Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Felipe G.: I have a Dell Inspiron N5110 laptop (Windows 7 – 64 bit) with a single stick of 4GB RAM installed from the factory.
I checked and there is one empty memory slot in this computer. Can I upgrade the RAM to 12GB by plugging a single 8GB DDR3 RAM stick into the empty slot?
Rick’s answer: Hi Felipe. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the answer to your question is no. The maximum amount of RAM supported by your laptop’s motherboard is 8GB. [Read more…]
Question from Miranda P.: Hi Rick. I just bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 and I love it, but the annoying clicking sound the keyboard makes when I’m typing is driving me crazy.
I’ve searched the menus from top to bottom and I can’t find a setting to disable the keyboards sounds. Can you please, please, please tell me how to do it?
Rick‘s answer: Indeed I can Miranda. The setting for turning off the key click sound on the Galaxy S4 is hidden under a set of nested menus. Here’s how to find it:
1 – Open the Settings screen, then scroll down and select Language and Input.
2 – Find Samsung keyboard and tap the gear-shaped icon.
3 – Tap Advanced.
4 – Uncheck Key-tap sound. Note: If you’d like to turn off the equally annoying Key-tap vibration, you can do that while you’re on this screen as well.
Here’s a screenshot: [Read more…]
Question from Mike D: Rick, a few days ago my Acer laptop running Windows 7 caught a couple of nasty viruses, but I was able to remove them by following the instructions in your great virus removal post. Thanks for the help!
Now that the viruses are gone however, I have a different, but related problem. The viruses apparently “hid” all the files on a very important USB thumb drive that was plugged into the PC when the viruses struck. These are documents that I use at school, and I really need to get them back if at all possible. I’m not really concerned about the drive itself. I just need the files back! Any ideas?
Rick‘s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Kenneth O.: I started using Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer a while back, and I really like it.
But starting last night I can’t get to certain websites in Chrome even though I can get to them just fine in other web browsers.
As far as I know I haven’t changed any settings or anything. What could be the problem?
Rick’s answer: There are a number of possible causes for this problem Kenneth, but the two most common (and most likely) are having your browser set to use a proxy server or corrupted cookies on your hard drive. The following steps will eliminate both possibilities: [Read more…]
Question from Lonnie K.: I paid a guy I know to build me a custom PC around a Gigabyte Intel H77M-D3H motherboard. We had a disagreement and now he won’t talk to me or give me any advice.
What I want to do is add a stand-alone video card. I found a really good deal on an “open box” ZOTAC GeForce GTX 660 Ti but before I buy it I want to make sure it’ll work with my motherboard. Will it?
Rick‘s answer: [Read more…]