Tech Questions & Answers Archives - Page 152 of 258

Q&A: I installed a really old game and it messed up my son’s computer. How can I fix it?

Posted on October 9, 2020

Question from Stuart K.: I was cleaning out my closet yesterday morning and I found an old game disc with “Age Of Empires” on it.

I remember that I loved playing that game when I was a kid so I installed it on my son’s ASUS ROG gaming PC (with Windows 10).

The game played just like I remember and I didn’t notice any problems with anything else. Everything seemed to work fine so I shut the computer down.

My son used the computer for a few minutes and then shut it down when he got ready to leave for school.

This morning when he turned it on he noticed that the screen resolution was wrong and the screen was flickering really bad. He shut it down and restarted it and got the same result.

He asked me to help him get it straightened out, but so far I’m not having any luck.

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Q&A: Why is Google saying my blog might be hacked?

Posted on October 5, 2020

Question from Brianna L.: I need your help, Rick. And I need it quick.

I woke up this morning to find several messages in my inbox telling me Google is reporting that my blog has been hacked.

I searched Google for my blog’s name and sure enough they’re showing this message with my site’s URLs in the search results:

“This site may be hacked.”

Then I checked my blog stats and found that the page views had dropped to almost nothing, literally overnight. They are usually in the thousands.

I carefully examined every page on my blog but I couldn’t find anything that resembles a hacked page.

After that I did a Google search and saw where someone was recommending a check for strange plugins that could be causing the problem. He said to look for plugins that I didn’t remember installing.

I checked the list of installed plugins but the only ones I found were the ones that I actually installed myself.

I have three questions for you: [Read more…]

Q&A: Can you recommend a good ‘Screen Recorder’ app for Linux that’s easy to use?

Posted on October 3, 2020

Question from Earnie: I’ve been following you on Facebook for a long time Rick, and I’ve learned a lot from the great info you post.

One post that really helped was the one where you basically said we need to ditch Windows 7 because it’s no longer being supported. I had no idea!

After reading that post and pondering my options for several days I finally took your advice and replaced the Windows 7 on my laptop with Linux Mint, and I believe it was a good move.

I checked your list of Linux replacements for Windows programs (very helpful, thanks!) for a screen recorder app but I didn’t see one listed.

I searched Google for Linux screen recorder apps and found several but all the ones I tried are too complicated for what I need.

All I need is a very simple app that can record everything that happens inside the active window.

Is there one that you can recommend?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why is Chrome using so much of my computer’s RAM?

Posted on September 29, 2020

Question from Keith: Hi Rick. I’m having a computer problem that I hope you can help me fix.

I have a Dell desktop computer that’s running Windows 10 Home.

This machine has 8GB of RAM which seems like it should be plenty, but I’ve started getting frequent “Low Memory” warnings.

When I open the Task Manager I see that there are over two dozen Chrome processes running, and every one of them is using a big chunk of of RAM.

Even if I only have a couple of Chrome tabs open I still see a bunch of Chrome processes eating up lots of RAM! Is this normal? If not, what can I do to fix it?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]