Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Will I have to overclock my PC again if I reset Windows?

Posted on March 8, 2023

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.

[Read more…]

Q&A: How do you take just part of a house off-grid to go solar?

Posted on March 7, 2023

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from Keith: I just finished reading your post about taking your home office off-grid and I found it very encouraging because I’d love to that for just a couple of rooms in my own house.

My question is how do you take just part of a house off-grid while leaving the rest of it connected to the power line? [Read more…]

Scam alert: Are you being spied on via your own webcam?

Posted on March 7, 2023

The ingenuity of hackers, thieves and other miscreants is unlimited it seems.

Every day they come up with new ways to scam, hack and break into computers in order to steal bank account and credit card numbers, photos, addresses, phone numbers and other pieces of sensitive information.

One of their most devious tricks is hacking into people’s computers and spying on them via their own webcams. [Read more…]

How to quickly find a good meeting point halfway between two locations

Posted on March 6, 2023

Have you ever had to make plans to meet someone at a place that was halfway between your two locations?

If so, you might have found it a bit difficult to find an appropriate meeting place in the general vicinity of the half-way point.

Well, a fantastic website called Meetways that makes finding the most appropriate halfway meeting place between any two locations an absolute breeze. [Read more…]

Find out if your Internet service is down without calling your ISP

Posted on March 6, 2023

Unfortunately, Internet outages are to be expected from time to time.

Storms knock down transmission lines, backbone cables get cut via construction mishaps, routing and switching gear go belly up… the reasons for Internet outages are many.

The thing is, when your Internet stops working it can be hard to determine whether the problem is an actual Internet outage or an issue you’re having with your own modem, your router and/or your connected devices. [Read more…]