Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
I frequently receive questions about speeding up computers that have become sluggish over time or fixing problems that prevent Windows from working as it should.
There are a number of different responses that I usually have for those questions, and the one I give depends on the actual issues they are experiencing with their machines.
If you’ve been paying attention to the news of late, you probably know that the number of successful ransomware attacks on computers and mobile devices are increasing by the day.
Ransomware is a particularly insidious form of malware that encrypts all the files on your computer or mobile device, then holds your precious data hostage until you pony up and pay a monetary ransom to the hackers.
Once ransomware has locked up your machine, you’ll have no choice except to pay the ransom or you’ll have to say goodbye to your data forever. But… [Read more…]
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Question from Jan: Hi there. I have a 13 inch MacBook Air that I bought way back in 2014.
Can you help me with a problem I’m trying to solve with it? [Read more…]
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Question from Kendra: Hi, Rick. I really love your blog, especially the section where you answer questions from your readers.
If you don’t mind I’d like to ask a question of my own.
Back in March of 2020 the tech guy I used at the time installed a Crucial 500GB SSD in my Acer laptop and it really made it run a lot faster.
I recently read on another site that all SSDs wear out over time because they can only be written to a certain number of times.
That has me sort of worried because this drive is now about four years old and I have a lot of personal files on it that I don’t want to lose.
My question is do you think this drive is likely to fail at some time in the near future? [Read more…]
Question from Michael: I’ve noticed that every Windows computer I’ve ever owned runs lightning fast when I first take it out of the box, but before long they always seem to start slowing down.
Why do they do that? Do the parts just wear out or what?
Is there anything that can be done to reverse the slowdown and get the PC running like new again? [Read more…]