Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Anthony: I have no discs for windows 8.1, so is going back to factory mode a safe and easy way to restore my computer without the use of discs, and then just download the programs I had back on to my computer?
Rick’s answer: Anthony, you can certainly restore your Windows 8.1 computer back to its factory state using the Recovery Partition on the hard drive. [Read more…]
As you probably know, Apple is taking a ton of heat after several celebrities had their iCloud accounts hacked and risque photos stolen and published online. Well, the company is apparently taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, the soon-to-be-released iOS 8 will include an option for enabling “Two-Factor Authentication” on all iCloud accounts.
Two-Factor Authentication has been around for some time now, so it’s something of a mystery why it took such a high profile security breach to prompt Apple to finally make it available for their popular iCloud service. [Read more…]
Question from Liam F.: I brought my old HP Desktop PC up from the basement so my daughter could use it while her laptop is being repaired, but I can’t remember the password for logging into Windows.
How can I reset the password so she can use this computer? It’s running Windows 7 Home Premium. Thanks in advance for your help.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
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…]