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Question from Roger: Rick, I followed your advice and replaced the hard drive in my laptop with a solid state drive (SSD).
I’m absolutely blown away by how much faster the laptop boots up and how much faster my programs load.
I do have one question though. I read in another forum that SSDs don’t get fragmented and they never need to be defragged. Is that true?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
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Question from Tammy O.: Hello Rick. Thanks for all the great computer tips you post. They are a BIG help!!
Now I guess it’s my turn to ask a question.
When I load Task Manager it shows 11 processes running at the same time for Google Chrome even though I only six tabs open.
Could that be because my PC has a virus? [Read more…]
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Question from Pete: I read your post about speeding up a PC by replacing the hard drive with an SSD. Thanks for such an awesome tip!
I ordered a Crucial 1TB SSD to go in my old HP DV7t-7000 laptop and it arrived today.
When I went to install it the instructions said to set the SATA port to AHCI mode in the BIOS settings. The problem is I couldn’t find a way to make that change in the BIOS.
I emailed HP tech support and asked them how to change to AHCI mode in the BIOS and they said I can’t because that setting is locked out in that machine.
My question is will an SSD not work with this laptop? [Read more…]
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Question from Chris G.: I have a Dell OptiPlex 9020 mini-tower desktop PC that has both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports on it.
The hard drive died a while back and I replaced it with a 1TB SSD.
I couldn’t believe the difference in speed adding the SSD gave me!
I use this machine for my work computer, and even though it’s pretty old it works really well for me now that I’ve installed the SSD.
I’ve been using an external USB hard drive for my backups but I’m thinking seriously about getting this Crucial external SSD to speed up the backup process.
The problem is this Dell doesn’t have any USB 3.1 Gen 2 – Type C ports to plug the external SSD into.
Is it possible add at least one USB 3.1 Gen 2 – Type C port to the Dell OptiPlex 9020 without having to replace the motherboard?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
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Question from Corrine V.: I have a 5 year old HP laptop that won’t work anymore unless it’s plugged into a wall socket.
The battery charge indicator is stuck on 2% charge and it won’t charge any higher than that.
I thought laptop batteries were supposed to last longer than this.
Do you think I need to buy a new battery or could the charger maybe be bad?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]