Rick's Daily Tips

Scam alert: Beware this dangerous Covid-19 related email scam

Posted on December 1, 2020

As you surely know, there’s a dangerous virus making the rounds at the moment that has the entire world on edge.

This one is a real virus, not the digital kind that we’re all so familiar with these days.

This new “Coronavirus” has proven to spread quickly, and unfortunately it can be fatal in older patients and patients that have one or more underlying medical conditions.

Luckily, there are several things you can do to help prevent you and/or your loved ones from catching this virus: [Read more…]

How to disable the Control Panel and Settings app in Windows 10 (and why you might want to)

Posted on November 30, 2020

As you probably know, Windows 10 has both a Control Panel and a Settings app that make it easy to alter a plethora of Windows settings and features.

Unfortunately, these powerful tools also make it very easy for inexperienced users to make system changes that end up causing issues with either the Windows installation itself or the programs and apps that run under it.

[Read more…]

Speed up Windows 10 by disabling ‘Pretty’ features

Posted on November 29, 2020

If you’re like me you want your computer to respond to your clicks and perform its tasks as quickly as possible.

By default, Windows 10 has several features enabled that are designed to make the user interface look pretty.

For example, have you noticed how menus slide into view instead of just popping immediately onto the screen? Or perhaps you’ve noticed the cute little shadow that is displayed under your mouse pointer?

There are actually well over a dozen of these features that spiff up the user interface in Windows 10, and most of them are enabled by default. Unfortunately, all of those “pretty” features slow your system down by varying degrees.

[Read more…]

How to clone the contents of a hard drive onto a new hard drive or SSD

Posted on November 29, 2020

There are times when we need to copy the entire contents of one hard drive onto another hard drive.

This process is called “cloning”, and it is most often done when upgrading to a larger drive or replacing a drive that is about to fail.

Cloning a hard drive isn’t all that difficult. All you need is both drives connected to the computer at the same time and a copy of a good hard drive cloning utility (I use and recommend Clonezilla because it works well and is available as a free download).

Here’s how to use Clonezilla to clone the contents of one hard drive onto another: [Read more…]

How to install extensions for Microsoft Edge from the Chrome Web Store

Posted on November 28, 2020

As you probably know, Microsoft was never really able to gain any traction with the Edge browser they developed from scratch.

While there were other reasons for Edge’s failure to catch on with the masses, it was primarily due to the extreme lack of browser extensions that were available for it.

Microsoft eventually gave up on their proprietary version of Edge and developed a totally different Edge that is built upon Google’s ultra-popular Chromium browser code.

And guess what? Since Edge is now essentially Chrome at its core, it can now run Chrome extensions!

[Read more…]