Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Sean W.: I have an HP laptop running Windows Vista. Now all of a sudden it won’t turn on. When I press the power button some of the LEDs light up then go right back out and the system is dead. Do you think my computer is fried? Or maybe the power adaptor?
Rick’s answer: Sean, I don’t think anything is “fried”. I believe a hard reset to the machine will probably get you back up and running. Try this: [Read more…]
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Question from Anna G.: Hi Rick. I read your post the other day about playing old games on new computers and it reminded me that I have a ton of old 3.5″ floppy disks filled with stuff that I’d like to check out and possibly copy onto my hard disk.
The problem is my laptop doesn’t have a floppy disk drive. Any ideas?
Rick’s answer: You’re in luck Anna. All you need to do is buy an external USB 3.5″ floppy drive
There are a couple of things to be aware of however: [Read more…]
Now that Windows 8 has been out for a while you might be wondering if you should buy the Windows 8 upgrade package and install it on your computer. If you’re a regular reader of RicksDailyTips you already know from reading this post that I don’t really think so.
That being said, there are some valid reasons for upgrading your PC to Windows 8. If you’re considering taking the plunge, the first thing to do is determine whether or not your PC can even run Windows 8. According to Microsoft, the minimum system requirements for running it are as follows: [Read more…]
WordPress is the most widely used self-hosted blogging platform out there which makes WordPress-based blogs especially appealing targets for hackers.
The core WordPress files are updated quite often in order to plug security holes, but it’s easy to miss an upgrade when it becomes available, or simply forget to install it. Missing an update makes your blog an open target because hackers tend to go after blogs that are still running older, insecure versions of WordPress.
And it’s extremely easy for the bad guys to find blogs running older versions of WordPress. Since the WordPress version is listed right in the blog’s source code, all they have to do is search Google for an older version number and Google will comply by listing all the blogs that are running that WordPress version. But there’s an easy way to prevent hackers from finding your blog by using this method. Simply install a great little plugin called Remove My Version! [Read more…]
Question from Lynn: How do I restore my laptop to the factory settings before I give it to somebody else?
Rick’s answer: Lynn, there are two ways to reset a Windows PC back to its factory settings. The first one is to simply insert the Restore disc into the optical drive and boot from it. You can reinstall Windows from there.
The second option is probably the most widely used one these days since most PCs come without a set of Restore discs and few people take the time to create one. Here are step-by-step instructions for resetting a PC that’s running either Windows 7 or Windows 8… [Read more…]