30 May 2016 | Computers |
Every now and then, you upgrade your puter.
Let’s say you add an SSD. You copy your old hard drive’s contents to your shiny new SSD, and use your old HDD as a data-only drive. You boot from the new SSD, and poof! You’re done.
Well, sort of…
Your new E: drive is now only a data drive, but alas, there is still an E:\Windows folder, and it’s taking up lots of space.
So, you try to delete E:\Windows… Access Denied, you need permissions, and so on…!
There are a million and one articles out there about how to delete an old, unneeded Windows folder, but they usually involve some piece of software or complicated shenanigans.
Well, forget that! This method is a piece of cake…
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23 May 2016 | Computers |
Ooooh, man…
Well, it’s finally happened: Microsoft is basically tricking users into installing Windows 10.
That’s right. You now have to be VERY careful if you don’t want Win 10 to automagically download and install.
By now, we’re all used to M$ making decisions for us, but this one is just a bit over the top.
For the time being, there are still ways around it – but I’m not holding my breath…
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15 May 2016 | Computers |
If you speak more than one language, then you probably also write in more than one language.
In that case, you’re probably using Windows’ Language Bar.
In Windows 10, it appears in the system tray (lower-right corner of the taskbar by the time and date) as a 3-letter abbreviation, such as: ENG
There is a common problem that’s been around for awhile, and it’s back with a vengeance in Windows 10: Windows automatically applies some updates, and after your puter reboots, POOF!
No more Language Bar!
How do you get your Language Bar back? Read on!
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8 May 2016 | Computers |
For those of you who have been avoiding the free upgrade to Windows 10, there is one very good reason why you might want to rethink your plans.
The most obvious reason is that apparently, Windows 10 will no longer be a free upgrade after July of this year. And one way or another, eventually you will get a new puter, and the only supported OS will be Windows 10, anyway…
But if that doesn’t convince you, how about this: Windows 10 let’s you scroll inactive windows just by hovering the mouse pointer over the window.
What on Earth am I talking about?
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30 April 2016 | Computers |
You upgrade to Windows 10. All seems to be going well.
There’s only one problem: Every time you reboot, you get an error message about Microsoft Security Essentials.
“No problem!” you think. I’ll just uninstall it. Nope!
Worse yet, Windows 10 is very confused, since Windows Defender is basically the same program. Defender won’t run, and neither will Security Essentials.
What to do? Read on!
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17 April 2016 | Computers |
Here’s a fun one:
The Department of Homeland Security (??) announced that QuickTime for Windows has 2 nasty security flaws.
They also say that Apple is no longer providing updates for QuickTime for Windows, so they are recommending that QuickTime be uninstalled from Windows machines.
So… DHS? What?!
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3 April 2016 | Computers, Programming |
This summer, Windows 10 will be 1 year old. Microsoft recently announced that they’ll be releasing another “major” update for their latest OS around this time.
Most of the new features are nothing terribly earth-shattering. Probably the most impactful change to most users will be a slight modification to the Start Menu.
For power users, however, they’ve got something rather big planned: Windows 10 will soon include the Ubuntu Linux Bash shell (probably as an optional app/download).
What in tarnation is going on here?!
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20 March 2016 | Computers, How Does it Work? |
You’ve probably heard of SSDs (solid state drives). These are hard drives that use a type of very fast and very robust flash memory for data storage instead of a spinning magnetic disc.
SSDs are very fast, and until recently, their storage capacity was limited relative to old-fashioned mechanical spinning HDDs. They were also rather pricey.
You probably haven’t heard quite as much about SSHDs: hybrid mechanical hard drives with a small amount of SSD-type storage built-in. The idea here is that the SSD part of the drive can be accessed very quickly, so it acts as a very fast buffer between your puter and the slower mechanical part of the drive.
The result? SSHDs are faster than a mechanical HDD, not as fast as an SSD, but still offer 2TB, 4TB, or even more storage space – all at an affordable price.
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13 March 2016 | Computers |
In the olden days, you were quite often locked to one language in Windows, unless you had Windows 7 Ultimate.
These days, with Windows 10 you can change the display language in most cases.
There are a few exceptions, like if you buy a puter with an OEM version of Win 10. Some OEM versions of Windows 10 only allow certain languages.
For example, a new laptop purchased in France with OEM Windows 10 may allow only UK English, French, and German. Still, that’s better than nothing!
So, how do you change languages and get all the settings just right?
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6 March 2016 | Computers |
Let’s say you want to dual-boot between Windows and some flavor of linux.
You might think that you need some kind of fancy partitioning software like Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15 Suite
to free up disk space for the linux partitions.
You might also think that your linux installer will do everything for you automatically.
As it turns out, neither of the above are always true!
Sometimes, you need free space on your drive in order for the linux install (even Ubuntu) to be happy.
Fortunately, there is a very easy and built-in way to shrink a partition in all modern versions of Windows without any fancy software!
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Every now and then, you upgrade your puter.
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