Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
In Windows XP we could access the ‘Run’ box directly from the Start Menu, but for some unknown reason Microsoft chose to hide this indispensable tool beginning with the release of Windows Vista.
You can always display the ‘Run’ box by pressing the Windows+R key combination, but most Windows users would prefer to have it right on the Start Menu like it was in XP. If you’re one of them, here’s how to put it on there: [Read more…]
For many, the most dreaded “feature” of Microsoft Windows is the infamous “Blue Screen of Death” that tells you that Windows has crashed, without giving you the reason why it happened.
Yes, the Blue Screen provides you with a cryptic code that offers a subtle hint as to where to start looking, but that’s about all.
Windows 7 and Windows 8 are much more stable than previous versions of Windows, but the occasional Blue Screen still rears its ugly head from time to time. A wonderful free utility called BlueScreenView sheds light on the cause of a system crash by scanning the minidump file that was created when the crash occurred and helping you track down the particular driver that caused the crash. [Read more…]
Question from Connie D: Hi Rick. I recently set up a WordPress blog using your excellent instructions. You made it so easy! Thank you very, very much!
I’m having one issue that’s driving me batty though. Every time someone leaves a comment on one of my posts I receive two identical emails letting me know about the comment. How can I make WordPress send me just one email?
Rick’s answer: Connie, when I first started blogging with WordPress I had the same problem, and it drove me batty too until I finally figured out what the problem was. The duplicate notification emails result from using two different email addresses when you post under a different user name than the one assigned to the primary Administrator account. Here’s how to fix it: [Read more…]
Back in the golden age of personal computers virtually every PC had a Light Emitting Diode (aka LED) that would light up and flash every time a program accessed the hard drive. But many modern PCs don’t have a hard drive activity light. DiskLED is a free Windows utility that places a virtual hard drive activity light in your Windows system tray.
Why do you need to know when the hard drive is being accessed? There are actually several reasons: [Read more…]
In 2012 more text messages were sent via free texting apps on smart phones than by traditional SMS Text Messaging services, and the number of free texts vs. paid texts is growing at a fast rate. This is a great thing for consumers, but the cell carriers are taking a major financial hit because of it.
SMS text messages have always been a major source of easy profit for the carrier. They cost virtually nothing to transmit but bring in boatloads of cash.
But the immense popularity of apps such as Heywire, iMessage and WhatsApp have cut those profits by huge margins. And the bleeding is likely to continue and even pick up the pace as more users find out about these apps and begin using them. [Read more…]