Rick's Daily Tips

Tech Tips, Tricks and Tutorials

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Q&A: How can I watch a DVD on Windows 10?

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Question from Shannon:  I’m a movie buff and I have a large collection of movies on DVD.

I have a DVD player in every room in my house but I also love watching them on my computer while taking short breaks from my work (I’m self-employed and I work from a home office).

The problem is I could watch a DVD with Windows Media Player on my old computer but it won’t play DVDs on my new one.

Is it not possible to watch DVDs with Windows 10? Surely you can, but how?

This is very frustrating so I hope you can help me. Thanks in advance.

Rick’s answer:  [Read more…]

Do you miss your old Windows 7 games? Well, you can get them back!

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win7-solitaireDo you love the “old-style” games like Solitaire, Hearts, FreeCell and others that you used to be able to play with Windows 7, but can’t find them in Windows 8.1 or Windows 10?

Well, those beloved old-style games were removed in the most recent versions of Windows and replaced with “modern” versions that you have to download from the Windows Store.

I happen to prefer the old-style games myself. If you prefer them as well, you’ll be happy to know that our friends over at Winaero have an installer that will put those wonderful Windows 7 games on your Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 computer!

Follow these steps to install Solitaire and the other Windows 7 games on your Windows 8.1/10 PC:  [Read more…]

Process Explorer – A powerful free replacement for the Windows Task Manager

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process-explorerThe native Windows Task Manager has long been the go-to utility when we need to see which programs are running on our PC or kill a “hung” process.

While Microsoft has really expanded the features and power of Task Manager in recent years, it still has some serious limitations.

Luckily, Microsoft also offers a free program called Process Explorer that takes the concept of the Task Manager to a whole new level.

Process Explorer displays every process currently running on your PC in an easy to visualize “tree” structure.  [Read more…]

Q&A: How can I combine several short videos to create one long video?

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Question from Tina:  Our church hosted a gospel music festival over the weekend and I videoed the performances of eight groups, each of which sang several songs each.

There was a considerable gap between the performances so I stopped recording after each group had finished singing their last song.

That left me with eight relatively short videos instead of just long one.

How can I combine all of those short videos into one long video?

Rick’s answer:  [Read more…]

‘Unchecky’ helps you avoid installing unwanted add-on software when installing free programs

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unchecky-logoAs regular readers of this blog already know, I’m a huge fan of free software. And thanks to the Internet there are thousands of great free programs available for instant download right onto our computers.

But truth be told, much of that “free” software isn’t actually free.

While it’s true that we can download tons of free programs without having to lay out any cash, we often end up paying in other ways.  [Read more…]

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