Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Why does my Samsung Android phone keep turning on Wi-Fi all by itself?

Posted on August 22, 2013

Question from Evan: I have a Sprint Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G that keeps turning the Wi-Fi on all by itself. I can go into the settings and turn it off, but the next thing I know the Wi-Fi is enabled once again. I’ve had this phone for a long time and it only started doing this about a month ago. Can you tell me how to fix it? It’s driving me bonkers!

Rick’s answer: Evan, this is a fairly common problem among Sprint Android phones, and it isn’t limited to your particular model. The culprit is a pre-installed app called Sprint Connections Optimizer.

Sprint’s stated purpose for this app is to automatically connect your phone to any available Wi-Fi connection that you have used previously whenever it becomes available in order to speed up your data service. But I believe the real reason for it is to keep you off the Sprint data network as much as possible, freeing up available bandwidth for other users. [Read more…]

Q&A: Why can’t my Acer Aspire 5251 get past “Setup is starting services” message?

Posted on August 21, 2013

Question from Todd B.: Rick, I turned my laptop on yesterday morning and it suddenly shut off in the middle of the boot process. I turned it back on and it started to load Windows again, but then it displayed the message “Setup is starting services” and just sat there.

I finally gave up waiting for it to resume and turned it off, but now every time I turn it on it gets stuck at the same message.

I hope you can tell me how can I fix this? It’s an Acer Aspire 5251 running Windows 7. Thanks in advance for your help.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why does the sound stop working when I rest my hand on my laptop?

Posted on August 19, 2013

Question from Darrell F.: Rick, I have a two month old Lenovo Y500 laptop that works great except for one problem…

When I rest my hands on the computer to type something on the keyboard, the sound cuts completely out just as if I had clicked the “Mute” button. When I remove my hands the sound immediately starts working again. Is this something that I can fix myself?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: How can I determine the total up time for my PC since I bought it?

Posted on August 17, 2013

Question from Ron K.: Rick, this might seem like a frivolous question (and I admit that it is), but is there any way to determine the total number of hours and minutes that my Dell desktop computer has been powered on since I bought it in May 2008? No biggie if there isn’t, I’m just curious.

Rick’s answer: That isn’t a frivolous question at all Ron. Now you have me curious about how long my PCs have been powered up as well.

To answer your question, I don’t know of any way to use Windows itself to determine the total uptime of a computer, but I do know of a way to get a fairly accurate estimate: [Read more…]