Reader Support
Can I move Brave to a secondary drive?
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QIn Issue 611 (page 53) you recommended Brave for web browsing, which I’m impressed with. However, you didn’t point out that you can’t install it on a secondary drive. Instead, it defaults to the main drive. In my case that’s a 250GB SSD that’s running out of space. I’d like to install it on my secondary hard drive, as this has loads of free space. Can it be moved once installed?
AWindows 10 does have an option to move programs – click Start followed by the Settings cog. Next, click Apps followed by the relevant app then the Move button. However, not all programs support this function, and Brave is one of them. In hindsight, we should’ve have flagged this annoyance under the ‘What we don’t like’ heading in our article.
This is actually a long-standing gripe with Brave, and one that only the developers can remedy. However, one option is to grab a ‘portable’ version of the app, from www.snipca.com/39072 (see screenshot below). This isn’t an official release, as such, but Brave itself is open source – meaning anyone can take the browser’s code to make unofficial versions.
It doesn’t need installing in the traditional sense but, when you run the setup file, it’ll ask you which drive you’d like to use for the files – so here you can specify your external drive.
Was your SMS advice incomplete?
QIn Issue 609’s Problems Solved section, you answered Michael Finlay’s question about the inability to receive SMS texts at home, due to no mobile signal (page 66). I believe you overlooked a more secure option for people in Mr Finlay’s position, which is that text messages can be sent to compatible landline phone systems. BT offers this, and it also works with landlines on EE and Plusnet (I can’t comment on non-bt companies). When you are at home, send an SMS message to your landline and try the system.
AThis is indeed the case, and we perhaps should have mentioned this. However, for many reasons, Sms-to-landline services aren’t always reliable, and so they’re not necessarily suitable for the emergency alerts Michael needed to receive. Coincidentally, another reader asked us about these landline SMS services and how they differ from those on mobile phones – see page 69 for our full explanation.
Why does my webcam and sound not work in Windows 11?
QFollowing the instructions in Issue 610’s Cover Feature, I got Windows 11 beta running in a virtual PC. Maybe I’m expecting too much from a virtual environment, as I was hoping my Logitech webcam and Realtek sound card would work. Instead, Virtualbox ( www.virtualbox.org) reports no mic or webcam installed, even though I downloaded the Logitech software from a Chrome browser within the virtual PC. Checking Device Manager shows no webcam installed or connected. Similar for the sound card. Any suggestions?
AThere are a couple of things to unwrap here. First, to use USB 2.0 or 3.0 devices – and some other peripherals – in a Virtualbox virtual PC, you need to install the Virtualbox Extension Pack. This is a free download from www.snipca.com/39111. Just click the ‘All supported platforms’ link to download it. Next, in Virtualbox itself, open the File menu and choose Preferences. Next, click the Extensions tab (see screenshot above) followed by the small plus (+) icon, then select the Extension Pack file just downloaded and click Open.
Next, for the audio side of things, in the Virtualbox Manager window, first click to select your Windows 11 machine then click Settings. Next, click the Audio tab and check that Enable Audio is ticked, that the Host Audio Driver dropdown menu is set to Windows Directsound and, below that, check that the Enable Audio Output box is ticked.
Finally, as you point out, Windows 11 is beta software, and so you shouldn’t expect everything to work perfectly. This would be true even if it were running on real hardware, but it’s even more so on a virtual machine, where all manner of settings might need tweaking to make things work properly.
As it happens, we don’t think the beta status of Windows 11 is the cause of the failings here, and we’re confident our advice above will sort you out. However, we can offer no more guarantee than Microsoft itself that Windows 11 beta will run smoothly in all circumstances.