Rick's Daily Tips

Save money by doing your own file recovery from a failed hard drive

Posted on June 23, 2020

It happens to most everyone sooner or later. You turn on your PC and discover that it won’t boot.

You hear a clunking sound from your hard drive and whisper “Oh, no!!!” after realizing that the drive has gone belly up on you.

All is not lost if you have a current backup that works. You can simply replace the bad drive with a new one and restore everything in short order.

But what if you don’t have a backup? Or what if you have a backup but it has somehow become corrupted and you can’t restore from it?

Well, that’s when you have a choice to make. [Read more…]

How to reset an iPad back to the factory default settings

Posted on June 22, 2020

A while back I wrote a post explaining how to reset a smart phone back to the factory default settings, and I have received a lot of positive feedback on that post.

Since then I’ve had several people ask me how to do the same for an iPad, so I thought I’d put the instructions for resetting an iPad back to its factory defaults in a post of its own. I hope it will help some folks.

It’s actually quite easy to reset your iPad. Here’s how: [Read more…]

How to use the Onscreen Keyboard in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10

Posted on June 21, 2020

By now you are probably quite familiar with the onscreen keyboard that pops up whenever you access a text box on your mobile device.

What most people don’t know however is recent versions of Microsoft Windows come with onscreen keyboards as well.

You might be wondering why you would ever want to use an onscreen keyboard when your PC already has a full-size physical keyboard.

Well, there are several situations in which an onscreen keyboard can come in handy. Here are a couple that arise fairly often : [Read more…]

Q&A: How expensive is it to have a bad audio connector replaced on a laptop?

Posted on June 17, 2020

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from MaryAnne G.: I’m hoping you can answer a question for me. How much will a computer shop charge me to replace the audio connector on my three year old Lenovo laptop?

I use headphones a LOT when I’m watching videos and the connector has become wallowed out and I can’t seem to get a good connection anymore when I plug the headphones in.

I know it’s the connector on the laptop that’s bad because it does the same thing with a brand new pair of headphones. Ans I can feel the connector wiggle with the slightest touch.

If it’s gonna cost more than $40 to $50 I think I’d rather just buy a new laptop. If you can give me a rough estimate that’ll help me decide what to do. Thanks.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]