Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
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…]
Question from Anthony H: Rick, I have a favorite program that I’ve been using for many years, but they haven’t updated it since 2006 and it sometimes freezes up on me in Windows 7.
When the program freezes my mouse does too, and the only way to proceed is to unplug the power cable. I really don’t like doing that cause I’m afraid it’ll damage my PC. Is there any way to exit that program gracefully when it freezes using just the keyboard?
Rick’s answer: Hi Anthony. My first suggestion would be to ditch that old, no longer supported program and try to find a modern equivalent that won’t crash your computer when you use it. That being said, I understand completely why you’d rather not do that. In fact, I have a couple of programs on my Windows 7 PC that were released long before yours was and I won’t part with them until I absolutely have to!
To answer your question, there is indeed a way to “kill” a frozen program using just the keyboard. Follow these steps: [Read more…]
Question from Connie D: Hi Rick. I recently set up a WordPress blog using your excellent instructions. You made it so easy! Thank you very, very much!
I’m having one issue that’s driving me batty though. Every time someone leaves a comment on one of my posts I receive two identical emails letting me know about the comment. How can I make WordPress send me just one email?
Rick’s answer: Connie, when I first started blogging with WordPress I had the same problem, and it drove me batty too until I finally figured out what the problem was. The duplicate notification emails result from using two different email addresses when you post under a different user name than the one assigned to the primary Administrator account. Here’s how to fix it: [Read more…]
Question from Anita P.: Hi Rick. I hope you can help me. I’m semi-addicted to Youtube and I watch it every day.
I like watching the videos full screen but about a week ago the full screen feature stopped working. Is there any way I can get it to work again? I use Google Chrome as my web browser.
Rick‘s answer: Hi Anita. I haven’t encountered this problem before, but after doing a quick Google search I found out that lots of other people have. Here is the solution that seems to work for most people: [Read more…]
Over time Ubuntu has gradually become the most popular flavor of Linux among users who have decided to make the switch from Microsoft Windows, and for good reason.
In addition to its fast and easy installation, Ubuntu also offers a more “Windows-like” user interface than many of the other Linux distros out there. [Read more…]