Rick's Daily Tips - Page 2 of 588 - Tech Tips, Tricks and Tutorials

Q&A: Are SSDs just as reliable as hard drives?

Posted on April 6, 2020

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from Wesley G.: Hi Rick. I hope you’re doing well.

I recently read your post about speeding up a computer by replacing the hard drive with a much faster solid state drive (SSD).

I’m leaning towards doing this but I have one concern that’s holding me back.

I’m worried that an SSD might not be as reliable as a hard drive, and I really can’t afford to lose my files if it were to crash on me.

What’s your opinion on this? Are SSDs as reliable as hard drives?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Scam alert: Beware the many ‘Coronavirus Stimulus Payment’ scams that are now making the rounds

Posted on April 6, 2020

As you surely know, the Coronavirus pandemic has already caused a lot of financial pain for millions of Americans.

And unfortunately things are likely to get even worse before they get any better.

To help ease the pain for the American people, the US Congress has passed and President Trump has signed a massive $2 trillion economic stimulus bill that includes a provision to provide cash payments to most Americans.

These “stimulus payments’ will be greatly appreciated by the folks who are suffering the most from the economy’s screeching halt, but as you might expect the scammers of the world are already hard at work trying to get their own piece of the stimulus pie.

There are currently dozens of stimulus related scams being perpetrated. Here are just a few of the most common ones: [Read more…]

Q&A: Is there an easy way to copy and paste as plain text?

Posted on April 6, 2020

Question from Amber H.: Hi Rick. I write a blog about contests and giveaways, and I’m always copying and pasting snippets from other websites into my own blog posts.

The problem I’m having is when I copy a snippet of text with Ctrl+C and then paste it with Ctrl+V, any formatting (bold, italics, web links, etc.) are pasted into the document along with the text.

To get around that I’ve been pasting the snippet first into Notepad, then copying it again from there and pasting it into my WordPress editor window.

My question is can you tell me a simpler (hopefully one step) way to paste something that was copied to the clipboard as just plain text? Thanks for your help!

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Scam alert: ALWAYS assume that emails with a link to a login page are fake!

Posted on April 5, 2020

If you ever get an email that appears to be from your bank or some other online service saying you need to click a link in the email to log in to your account and update your personal information, don’t do it.

These types of emails are almost always fakes. And even the rare few that are legitimate should never be trusted!

There is one (and only one) exception: That is when you cannot remember your password for an account and you click the “Forgot Password” link, in which case you’ll most likely receive an email containing a link to click in order to reset your password.

ALL other such emails should be assumed to be fake! [Read more…]

Q&A: How can I retrieve my Windows 10 license key from a bad hard drive?

Posted on April 5, 2020

Question from Keith: I upgraded my Windows 7 computer to Windows 10 shortly after it was released, and like a dummy I didn’t write down the license key for it.

The hard drive in this machine went bad and I replaced it with a 500GB SSD. The bad drive appears to be completely dead because it doesn’t make any noise at all.

After I installed the new drive I downloaded the Windows 10 files and put them on a CD. I know I’ll need the license key to activate Windows 10 after I install it, but I don’t have it.

I read that you can sometimes retrieve files from a dead hard drive. Is there any way to retrieve the Windows license key from a hard drive when Windows won’t even recognize the drive when its plugged into a different computer?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]