Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Angie H.: Hi Rick. My Dell Inspiron N5010 laptop is loaded down with viruses and all sorts of other bad stuff. I really need to re-install Windows but I don’t have a Windows 7 CD.
I know I can order a Windows CD from Dell but I’d rather not if I can avoid it. My daughter said she thinks I can re-install Windows without the CD. Is that true? If it is how do I do that?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Well, there’s yet another extremely dangerous scam making the rounds on Facebook, and it’s an easy one to fall for. It goes something like this…
You’re scrolling through your Facebook news feed when an interesting video catches your attention. You click on it to watch it, but instead of the video you’re presented with a warning that your computer’s Flash Player is out of date and needs to be updated. Well, it doesn’t. [Read more…]
Question from Rhonda F.: Rick, I have a question for you. Why do the photos I take with my phone always turn out blurry? I often have to take a dozen shots to end up with just one that’s clear.
I must be doing something wrong but I can’t figure out what it is. My phone is an Android (Samsung Galaxy S II). Thanks for your help!
Rick’s answer: Hi Rhonda. It’s impossible to know for sure without seeing how you’re taking the photos, but I have a strong hunch that you aren’t letting your phone’s camera finish focusing the shot before releasing the shutter button. [Read more…]
A while back a local business owner asked me if there is a way to move the ‘My Documents’ folder from its default location on the hard drive to a USB flash drive.
His routine was simple, yet time-consuming. At the end of every workday he copied all of his data files from the ‘My Documents’ folder on his hard drive to a 64GB thumb drive so he can work on them some more at home. The next morning he copied them back onto the hard drive.
I told him how to make the change, and now his files are automatically saved directly to his thumb drive regardless of where he happens to be working. Since he is quite happy with the new setup, I thought some of you might be interested in doing the same. The instructions that follow will explain how to set it up, step-by-step, in either windows 7 or Windows 8. [Read more…]
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…]