Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
I frequently receive questions about speeding up computers that have become sluggish over time or fixing problems that prevent Windows from working as it should.
There are a number of different responses that I usually have for those questions, and the one I give depends on the actual issues they are experiencing with their machines.
Question from Michael: I’ve noticed that every Windows computer I’ve ever owned runs lightning fast when I first take it out of the box, but before long they always seem to start slowing down.
Why do they do that? Do the parts just wear out or what?
Is there anything that can be done to reverse the slowdown and get the PC running like new again? [Read more…]
Question from Brandon: A guy I play games with online told me how to overclock my computer to make it run the games faster.
I followed his instructions and did it and everything was great for about 2 days.
Then I must have downloaded a virus or something because my computer has started acting strange. It’s locking up on me and shutting down on its own.
I ran my virus checker but it didn’t find anything so I want to follow your instructions to reset Windows 10 to see it that will fix it.
If I reset Windows will it wipe out the overclocking? I’d hate to have to go through all those BIOS settings again.
Does your Windows PC keep disconnecting from the Internet at random times?
Or perhaps your web browser frequently slows to a crawl or completely freezes up even though it appears that you still have a normal connection?
Or maybe you just get the feeling that your Internet or local network connection just isn’t working as well as it should?
These types of issues are often due to a glitch or an incorrect setting in your PC’s network adapter settings. If you’re experiencing any type of connectivity problem a simple Network Reset just might fix it in a jiffy. [Read more…]
Question from Barry: I bought an Acer Aspire S7-391 laptop with Windows 8 at an estate auction.
I took a chance on it because it looks brand new and I was able to buy it for only $20. I’m hoping that’s a good deal (LOL).
Once I got the laptop home and booted it up I found out that it has 3 user accounts on it.
The machine boots up fine into an administrator account that doesn’t have a password on it. The other two accounts I can’t get into because they do have passwords (and I don’t know them).
I’d like to reset this machine back to the factory default setting so I can I install Linux on it. Can you tell me how to do the reset? [Read more…]