Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
If you have recently upgraded to Windows 8.1, you have probably noticed that both the address bar and tabs list in the “modern” version of IE 11 (the app that loads when you click the Internet Explorer tile on the Start screen) keep disappearing every time you load a new web page.
If you find the disappearing address bar and tabs as frustrating as I do, follow these steps to force them to remain visible for you: [Read more…]
AVG Antivirus is one of the most popular antivirus programs on the market. When you go to download the software from the AVG website, you have a choice between a free version and a paid version which comes with some extra bells and whistles.
Many users opt to download the trial version of AVG Internet Security, then decide to switch to the free version when the trial period ends. This is fine (it is actually what I recommend), but that means uninstalling the trial version and then installing the free version from scratch.
But now there’s a better way to “downgrade” from AVG Internet Security to AVG Free. Simply download the AVG Downgrader utility from the AVG website and run it. The fast and simple process explained below will make the conversion for you without having to jump through a bunch od complicated hoops. Just follow these directions: [Read more…]
Having a recent System Image Backup on hand is a great way to get your PC back up and running quickly if you have to replace your hard drive or a virus trashes your Windows installation.
But if you recently upgraded to Windows 8.1 or bought a new PC with it pre-installed, you won’t find it in the same place it was in when using a previous Windows version.
Here’s how to create a System Image Backup in Windows 8.1: [Read more…]
By default, any time you perform any kind of search from the Windows 8.1 Start Screen you will also be presented with a list of search results from the Internet – courtesy of the Bing search engine. Some people love it, others hate it.
If you’re like me and prefer having your local searches confined just to the drives on your local computer, you can easily turn Bing Search Integration off. Here’s how: [Read more…]
If you have recently upgraded your Windows 8 installation to Windows 8.1, you can reclaim 6GB of hard drive space by removing the old Windows 8 files. Here’s a little background info for you…
When you upgrade to a newer version of Microsoft Windows, the version being replaced is retained in a folder called Windows.old just in case the upgrade fails or you wish to revert back to the previous version for some reason.
The amount of space required to store the previous version of Windows varies depending on the versions involved. Since you have just upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1, you now have roughly 6GB of old (and now useless) Windows 8 system files just sitting there taking up valuable disk space. [Read more…]