Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: How can I reset a forgotten Windows 10 password?

Posted on August 28, 2017

Question from Gloria: I tried to log in to my computer for the first time in several months, but it won’t let me log in because I can’t remember the password.

This is a desktop computer with Windows 10? I can’t believe I forgot the password! Can you tell me how to reset it?

Rick’s answer: Don’t be too hard on yourself, Gloria. This happens all the time. In fact, rarely a week goes by without someone asking me how to reset a Windows password that they’ve forgotten.

As you might imagine, Microsoft doesn’t include an easy way to reset a forgotten password with Windows since that would defeat the purpose of having a password in the first place. But luckily there are third-party tools that we can use to reset them. [Read more…]

Scam alert: Beware the insidious ‘Locky Ransomware’ that’s being spread by Facebook Messenger

Posted on August 27, 2017

As you probably know by now, scams and viruses are constantly making the rounds on Facebook.

The latest threat is spreading like wildfire with the help of the ubiquitous Facebook Messenger app that runs on millions of smart phones and tablets.

Commonly known as “Locky Ransomeware”, this threat is especially bad because there’s no known decryption program available for unlocking a device once it has been encrypted. [Read more…]

Parted Magic – An awesome bootable CD for testing, partitioning and cloning hard drives

Posted on August 25, 2017

Your computer’s hard drive or SSD is one of the most important parts of it.

After all, it stores all of your valuable programs, data files, music and other miscellaneous pieces of your digital life in addition to the operating system itself.

Parted Magic is a powerful suite of Linux-based utilities for testing, partitioning, formatting and cloning your hard drive(s) and/or SSD(s).

Many computer techs (including Yours Truly) use it fairly often for setting up and maintaining the drives in our own machines as well as those of our customers. [Read more…]

How to back up your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to your iCloud account

Posted on August 22, 2017

Just as with a traditional laptop or desktop computer, it’s important to always have a current backup on hand for your mobile devices in case you ever have to restore your files.

Thanks to Apple’s popular cloud storage service known as iCloud, keeping your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch backed up is as easy as 1-2-3. And trust me, there will come a time when you will need it.

Here’s how to enable automatic iCloud backups on your Apple device: [Read more…]