CAN YOU SEND IT BACK?

Broadly speaking, you have more rights when buying online. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you a 14-day ‘cooling off period’ to cancel and get a refund. If the item is faulty, you have 30 days in which to return it for a refund.

These rights now apply to digital goods such as ebooks and film downloads, too – and even to secondhand items. Find out more on the government’s site: www.snipca. com/21070.

However, your rights are reduced dramatically when buying from a private seller, for example on ebay or Amazon. The item must be correctly described, and the person must have the right to sell it – but that’s all. Always keep the phrase caveat emptor (‘let the buyer beware’) in mind.

AWe don’t hate Windows 10 here, but we certainly agree that many aspects of it are deeply frustrating — and that includes the assumption that everyone will want to use Microsoft’s cloud-storage service. You can’t actually uninstall Onedrive, which we think speaks volumes for Microsoft’s intentions. Disabling Onedrive completely is also a palaver, but it’s not impossible. Note that you need to perform the following steps in the right order to disable Onedrive, so follow our instructions carefully.

First, right-click the Onedrive icon in the notifcation area at the far right of the taskbar — it’s the two overlapping clouds. If you can’t see this icon, click the up arrow to expand the Notification Area. From the pop-up menu, choose Settings, then select the Settings tab in the Onedrive dialogue box. Clear the ticks from both ‘Start Onedrive automatically when I sign in to Windows’ and ‘Let me use Onedrive to fetch any of my files on the PC’.

Next, click the ‘Auto-save tab’ and use the dropdown menus to set both Documents and Pictures to ‘This PC only’ (see screenshot). Also, remove the ticks from the boxes on this tab. Then click OK to save the changes.

Next, select the Account tab and click the ‘Choose folders’ button. Clear the tick from ‘Sync all files and folders in my Onedrive’. Now tick it again and clear it once more, as this ensures all ticks have been removed from every folder box. Be warned that when you click OK, any files stored in your Onedrive folder on your PC will be erased. They will still be available on the web version of Onedrive (at www.onedrive.com), however.

Remarkably, we still haven’t finished, so repeat our first instruction to bring back the Onedrive dialogue box. Select the Account tab, then click the Unlink Onedrive button. You won’t see a confirmation screen, but the ‘Welcome to Onedrive’ box will appear, as if you were setting up Onedrive for the first time. Close it by clicking the X in the top-right corner.

You have now disabled Onedrive, although it will still appear in File Explorer. To fix that, first press Windows key+e to launch File Explorer, then right-click Onedrive and choose Properties. Select the General tab and, in the Attributes section, tick the box labelled Hidden.

Finally, right-click the Onedrive icon in the Notification Area and choose Exit. When you restart your PC, Onedrive will be but a memory.