Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Karen: I have several old computers in my basement that I want to recycle.
I’ve always heard that you need to destroy a computer’s hard drive before you recycle it to prevent someone else from maybe getting your files.
My question is will removing the hard drive from a PC completely eliminate any possibility of someone finding my old files.
Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.
Regular readers of this blog know I’m always mentioning how important it is to create regular backups of your computer’s hard drive or SSD.
After all, always having a recent backup on hand is the very best “insurance” you can have against a catastrophic drive failure or a crippling virus infection.
But there’s one important point that I probably don’t stress nearly as much as I should…
The Task Manager utility is a very handy tool for examining and managing all the apps and processes that are currently running on your Windows machine.
But if you’re searching for a specific task it can get a little tedious having to click the arrows one at time to expand each “branch” of the “tree” until you find the task you’re searching for.
Luckily, you don’t have to. [Read more…]
Question from Lois: Hi, Rick. I need your help with a Facebook issue.
I just noticed that people can see my birthdate when they look at my profile page.
I really don’t want strangers (or even Facebook) knowing when my birth date is. I don’t even want my friends to know when it is.
How do I completely remove my birth date from Facebook? [Read more…]
Question from Alma: I have a computer with Windows 11 on it and I’m hoping you can answer a question for me.
Every time I use my computer I start by accessing the files in one specific folder and I keep that folder open at all times.
It’s a hassle having to open File Explorer and navigate to that folder every time I turn on the computer.
It would be wonderful if I could have Windows start up every time with that folder already open so I can get right to work.
Is that possible? If it is, how do I set it up? [Read more…]