Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Gary M.: I have my photos and Lightroom catalog on my USB drive and move them from my laptop to desktop. It would make my life easier if it presented as the J: drive every time it’s plugged into either machine.
How can I force my external USB drive to present itself as the same drive letter every time it’s plugged in no matter which PC I plug it into?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
I have written several posts in the past that explain various ways to back up your primary hard drive because it’s extremely important to always have a current backup of your entire boot drive available.
That being said, Windows 8.1 also has a pretty nifty feature that makes it extremely easy to keep multiple, up-to-date backup copies of just your user-created files. [Read more…]
Several of my recent posts have discussed the importance of updating a Windows 8 installation to Windows 8.1.
After receiving a number of requests for instructions for installing the update, I thought it might be a good idea to publish them as a tip. As you’ll soon find out, it really isn’t all that difficult to install the free Windows 8.1 update.
The first thing you need to do is make sure that all available Windows Updates have been applied to your existing Windows 8 installation. Here’s how: [Read more…]
Question from Gary M.: Rick, Microsoft is forcing me to get serious about upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 8 (or 8.1). I just finished reading your recommendation to install an SSD drive and convert my XP internal drive into an external USB drive.
I was thinking along similar lines, but figured I would make my existing XP drive into a drive D: after upgrading to Windows 8. Why would converting it to an external USB drive be better?
Thanks, Gary
Ricks answer: [Read more…]
Question from Gillian S.: My Acer Aspire 5715z laptop won’t boot into Windows and my friend says I need to reset it back to the factory condition.
The problem is I don’t have a restore disc for it. Is there any way to restore this computer without a restore disc?
Rick’s answer: Gillian, if the hard drive is working properly and the recovery partition isn’t damaged, you should be able to easily restore your laptop back to its factory condition. Here’s how: [Read more…]