Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
When using Microsoft Windows, there are times when we need to find the entire path to a file’s exact ‘location’ on the hard drive (i.e. the file’s pathname).
For example, some of the tips I post on this blog require entering a file’s full pathname into a text field of some sort.
Back in the Stone Age of personal computing when the DOS operating system ruled the roost, determining a file’s pathname was easy…. [Read more…]
Question from Ed: I have a Lenovo laptop that came with Windows 8.1 preinstalled.
The hard drive died and I have to replace it and my co-worker recommended that I install Linux on it.
The thing is, there are so many Linux versions to choose from that trying to pick one is about to make my head explode.
Which version of Linux do you recommend for a system that was running Windows 8.1 previously? [Read more…]
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
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…]