Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: The guy at the computer shop stole my RAM. How can I make him give it back?

Posted on May 5, 2018

Question from Nikki W.: I have a terrible problem Rick. I took my HP desktop tower to our local computer shop because it wouldn’t boot up into Windows.

Long story short, the guy told me the hard drive was bad and he would have to replace it and then reinstall Windows 7.

I got the computer back yesterday and it seems to run ok, but after I use Chrome for a while I get a message telling me the memory is running low.

I looked at the System Information screen and it said there was only 3.4GB of RAM installed. I know for a fact that it had 8GB in it when I took it to the shop. Oh, and the sound isn’t working either.

My main problem is the guy stole some of my RAM and I need to know what I can do to make him put it back in since I can’t prove how much RAM was in it when I took it to his shop. And I hope you can help me get the sound working too. Can you give me some advice?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why is my computer saying ‘A hard drive in the system reports that it may fail.’?

Posted on May 3, 2018

Question from Darla: I have an HP Pavilion laptop with Windows 8.1 on it.

I recently started seeing this message every time I turn it on:

“A hard drive in the system reports that it may fail.”

The thing is the hard drive is working just fine.

Can you tell me what do I need to do to get the computer to stop showing me this message?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Review: TP-LINK Archer C9 AC1900 Dual Band Wireless AC Gigabit Router

Posted on May 2, 2018

tp-link-archer-c9-ac1900-dual-band-router-large — (#ad)

Now that AC class routers have been out for a while, their prices have dropped considerably even as their wireless speeds have increased.

I recently had the opportunity to check out the TP-LINK Archer C9 AC1900 Dual Band Wireless AC Gigabit Router (#ad), and I came away very impressed.

This is a simultaneous dual-band router (2.4GHz 600Mbps and 5Ghz 1300Mbps) that also has four wired Gigabit Ethernet ports, making it an ideal router for connecting pretty much every device you own at blazing fast speeds. [Read more…]