Rick's Daily Tips

How to create a USB Flash Recovery Drive in Windows 8.1

Posted on February 1, 2015

windows-8-1 If your PC is running Windows 8.1, your hard drive probably has a hidden recovery partition that you can use to restore your Windows installation if something ever goes wrong and Windows becomes corrupted.

But what if your hard drive fails or the recovery partition itself becomes corrupted and no longer usable? It happens, and when it does it can cause all kinds of heartache for those who don’t have a backup of some sort to restore from.

Luckily, Windows 8.1 users have a very easy way to prepare for such an emergency. All you need to do is create a USB Flash Recovery Drive. Here’s how: [Read more…]

How to ‘unpost’ an embarrassing Facebook post before anyone sees it

Posted on January 31, 2015

Have you ever published a status update, a photo, or a link on Facebook only to immediately have second thoughts about it?

If so, you probably deleted the post as quickly as possible, hoping that you got rid of it before any of your friends had a chance to see it.

Truth be told, most of us have published an embarrassing post at one time or another. It happens.

Luckily, if you use Google Chrome you can give yourself a brief moment of reflection after clicking the “Post” button before the post actually goes live, and change your mind if you end up thinking better of it. [Read more…]

Q&A: Will a new battery fix my laptop?

Posted on January 30, 2015

Question from Danielle H.: I have a 5 year old HP Envy 13 laptop that works fine when it’s plugged into the wall with the charger, but if I unplug the charger it shuts off almost immediately.

Do you think replacing the battery would fix the problem or do you think there’s something else wrong?

Rick’s answer: Yes Danielle, the problem is almost certainly a bad battery. If the charger was bad it wouldn’t run the laptop at all, and if the laptop itself was bad it wouldn’t run regardless of whether it was using battery power or AC power.

You have several options available to you for buying a replacement laptop battery for your HP Envy 13: [Read more…]

Q&A: Where can I find Windows 8.1 Wireless LAN Drivers for my HP Pavilion dv4000?

Posted on January 29, 2015

Question from Howard L.: Rick, I’m hoping you can help me out. After Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP I decided to install Windows 8.1 on my HP Pavilion dv4000 CTO laptop. I really love this computer and I hate to give it up!

Since this PC is so old I didn’t know how well it would work with Windows 8.1, but I was very pleasantly surprised. It actually seems to run faster than it did with XP. But there’s one problem. [Read more…]

New computer? Prepare for having it serviced by creating an info packet!

Posted on January 27, 2015

pc-data-card Does this scenario sound familiar? You buy a new computer, take it home, set it up and begin using it.

Everything works just fine for several months, but then one morning it just refuses to boot into Windows. Try as you might, you can’t get the system to come up. Oh well, time to send it on for repair, right?

But then a question pops into your mind: Is the computer still under warranty? You know you’ve had it close to a year, but is the warranty still in effect? Did you spring for the extended warranty when you bought it? No problem, you’ll just get that information right off of the receipt.

Uh-oh, you can’t find the receipt! What to do now? [Read more…]