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Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
For the most part, the Windows operating system has improved greatly over the years, generally getting better and more reliable with each major update.
But unfortunately a couple of major frustrations still plague Windows users to this day.
Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
Question from Mike: I install lots of free software and I always create a new System Restore Point before installing a program just in case something goes wrong.
I think Windows is great, but as you know, things do go wrong sometimes.
My boss told me that relying on System Restore for my backups isn’t good enough. He said I need to create regular backups too, but I think that’s overkill.
What’s your opinion on this? [Read more…]
Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
If you use a Windows PC there will likely come a time when you need to start up Windows in Safe Mode for trouble-shooting purposes.
Which brings up a question you might be asking…
What is Safe Mode?
When you boot up Windows into Safe Mode only the bare essentials of the operating system are loaded.
Only the system’s basic hardware drivers are loaded, and no programs listed in the Startup folder are allowed to load and run.
In a nutshell, Safe Mode makes it much easier to troubleshoot and fix software problems such as bad drivers, corrupted Windows files, really viruses and a lot more.
How to boot Windows into Safe Mode [Read more…]
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Microsoft provides a utility called MSCONFIG that allows us to determine and control which programs Windows loads at Startup, but unfortunately it is woefully lacking.
MSCONFIG does list the major applications that start up automatically, but it doesn’t provide anywhere near a full list of all the independent processes that load into memory with every boot-up and consume precious CPU clock cycles.
Luckily, there is a better much better Windows Startup manager, and it is available as a free download. [Read more…]
Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.
I’ve received several emails recently asking me how to enable Secure Sign-In on a Windows PC, so I thought I’d write those instructions up as a tip.
If you’re unfamiliar with how it works, the Secure Sign-In feature forces the user to press the Ctrl+Alt+Delete key combination before they are allowed to sign in to Windows. [Read more…]