Search Results for: create system image

Q&A: How can I disable the Control Panel in Windows 7?

Posted on January 15, 2014

Question from Kenny: Hi Rick. First of all, I wa windows-7 nt to thank you for your generosity in posting all these amazing tips. You have helped so many people by posting them! Now, I have a question for you if you don’t mind.

I recently bought a new computer and decided to give my 2 year old Gateway laptop to my son. Since he’s only 8 years old I’d like to keep him from accessing the Control Panel and accidentally messing things up.

My question is can you tell me how to disable the Control Panel in Windows 7?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

10 New Years Resolutions that every computer user should keep

Posted on January 1, 2014

2014 I’ve never really been one to make New Years Resolutions, but this year I’ve come up with 10 of them that can help all of us keep our computers running smoothly and the hackers at bay. I hope you find at least a few of them useful.

Note: All of the links contained within the following list of resolutions will open in a new window. This will make it easy to return to the next resolution by simply closing the current browser window or tab.

Rick’s 10 New Years Resolutions for computer users: [Read more…]

How to reclaim 6GB of wasted disk space after upgrading from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1

Posted on November 17, 2013

windows-8-1 If you have recently upgraded your Windows 8 installation to Windows 8.1, you can reclaim 6GB of hard drive space by removing the old Windows 8 files. Here’s a little background info for you…

When you upgrade to a newer version of Microsoft Windows, the version being replaced is retained in a folder called Windows.old just in case the upgrade fails or you wish to revert back to the previous version for some reason.

The amount of space required to store the previous version of Windows varies depending on the versions involved. Since you have just upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1, you now have roughly 6GB of old (and now useless) Windows 8 system files just sitting there taking up valuable disk space. [Read more…]

Q&A: Is it possible to uninstall a bad Windows Update?

Posted on October 12, 2013

Question from Brandon H.: The other day I checked to see if there were any Windows Updates available for my PC and saw that there was an optional update for my video card available.

I installed the update and immediately after the reboot my PC began running very slowly. Programs take forever to load, web pages open slowly if at all, and none of my games will run correctly.

Is there any way to uninstall a bad update or will I need to reinstall Windows 7? What really sucks is this was an optional update which means I didn’t really have to install it in the first place!

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why can’t my Acer Aspire 5251 get past “Setup is starting services” message?

Posted on August 21, 2013

Question from Todd B.: Rick, I turned my laptop on yesterday morning and it suddenly shut off in the middle of the boot process. I turned it back on and it started to load Windows again, but then it displayed the message “Setup is starting services” and just sat there.

I finally gave up waiting for it to resume and turned it off, but now every time I turn it on it gets stuck at the same message.

I hope you can tell me how can I fix this? It’s an Acer Aspire 5251 running Windows 7. Thanks in advance for your help.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]