Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Aaron: The hard drive crashed on my Dell Inspiron 14z laptop so I took it to a guy I know who works on computers. He replaced the bad drive and installed a bootleg copy of Windows 7 since I didn’t have a set of recovery disks.
My question is if I buy a Windows 8 Pro upgrade will it make my Windows installation “legitimate”? I’m not out to rip off Microsoft, just get my laptop back “legal” with a fully working version of Windows.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Todd B.: Rick, I turned my laptop on yesterday morning and it suddenly shut off in the middle of the boot process. I turned it back on and it started to load Windows again, but then it displayed the message “Setup is starting services” and just sat there.
I finally gave up waiting for it to resume and turned it off, but now every time I turn it on it gets stuck at the same message.
I hope you can tell me how can I fix this? It’s an Acer Aspire 5251 running Windows 7. Thanks in advance for your help.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Nathan E.: Hi Rick. I have a problem that I can’t seem to figure out. I’m hoping you can help me.
I work with a lot of ISO files that I download from the web and then burn onto writable CDs and DVDs. Until recently I could right-click on an ISO file and click “Burn disc image” and Windows’ built-in CD/DVD burner utility would create a bootable disc.
Alternatively, I could get “Burn disc image” to show up as a menu item in Windows Explorer by simply clicking on the name of the ISO file.
I don’t know what happened, but starting a few days ago the “Burn disc image” option fails to appear regardless of which of the above-mentioned methods I try. Can you help me get it back? I’ll be much in your debt if you can! My laptop is running Windows 7. Thanks!
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Bill T.: Rick, my office doesn’t have Wi-Fi installed at all. For security reasons my company requires everyone to connect our laptops to the network via Ethernet (we have a cable at each desk).
The problem that many of us have is our laptops ignoring the wired Ethernet connection altogether and connecting to an open Wi-Fi network from the building next door.
What we all do at the moment is turn Wi-Fi off, but what we’d really like to be able to do is leave it on and have our laptops default to a wired connection whenever one is available. Can you tell me what settings to change in Windows 7 to make this happen? Your help will be very much appreciated. Thanks!
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
It’s a fact of life: Sooner or later there will come a time when you’ll need to re-install Windows on your PC.
Whether it’ll be due to a hard drive failure, a virus attack or just the desire to re-install the operating system from scratch and start over fresh, you most likely will have to refresh your Windows installation at some point.
If you have a set of recovery discs, re-installing Windows from scratch is easy. If you don’t, it’s virtually impossible. But what if you can’t find your recovery discs (or never had a set in the first place)? Well, you have three options:
1 – Order a replacement set of recovery discs for your specific PC model directly from the support section of the manufacturer’s website. This option can be (and in most cases is) fairly expensive.
2 – Purchase a full retail version of Windows, either on discs or via direct download. This option is even more expensive than the first one.
3 – Create your own Windows 7 or Windows 8 installation media. This option is virtually free (you’ll need either a blank, writable DVD or a blank USB thumb drive).
If you choose to go with option 3, here are the steps you’ll need to take in order to create your own Windows 7 or 8 installation media: [Read more…]