Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
I have written several posts in the past that explain various ways to back up your primary hard drive because it’s extremely important to always have a current backup of your entire boot drive available.
That being said, Windows 8.1 also has a pretty nifty feature that makes it extremely easy to keep multiple, up-to-date backup copies of just your user-created files. [Read more…]
If you have a PC running Windows 8.1, make sure you have all the current Windows Updates installed by May 13 or you’ll no longer receive new updates after that date.
Microsoft has decided that it’s so important to keep Windows up to date that they’re going to make it mandatory if you want to keep your Windows 8.1 installation protected from future security threats as they arise. My advice: Do it, and ASAP.
All you really need to do is make sure your Windows 8.1 installation is set to install updates automatically. Here’s how: [Read more…]
By now you probably know about the dangerous Heartbleed bug that’s affecting millions of secure websites. It’s a pretty nasty vulnerability that must be avoided at all costs.
A few days ago I wrote about a great tool developed by the folks at LastPass that lets you check to see if a particular website is affected by Heartbleed. Well, now there’s another tool that’s even faster and easier to use. [Read more…]
If you access the Control Panel and File Explorer as often as I do, clicking an icon on the Desktop to access them can be a real time saver. I do it all the time.
Although accessing either of these essential tools is faster and easier than ever before in the latest versions of Windows, there’s absolutely nothing faster than just clicking on an icon.
It’s actually quite easy to add File Explorer and Control Panel icons to the Desktop in Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1. Here’s how: [Read more…]
If you’re a Microsoft Windows user you probably know that you’ll need the 25 digit Windows Activation Key (also called the PID) if you ever need to re-install Windows on your PC.
The Activation Key / PID was easy to find with Windows 7 and previous versions since it was written either on the CD/DVD packaging or somewhere on the computer itself.
But if you have recently purchased a PC with Windows 8 or 8.1 pre-installed, you’ll likely find that the Windows Activation Key / PID is nowhere to be found. Why Microsoft decided not to provide it to us with the new versions of Windows is beyond me, but there is a very easy way to retrieve it from the Registry. Here’s how: [Read more…]