Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Alice T.: Rick, I have an HP laptop running Windows 7, and I have a question for you.
I read somewhere that hackers can take control of your webcam and make videos and take pictures of you without your knowledge.
I NEVER use a webcam for anything so I’d like just disable it completely and be done with it. How do I do that?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Windows 8.1 is a huge improvement over Windows 8 because it fixes a number of the most despised “changes” that Microsoft made to the newly-designed Windows interface.
One of the most appreciated “fixes” is the ability to have Windows 8.1 boot directly to the Desktop instead of the Start Screen – but this isn’t the default. Follow these steps to make Windows 8.1 boot directly to the Desktop: [Read more…]
A few days ago I wrote a post about a bad Windows Update that was causing many Windows 7 PCs to go into a reboot loop. Inexplicably, Microsoft has yet to release a fix for the issue.
As I explained in that post, if your PC already has the bad update installed and it’s stuck in a reboot loop, you can probably use the System Restore utility to roll back your Windows installation to a point in time before the bad update was installed. [Read more…]
Microsoft announced yesterday in a blog post that Windows 10 will be released “this summer”. The term “this summer” is pretty ambiguous, but I believe they’ll want to get it out to the masses as soon as they can.
The much-maligned Windows 8’s replacement was widely expected to be released some time around October, but yesterday’s announcement leaves open the possibility that it could be released much sooner. [Read more…]
Networking and Internet connectivity is one of the least understood aspects of Windows computing, especially for casual users who aren’t familiar with the internal workings of the operating system.
Everything is all well and good when your PC connects to the web as it should, but when a networking issue arises that causes “Limited Internet Access” – or no access at all, tracking down the problem can be quite difficult for the average user.
Most causes of connectivity issues are actually quite minor, but if you don’t know what to look for or how to go about troubleshooting the issue it can be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. [Read more…]