Rick's Daily Tips

Samsung halts production of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone

Posted on October 11, 2016

galaxy-note-7 Korean electronics giant Samsung has decided to stop making their new Galaxy Note 7 smartphones for good and recall ALL of the phones that are currently in use – even the replacement phones from the original recall.

As you probably know, the high-end Galaxy Note 7 got off to a very rocky start when some of the phones began over-heating and catching fire almost immediately after the new phone hit the market.

Samsung quickly recalled all of the phones that had been sold to date and provided free replacements for them, but then the replacement phones started over-heating as well. [Read more…]

Facebook: How to show all the photos sent or received via chat or instant message

Posted on October 2, 2016

Have you ever sent or received a photo in a Facebook Chat or Instant Message and then tried to scroll back through the conversation at a later time trying to find it?

Or have you ever wanted to view all the photos that you and a chat partner have shared with one another all at the same time?

If so, you surely know how difficult it can be to track down one or more images that are embedded in a long message thread.

As luck would have it, Facebook makes it very easy to display all the images contained within a specific chat or IM thread very quickly, and all together in one place. Here’s how: [Read more…]

How to set up a VPN with Hamachi

Posted on September 29, 2016

If you travel frequently, you probably use public, unencrypted Wi-Fi fairly often since it’s available for free at restaurants, shopping malls and many other public places around the globe.

If you do use public Wi-Fi, everything you send or receive over the Internet is out in the open for any hacker to intercept and use as he pleases.

But a Virtual Private Network (aka VPN) will let you send and receive your data through a secure, encrypted “tunnel” even when you’re connected to the Internet via an unencrypted Wi-Fi connection. [Read more…]

HP reverses course on their new third-party ink cartridge ban

Posted on September 29, 2016

hp-officejet-pro-8610 A few days ago I wrote a post explaining how a new firmware update for some HP printers effectively banned the use of third-party printer cartridges.

Well, it appears that they received so many complaints that it prompted them to reconsider the move and even apologize for it in a post on their corporate blog.

Of course they worded the apology in a way that frames the issue as a “communications” problem, but the real problem is the ban itself in my opinion, not the way they chose to “communicate” with their customers about it. [Read more…]

Q&A: Is csrss.exe a virus?

Posted on September 29, 2016

microsoft-windows Question from David K.: My computer has Windows 7 and there is a file named csrss.exe running according to Task Manager. Actually, there are two of them. They are in system.

Some websites say this file is a virus, and others say it isn’t. How do I know?

Rick’s answer: David, csrss.exe is a critical system file, not a virus. The filename is actually an acronym that stands for Client/Server Run-Time Subsystem.

It is perfectly normal to see this file listed in Task Manager (often twice) as it loads into memory every time Windows starts up. [Read more…]