Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
If you have made the jump from a previous version of Windows to Windows 8, you have surely noticed that many once routine tasks must now be performed differently than before. And that includes something as simple as installing a second hard drive in your Windows 8 PC.
In order for Windows 8 to recognize and make use of a newly installed second hard drive, the drive must first be initialized. Here’s how to do it: [Read more…]
Facebook has added another option for regaining access to your account should you ever forget your password and not be able to reset it for some reason.
Now you can designate up to five of your Facebook Friends as “Trusted Contacts”, each of whom will receive a security code from Facebook on your behalf after you click on the “Forgot your password?” link.
After you collect the security codes from three of your five trusted friends, you can enter them on the Password Reset screen and then choose a new password. [Read more…]
In Windows XP we could access the ‘Run’ box directly from the Start Menu, but for some unknown reason Microsoft chose to hide this indispensable tool beginning with the release of Windows Vista.
You can always display the ‘Run’ box by pressing the Windows+R key combination, but most Windows users would prefer to have it right on the Start Menu like it was in XP. If you’re one of them, here’s how to put it on there: [Read more…]
If you have ever used Windows 7 you probably remember creating a System Repair Disc soon after setting up your new PC just in case it ever failed to boot up properly. You can create one for your Windows 8 PC as well, but you also have the option of creating a bootable USB Flash Recovery Drive instead.
You can use either a System Repair Disc or USB Recovery Flash Drive to boot a PC that fails to start up properly into an emergency troubleshooting and repair mode. They both do the job equally well, but I prefer the USB flash drive option for a number of reasons. If you do as well, here’s how to create one in Windows 8: [Read more…]
When Microsoft designed Windows 8/8.1 they optimized the boot process in order to make Windows load faster.
While this was a welcome change from previous Windows versions, the faster boot time made it impossible to use the F8 key to load the Boot Menu for booting into Safe Mode.
If you prefer the convenience of being able to boot into Safe Mode in Windows 8 by pressing the F8 key at startup over the faster boot process, you can re-enable the F8 key and have it work just like it always has. Here’s how: [Read more…]