Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Keitha D.: Hi Rick. I need your help with an issue I’m havingwith my Macbook Pro.
I recently upgraded from OS X Mavericks to Yosemite, and ever since the upgrade I can’t seem to view any file extensions. Can you tell me how to get them back?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Derick T.: Hi Rick. I had been wanting to add some USB 3.0 ports to my HP desktop PC for a while now. I finally broke down and bought a USB 3.0 expansion card
The new USB ports work fine with my USB mouse, keyboard and printer, but when I plug my Seagate external USB hard drive into it I can’t get the computer to recognize the drive. I know it should work because the box the drive came in said it works with USB 3.0. Am I doing something wrong?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Glenn W.: I have an old, but awesome 2008 era Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop that came with Windows Vista. It still works great except for the hard drive which just died on me with no warning.
I found out that I can buy a brand spanking new replacement hard drive for less than $50, but I don’t have a set of Windows Vista restore discs.
If I replace the hard drive can I also install Windows 8.1 in place of Vista? (I would actually prefer Windows 7 but they don’t sell it anymore.)
Or is this machine so old that only Windows Vista will work, which would mean I’m out of luck either way?
Sorry for the multiple questions, but this is all very confusing to me. I hate to throw away a perfectly good laptop just because the hard drive died.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Terrie A: I’ve been trying to change my cover photo on Facebook, but I’m having trouble.
When I try to choose a picture I’ve saved, it says it’s too big and that it has to be so many pixels high by so many pixels wide. How can I change the pixel size of the pic?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Millie H.: I heard that Windows 10 is supposed to be released pretty soon. Will the Windows 7 that’s on my computer still work after that or will I need to buy Windows 10?
Rick’s answer: Millie, you have nothing whatsoever to worry about. Your computer’s Windows 7 installation will work just fine for the foreseeable future. In fact, Microsoft has committed to supporting Windows 7 with regular security updates until the year 2020.
But that being said, you might want to consider upgrading your computer to Windows 10 when it is released anyway. Here’s why… [Read more…]