Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Do you always seem to miss the local broadcast of your favorite “Talk Radio” show due to work, school or some other scheduling conflict?
Did your local talk radio station drop your favorite show, making it impossible to listen to it in your local area?
Well, now there’s an easy way to listen to your favorite talk radio personality at most any time of the day, regardless of where you might happen to live. All you need is an Internet connection! [Read more…]
Question from Gloria: I tried to log in to my computer for the first time in several months, but it won’t let me log in because I can’t remember the password.
This is a desktop computer with Windows 10? I can’t believe I forgot the password! Can you tell me how to reset it?
Rick’s answer: Don’t be too hard on yourself, Gloria. This happens all the time. In fact, rarely a week goes by without someone asking me how to reset a Windows password that they’ve forgotten.
As you might imagine, Microsoft doesn’t include an easy way to reset a forgotten password with Windows since that would defeat the purpose of having a password in the first place. But luckily there are third-party tools that we can use to reset them. [Read more…]
Question from Eugene N.: Rick, I have a 2 year old laptop computer that I fear might have a failing hard drive. I’m a professional photographer and I primarily use this PC for editing my photos.
Everything was working fine until late last night, but now every time I turn the computer on I get an error stating that the hard disk is in danger of failing and I need to run the hard disk test in system diagnostics.
When I run the disk test it says “SMART Check: FAILED”. Do you think I need to just go ahead and have the hard drive replaced or is there a way to fix this error?
I sprung for a 2 year extended warranty when I bought the laptop, but I’m not sure it’ll cover the repair if it turns out to be a software problem. I’m not worried about losing any data though because I create a new system image after I download the photos from every shoot.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Windows 10 offers multiple options for backing up your important files, and they are quite easy to set up and use.
I have already explained how to create a System Image Backup of the entire hard drive, and I recommend that you do that fairly often just in case you have a hard drive failure at some point.
But there’s another backup option that can ensure that you always have backups of the most recent versions of your important files in addition to the “old” versions that are stored in your most recent System Image backup.
Once enabled, Windows 10’s powerful File History backup feature will automatically create “snapshot” backups of every file that’s stored in the folders you designate. [Read more…]
Did you know that when you offer credit card processing to your clients, your systems can do much more than just accept payments?
With Merchant Account Solutions options, you can collect customer information for later use, keep up with inventory from your store, and even keep up with employee’s schedules.
The amazing merchant services offered from the folks at MAS allow you to do a variety of tasks to make running your business easier than ever before. [Read more…]