What to do when switching to a new Mac goes wrong
Q. I have a new MacBook Air M1. I migrated my information from my old MacBook Pro, and all seemed fine. But I continue to get a notice to sign into iCloud and accept the new Terms & Conditions. When I do that, the notice does not go away, and I am now locked out of two email accounts, despite signing in to them repeatedly. Do you have any idea what the issue might be and how I can fix it?
A. The Apple Migration Assistant is an amazing tool for migrating from one Apple device to another. The fact that you can use Time Machine to back up your computer and then use this tool to move the data to your new computer is something that can make getting set up on a new computer pretty quick and painless.
But there are some things to be aware of.
If your computer is older and has not been updated to one of the more recent versions of the Mac OS, you might run into some issues if you try to migrate that data to a modern Mac.
I recommend making sure your old computer is running the most current version of the operating system it can support.
If you can’t get the old computer updated to within two versions of the new Mac operating system on your new computer, you may not want to do a full system transfer.
Instead, I would set up the laptop without using the Migration assistant. I would then sign into my Apple account and use the migration assistant to transfer only the user profile that contains your personal data. I would then go back and reinstall your programs and apps from scratch.
The good news is that you can try all options. If you run into a problem, resetting the Mac is pretty easy, though time consuming.
Q. I received a notice from Microsoft saying that updates to Windows 8.1 including security updates have stopped and that my laptop could be subject to viruses and malware. I have McAfee virus protection and I use the free version of Malwarebytes.
Is that enough to keep me protected?
A. The Windows 8.1 operating system from Microsoft reached end of life Jan. 10.
This means that Microsoft will no longer be putting out updates to patch any vulnerabilities in the operating system.
You can keep using Windows 8.1 and your anti-virus and anti-malware applications will help to a certain degree. But these apps rely on an operating system that does not contain any unpatched vulnerabilities.
Beyond that, support for those apps running on Windows 8.1 will also be coming to an end.
If the system will support an upgrade to Windows 10, I would strongly recommend it.
Ed Bott over at ZDNET just published an article at https://tinyurl.com/helplinewindows10 that explains how you can still get a free upgrade to Windows 10.