Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Well, October is just around the corner and that means Microsoft will soon be releasing the annual Fall update to Windows 10.
Unfortunately, the upcoming release of the “Windows 10 October 2018 Update” will end up preventing a lot of PCs from booting up into Windows after the update is installed.
Question from Andy: The 750GB hard drive in my laptop has started making strange noises and I’m afraid it’s about to go out on me. I need to replace it ASAP but I don’t know which drive I should buy to replace it with.
I’d really like to get an SSD to make the laptop run a lot faster, but my budget for the drive is only about $100 (or preferably less).
I checked around and the largest SSD I can get for that price is way too small for my needs. I really need something that’s at least as big as the drive that’s in the laptop right now.
Can you help me find the fastest hard drive I can get for $100 that’s at least 750GB?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Wanda: Rick, I just bought a refurbished computer with Windows 7 Home Premium on it.
In case you’re wondering why I bought a refurbished machine, it’s because I hate Windows 8 and Windows 10 so I decided to by a refurbished PC in order to get Windows 7.
LOL You probably think I’m crazy, but that’s why.
Anyway, this machine is showing two hard drives in Windows Explorer, a C: drive and a D: drive.
When they refurbished this computer they supposedly reinstalled Windows from scratch. I haven’t put anything at all on the D: drive, yet the Windows Explorer shows it as being full with hardly any free space left.
I can’t open that D: drive to see what’s in it making be think it might have a virus.
Is it possible for the equivalent of a brand new computer to have a virus that’s filling up the hard drive? My Norton isn’t finding anything.
Any help you can provide will be much appreciated. Thanks.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
A while back I wrote a post explaining the benefits of replacing your hard drive with a Solid State Drive (aka SSD).
Of course the greatest benefit is the amazing speed increase you’ll gain by replacing your hard drive’s spinning platters and read/write heads with an SSD’s lightning-fast memory chips.
You might recall that in that post I recommended paying a PC Tech to swap out the drives for you, but since then I’ve had a couple of emails from folks who really wanted to try upgrading their laptops themselves, prompting me to decide to write this post explaining the procedure.
But before we get to that, if your laptop was made in such a way that the entire case has to be partially disassembled in order to access the hard drive, I still strongly recommend that you hire a qualified PC tech to remove the hard drive and install the SSD for you. Just sayin’.
On the other hand, if your laptop’s drive bay is easily accessible via a small removable cover you can swap out the drives out yourself. Just follow the instructions below.
Personal computers have now become commodities, and as a result their prices are now the lowest they have ever been. Even better, their speed and capabilities just keep increasing even as their prices continue to drop.
But even with the prices of computers at an all-time low, even an entry level model will likely set you back at least $200 or more.
That means you’ll probably want to do everything you can to ensure that yours continues to run at peak efficiency for as long as possible. [Read more…]