step Two: Reduce the number of conversations per page

By default Gmail loads more emails than it (or you) need it to load. By reducing the number of emails per page you’ll increase the speed of your Gmail.

• Go to “mail.google.com” (without quotations)
• In the upper right of the Gmail window you’ll see a grey icon that looks like a gear wheel. Click on that.
• In the menu that appears click on Settings
• In the General tab find the option labeled “Maximum page size“
• Reduce the number of conversations to either 15 or 20 conversations per page.
• Scroll down the bottom of the page and click Save Changes

Step Three: Prevent browser checks

By default Gmail will scan your browser every time that it loads in order to determine compatibility and load the correct browser features. However if you’re using a modern browser such as Chrome or Firefox or Safari this step isn’t really necessary.

(At least I have not noticed any difference.)

You can add a “nobrowsercheck” flag to the end of the Gmail url in order to have Gmail skip the browser check. This speeds up the load time. In order to have Gmail skip the browser check every time you can create a bookmark with the following link:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?nocheckbrowser#inbox

Bonus Option: Use HTML

I don’t really recommend this last option because you’ll loose a lot of Gmail features. However if you want a blazing fast Gmail experience then you can downgrade to the HTML Gmail page.

What this will do is allow you to check your emails in a stripped down Gmail environment.

Here’s what to do:

• Go to “mail.google.com” (without quotations)
• As the page is loading look in the bottom right, they’ll be a link that says “Load Basic HTML (For Slow Connections)”
• Click on the link. If you don’t click it in time then reload Gmail and try again.
• Gmail will now load in HTML mode.

To go back to Standard mode just reload the page. If you want to stick with HTML mode then click on “Set basic HTML as default view” at the top of the page in HTML mode. You can always return to Standard mode in the future if you change your mind.

Do you have any other tips or suggestions on how people can speed up Gmail? Please leave your suggestions in the comments below so that you can help others.

Have you loaded your website, or some other website, only to be presented with the error “Sorry that page cannot be found”? Well there’s an easy fix that you can implement in just a couple of minutes in order to resolve the problem.

The error message looks something like this:

It may look a little bit different and the wording might change depending on the settings of your website. But the basic error is that you cannot load specific pages.

This problem occurs because the permalink structure of the WordPress installation has been corrupted or changed improperly by a plugin, theme, or WordPress update. In my case this error occurred after updating to a new WordPress version.

Fortunately the fix is simple. Simply follow these steps:

1. Login into your WordPress administration dashboard. (You can usually do this by adding “/wp-admin” to the end of your domain.
2. On the left-hand column hover over Settings
3. In the menu that appears click on Permalinks
4. Under Custom Settings you should see that the “Custom Structure” option is selected and a custom permalink structure is being used. In my case the permalink structure being used was “/’/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/’. You can tell immediately that the apostrophe at the beginning will prevent pages from loading.
5. Select one of the presets. I suggest the “Day and Name” option. Keep in mind that if this isn’t what you had before then links will be broken to your site until search engines and other websites update.
6. Click on Save Changes on the bottom of the page.
   
7. And that’s it!

If this doesn’t resolve your issue then I suggest that you disable all of your plugins and revert back to the default WordPress theme. If this resolves the error then re-enable each plugin one by one until you find the culprit. You should also update to the latest WordPress release.

Please let me know if this resolved the issue for you in the comments. If you find an alternate fix then let me know in the comments below and I’ll add it to this post with a credit to you.