Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Darla: I have an HP Pavilion laptop with Windows 8.1 on it.
I recently started seeing this message every time I turn it on:
“A hard drive in the system reports that it may fail.”
The thing is the hard drive is working just fine.
Can you tell me what do I need to do to get the computer to stop showing me this message?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Do you suspect that malware might be slowing down your PC or putting your data at risk, yet nothing is detected during a virus or spyware scan?
Or do you suspect that malware that was found and removed changed some of your Windows settings and/or disabled certain features such as the Task Manager, System Restore or the ability to boot into Safe Mode?
Even the best anti-malware programs have a difficult time catching all the viruses, trojans and spyware that is out there today. That’s why it helps to have a low-level system scanner that can root out and report every single running process and detect any suspicious system activity. [Read more…]
Every now and then I receive messages asking me how to launch the OnScreen Keyboard on Windows machines that don’t have a touch screen.
There are several ways to activate the OnScreen Keyboard, but my favorite method is by simply clicking a desktop shortcut.
If you’d like to create a shortcut to the OnScreen Keyboard on your own computer, just follow the steps below: [Read more…]
As you probably know, if your computer is currently running either Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 it is eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 10 if you initiate the upgrade before the end of this month.
You can choose to upgrade your PC to Windows 10 in either of the following ways:
1 – By clicking the “Get Windows 10” icon in your PC’s notifications area.
2 – By performing a clean installation of Windows 10 on your computer.
Many Windows 7 users decided to skip the upgrade to Windows 8 because of all the stories they heard about how horrid Windows 8 is, and I can’t say I blame them.
But now that Microsoft has fixed many of Windows 8’s most irritating problems and annoyances with the release of Windows 8.1, many of those same users would now like to upgrade. Perhaps you’re one of them. [Read more…]