Search Results for: create system image

Q&A: Why is my new custom built PC shutting down almost immediately after turning it on?

Posted on November 18, 2017

Question from Kenny V.: I watched a Youtube video that showed how to build a gaming PC and it really intrigued me.

I decided to build one for my son so I asked the guy at Fry’s Electronics for recommendations on the parts. This is what he recommended (and what I ended up buying):

ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-E Gaming Motherboard

Intel i7 7700k LGA 1151 CPU

4 Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR4 3000MHz C15 RAM sticks – (32GB total)

EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti SC GAMING, 4GB GDDR5 Gaming Video Card

Samsung 850 EVO 1TB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD

Corsair RMx Series, RM850x, 850W Power Suppy

I put everything together according to the instructions but when I turn on the computer a light on the motherboard flashes and then everything immediately shuts down. According to the manual the light that flashes is the “CPU Warning Light”.

Just to be sure it’s not a bad connection I re-seated the RAM sticks and CPU. There were no bent pins that I could see. I also disconnected and reconnected all the power cables.

Do you think I might have received a bad CPU? That’s the only thing I can think of that could possibly be wrong. I don’t want to go back to Fry’s claiming they sold me a bad CPU unless I’m sure they really did.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

How to reclaim up to 40GB of wasted storage space after installing the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

Posted on October 24, 2017

If you’ve already installed the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update on your PC you might be wondering where a huge chunk of your free hard drive/SSD storage space went.

Well, when Windows Update installs a new major Windows release it automatically backs up the previous Windows installation just in case you need to revert back to it for some reason.

That’s a good thing because it provides a way to roll your system back to the previous version of Windows in case something goes wrong with the update.

But there’s a problem: It can take as much as 40GB of storage space to hold the files in that previous Windows version backup. That means dozens of Gigabytes of “wasted” space won’t be available for storing photos, Office documents and/or other important user-created files.

Of course if your system has a massive hard drive with tons of unused space available, you probably won’t even miss that “wasted” disk space.

But what if your hard drive was already close to being maxed out before the upgrade? Or maybe your PC has a relatively small solid state drive (SSD) (#ad) instead of a much larger hard drive?

If you find yourself running low on storage space after installing the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, you can easily recover dozens of Gigabytes of space by removing those old Windows backup files. Just follow the steps below: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why does my computer want to hibernate when I do a regular shutdown?

Posted on October 9, 2017

Question from Michael D: My computer has a strange problem Rick, and it’s driving me up the wall.

When I shut the system down, everything that was open when I shut it down opens back up when I turn it back on.

Every program reopens, every browser and website reopens… It’s like I hibernated the machine instead of shutting it down. But that’s not the case. I always do a normal shutdown.

Can you help me resolve this? My computer is a Dell Inspiron 3464 with Windows 10 Home.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: How can I reset a forgotten Windows 10 password?

Posted on August 28, 2017

Question from Gloria: I tried to log in to my computer for the first time in several months, but it won’t let me log in because I can’t remember the password.

This is a desktop computer with Windows 10? I can’t believe I forgot the password! Can you tell me how to reset it?

Rick’s answer: Don’t be too hard on yourself, Gloria. This happens all the time. In fact, rarely a week goes by without someone asking me how to reset a Windows password that they’ve forgotten.

As you might imagine, Microsoft doesn’t include an easy way to reset a forgotten password with Windows since that would defeat the purpose of having a password in the first place. But luckily there are third-party tools that we can use to reset them. [Read more…]