Grove Geeks Ltd

30/10/2025

Window 11 warnings- Are you getting warnings that your Windows 10 computer is now unsupported, and at risk? If so, you may NOT need a new one - in most cases we can upgrade to Windows 11 for much less than a new computer, avoiding the costs and hassle of swapping to a new computer....
Windows 10 expired on 14th October 2025, and isn't getting new security updates from Microsoft - so it's important to get it upgraded to Windows 11, or replace it, to ensure you remain secure. There is an optional chargable extension, but it's a short-term fix.....
So if your computer is generally in good condition and you're happy with it, why not give it a few more years by getting in touch with us at Grove Geeks and getting it upgraded?? We can help!

20/02/2025

Why is it CRITICAL to ensure your email account password is DIFFERENT from everything else? Ideally every password should be different, for every site - but of all the ones that MUST be unique, email is the one...!
We explain this a lot to our customers, particularly after helping them recover from being hacked - so thought it would be helpful to explain why it's so important, and maybe protect others from the horrible consequences of an email hack...so here goes.....

When you forget a password for a website, how do you reset it? Let's say you forget your Amazon.co.uk password.....Typically, you'll click the "Forgotten password?" link on their login page, and then enter your email address. Amazon sends you an email, knowing that only you have access to that email account - so they know it's really you who's resetting the password. You click the link in the email, enter a new password, and you've securely reset your password. Nobody else can do that, because they don't have access to your emails...so effectively your email is your master key for all your other accounts and logins for other websites...

So why is it so important to ensure that password is different from all your other passwords?

Let's imagine the following scenario:- You've registered with three websites (e.g. BBC iPlayer, Sainsburys, and dailymail.co.uk) all using [email protected] to identify it's you, and all using "Primary1999Keys" as the password... AND, you've also used "Primary1999Keys" as your password for your email account...
Then, one day dailymail.co.uk gets hacked - they lose all their user account details, INCLUDING the email addresses and passwords of all their users (this happens more often than you might think...) The hacker now has thousands or millions of email/password combinations...
The hackers aren't interesting in accessing your dailymail.co.uk account - but because the hackers know that the majority of people use the same passwords, the FIRST thing they do is try to login to your email, by going to gmail.com and logging in with [email protected], and "Primary1999Keys" - they get in, and can now see ALL your emails, sent, received, filed away etc. etc.! They can also get a good idea of all the website you've registered with, and can start to target them....
First, they setup some hidden rules in your email that silently forwards ALL your incoming emails to their own email address, and then hides them from you.....so you won't realise you've been hacked at all!
Next, they go to Paypal.com (for example), and use the "Forgotten Password?" link. Paypal sends you an email to allow you to reset your password, sent to [email protected] - This is silently forwarded to the hacker - and they use the link in the email to securely reset the password. They can then buy things with your Paypal account, send money to themselves etc.
Then, they login to your Facebook account and reset the password, and the personal details, and pretend to be you with all your friends, trying to persuade them to send money etc...

So once they're into your email, they can reset and access just about ANYTHING...

So what can you do to protect yourself?
1. Ensure your email password is COMPLEX and UNIQUE - it must NEVER be used anywhere else.
2. Turn on 2FA (Two Factor Authentication) for your email, if it supports it (GMail, Outlook, iCloud all support it.) Once turned on, any new login to your email account will ALSO need a code from your mobile device, or to another email account, to enter when logging in. NEVER give these codes to anyone else - if you receive one unexpectedly, someone's got your password, and is trying to hack your account...so you should act quickly (give us a call).
3. Turn on 2FA for all other accounts you can, particularly anywhere you can do anything with money - order something online, order gift cards, subscribe to a service, transfer money etc - e.g. Amazon, Paypal, eBay, Sainsburys, Tescos etc.

If you'd like help with any of the above, do give us a call and we can help.

28/07/2024

A number of our customers expressed interest in knowing when my mum's book was going to be published - well here it is!
"Take Care to Laugh" dispels the myths about hospice being a place where you "only come out feet first" - there's so much humour in end-of-life care, and Mum's captured this amazingly well in her book - BUY A COPY (paperback and/or kindle eBook), SHARE THIS POST, and SPREAD THE WORD!
Julian. Grove Geeks.

Living with a terminal diagnosis is a serious business. Many believe that all doors in life close, and end-of-life care entails hushed voices and a sombre mood in a hospice where all are waiting for death. Jennifer Taylor, retired Rehabilitation Lead at St. Christopher’s Hospice, London, dispels

15/05/2024

(FIXED) ISSUE WITH OUR CONTACT FORM on website....
We've discovered an issue today with our website contact form, which was caused by a security change made by our hosting company. The issue is now fixed, but if you've contacted us in the last couple of weeks via the form on the website and NOT had a response, please do send us another message, as we haven't recieved those messages. We can't be sure when the issue started, so apologies to anyone we've inadvertently ignored - do get in touch again? Thanks.

10/05/2024

What would happen if you lost your phone?
Only when the worst happens, and you've lost it or it's been stolen, do you realise what you had on it that you'll never get back :-(
But, if it's setup properly then you'll be able to get almost everything back - so check you have iCloud backup or Android backup to Google Drive turned on, that everything is stored in the cloud, and therefore can be recovered onto a new phone - and you'd only lose anything which hadn't already sync'd to the cloud!
If you've run out of space with Google Drive or iCloud, there are options to upgrade the storage for a few pounds a month - worth every penny, vs the distress caused when you've lost those cherished photos and messages :-(

17/04/2024

PHONE LINE ISSUES RESOLVED - 17th April 2024 11:50
Our phone issues appear to now be resolved. If you've recently contacted us and not received a reply, please do CONTACT US AGAIN on 07541 728180, or via Facebook, or WhatsApp 07541 728180.
Thank you.

16/04/2024

(Update 17/4/24 - ISSUE NOW RESOLVED)
If you're trying to contact us by phone, we have an issue with our O2 business phone number, due to an O2 eSIM issue - hoping it'll be resolved by tomorrow. Please do message on Facebook, WhatsApp call/message us on the usual number (07541 728180) or email us at [email protected].
If you've left an answerphone message and have not had a reply - apologies, as we can't pick up answerphone messages either!

31/01/2024

Fancy a discount on a horse racing club membership? They make a great gift, or just a treat for yourself - and, we've got a Grove Geeks exclusive discount code "GG10" to save £10 (16%!) on membership for 2024!
We've been working with The Posh Pundit Racing Club for the last year - the club's horse "Thank You M'am" (named in honour of Her Majesty) has had some great success - and he's running tomorrow, 1st Feb, at Wincanton!
More details at the link below - and use discount code "GG10" to claim your £10 off!

Home Welcome to The Posh Pundit Become part of something special – become a member of a racing club! Buy a Membership Package THANK YOU AGAIN for purchasing raffle tickets in aid of The Injured Jockeys Fund (& for your honesty). CONGRATULATIONS to WINNING TICKET NUMBER: 587 Please CONTACT RUPERT t...

23/10/2023

We had our oldest ever computer in to the Grove Geeks workshop this month!
A 1981 "Osborne 1", which had been found whilst clearing out old computer tech in a customer's house. These were the first "portable" computers - no battery (so they still needed to be plugged in) but were small enough to carry from place to place, vs the room-sized computers which came before. Many described it as "luggable" rather than portable, and they're not wrong - at 12kg it's quite a lump! They had two disk drives (5.25" single density floppy disks!), and a tiny built-in cathode ray tube screen - a full tiny television screen! They also had the ability to plug into an external display, and we had the cable for that.....

So having got it home, we checked it over and were keen to give it a go! All looked OK visually - so we risked plugging it in and turning it on (you never know what you're going to get!).......A loud bang and some black smoke from the disk drives followed, and it was promptly turned off.....
After some investigation, we confirmed what we suspected - two capacitors had blown, simply due to age (and maybe the slightly-higher-than-normal local mains voltage in Wantage?)
The great thing about old kit is that it's WAY easier to work on - everything big, well spaced out, and designed to be dismantled if you know what you're doing. So we de-soldered the old blown capacitors, and confirmed their voltage and capacitance (with some help from one of our other customers - thank you Joe!).
The capacitors were rated at 250volts max, and the power supply for only 220Volts - so this, combined with their age, meant it was no real surprise they'd failed (and, we've seen the voltage locally as high as 256 volts here on occassion....)

We checked over all the rest of the components on the boards and decided to replace all three of that type of capacitor, just in case the voltage was the issue, and the other was likely to fail.... We sourced brand new replacements next-day, but rated to 275Volts (thanks again Joe!) rather that 250Volts, and then soldered in place.

The moment of truth - we plugged in and turned on again - and IT WORKED! The built-in display worked, the drives spun up, the buttons, brightness, contrast etc. all worked.....and even the external monitor we'd plugged in worked too via SCART/Composite!

Sadly we don't have a boot-disk for it, so couldn't take it any further than that, but great to see a piece of history come back to life after all these years!

03/10/2023

It’s worrying that one of the criteria people use to determine whether an email, call or text is a scam, is that they don’t have an account with that bank/company etc. This suggests they’ll be more likely to trust an email/call/text that purports to be from a bank they DO have an account with….and their defences will be weaker!
Advice we give to our customers is “Don’t trust the expected!” - keep your guard up, even more so when you’re expecting a parcel, have an account with that bank, have just made a big transaction etc….

26/09/2023

A long-awaited update to Windows 11, which finally restores the Windows 10 feature to "Never combine taskbar icons", has finally been released! This has been a constant thorn in many of our customers' sides; why it took so long to be added to Windows 11 we'll never know?! But if you update Windows 11 you'll see the setting in the Taskbar settings.....finally!😀
(This missing feature was enough to make many wait and not upgrade from 10 to 11..... if you used it on 10, it was soooo frustrating in 11! More info if interested.... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-11-finally-gets-a-never-combine-taskbar-buttons-mode/)