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…]
I found it odd when Microsoft decided to make the touch screen-friendly tiles of the new Start Screen the primary selling point of Windows 8.
To this day I still haven’t figured out why the folks in Redmond thought of laptop and Desktops PC users would ever prefer “touching” their computer screens over using their mice and keyboards.
Well, it turns out that I’m not the only person who feels that way. [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…]
Question from Antonio V.: I recently bought a Dell Inspiron 660s desktop PC from Amazon. It came with Windows 8 and I am very unhappy with it. I love the computer though.
I have installed a second hard drive and I was wondering if can install Windows 7 Pro (full retail version) on the second drive without losing any of my photos and other files that are on the Windows 8 drive?
After I transfer everything over I’ll remove Windows 8 and use Windows 7 exclusively. Thanks for your help in advance.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
If you’re one of the relatively few seasoned Windows users who have made the switch to Windows 8, you have probably already noticed that Microsoft’s Music App is now the default player for MP3s as well as most types of video files. But by changing a single setting you can have your music and videos open in Windows Media Player instead.
Of course there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having the Music App set as your system’s default media player, but most people (myself included) tend to prefer Windows Media Plater. If you’re one of them too, you can follow these steps to set Windows Media Player as the default app: [Read more…]