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…]
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 Kenny: Hi Rick. First of all, I wa
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…]