Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Carla: My boyfriend is currently working overseas and he sends me lots of photos in zipped folders.
On my old computer I used a program called 7-Zip to unzip those folders and extract the files.
I just bought a new Windows computer and I noticed that there’s an option to unzip folders on the right-click menu.
Is there an advantage to using 7-Zip instead of the Windows tool? [Read more…]
Question from Barry: Rick, I desperately need to create a System Restore Point for last Monday.
What happened was I downloaded a couple of torrent files last Tuesday and now my Windows 10 computer is all messed up.
I tried doing a System Restore back to the previous Monday, but the oldest Restore Point I see is from 4 days ago. Is there a way to create one for last Monday? [Read more…]
If your PC is running Windows 10 you might have noticed ads for apps and various other things on the Lock Screen.
Microsoft has started running these ads as a way of making a few extra bucks to help replace the millions of dollars they are forfeiting by making Windows 10 basically free.
I’ve spoken to lots of folks who don’t mind the ads or begrudge Microsoft trying to recoup some of their lost revenue, but I’ve also heard from plenty of others who find the ads annoying.
If you happen to dislike the Windows 10 Lock Screen ads, you can easily disable them. Here’s how: [Read more…]
Did you know Windows 10 has over a dozen apps that run in the background at all times?
Well, it does, and every one of those continuously running apps slows your system down just a bit and makes your laptop’s battery run down a little faster than it has to.
What’s more, you probably aren’t even using most of those apps!
Luckily, it’s very easy to prevent those unneeded apps from running in the background.
Question from Betty: I have an Acer laptop that came with Windows 8.1.
I updated it to Windows 10 and now I’m having a problem with it.
When I finish using the laptop I can click the Shutdown icon and it shuts down just fine.
The problem is if I close the lid it doesn’t shut the laptop down like it did when it had Windows 8.1. It goes into Sleep mode instead.
Is there a way to force this my laptop to shut down automatically when I close the lid? [Read more…]