Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Lauren: I have an older Dell desktop PC with Windows 10 on it (upgraded from Windows 7).
It has always worked well, but I’ve recently started having a bit of trouble with it.
Sometimes when I’m typing something the Start menu will pop up all on it’s own just like I clicked on the Start button or pressed the Windows key (neither of which is the case when this happens). [Read more…]
Question from Melinda: I have a question about my Acer Windows laptop, Rick.
Yesterday morning I asked a friend on Facebook a computer question and his reply was that I need to run a file called cleanmgr.exe.
I’m a little leery about running .exe files because I remember reading that they can be dangerous.
Here’s my question: Is cleanmgr.exe a virus or is it safe for me to run? And if it’s safe, do you think I should run it? [Read more…]
Question from Kyle: When my computer was running Windows 7 I had an icon for the Registry Editor (Regedit) on my Start Menu.
But after I updated my computer to Windows 10 I noticed that it’s no longer there.
Can you tell me how to get it back? [Read more…]
System Restore is a handy tool that you can use to restore your PC’s Windows installation back to a previous (working) state if a virus or some other issue causes your computer to stop working as it should.
I’ve personally used System Restore to quickly get myself out of a lot of jams in the past, usually after installing a program or app that I was asked to test and review.
While it’s not as comforting as having a recent System Image Backup on hand, knowing that I can usually use System Restore to get my computer up and running again in a hurry if disaster ever strikes is great for my peace of mind. [Read more…]
Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
In Windows 7 (and earlier versions) we could easily boot our computers into Safe Mode by repeatedly pressing the F8 key when Windows first started loading.
Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft disabled that option in order to help speed up the boot process. Personally, I have never been very fond of that change.
If you miss being able to press F8 to boot into Safe Mode on your Windows 10/11 machine, you can easily enable it with a simple command line entry. [Read more…]