Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Have you ever taken a look at all the programs that are actually installed on your PC? If you have, you were probably a bit surprised that there are so many of them.
You might also be surprised to know that not all of your installed programs will show up on the “Add/Remove Programs” list.
The steps listed below will help you generate a list of all the programs that are installed on your PC, and optionally, print it out. [Read more…]
Question from Kenneth L.: My friend and I have had the exact same HP laptop for over 4 years.
He insists that he bought his laptop several months before I bought mine, but I’m certain that I bought mine first.
Is there any way to tell which computer was bought first? We have a sizable bet riding on the outcome.
Thanks!
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Darren S.: I have several old DOS-based games that I bought at a yard sale and I’d love to be able to play some of them on my Windows 7 laptop. Will they run on that computer? If not, is it possible to install DOS in a dual-boot configuration and run them that way?
Rick’s Answer: Darren, it is possible to run some DOS games under Windows 7 (as well as XP, Vista and Windows 8), but due to major differences in the way DOS and Windows handle memory and I/O you’ll need to run them within a DOS emulator.
There are several DOS emulators for Windows available, but I would recommend trying one called DOSBox first. DOSBox has been around for a long time and they seem to have a lot of the kinks in the emulation process worked out. [Read more…]
Question from Juliana P.: I was talking to some friends the other day and someone asked why Microsoft skipped Windows 9 and jumped from Windows 8.1 straight to Windows 10.
None of us knew the answer to that question. Can you tell us why they did it?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
If you’re a Windows user you’re probably very familiar with the need to “Eject” your removable drives before disconnecting them from your PC.
In the past Microsoft has always cached the data written to removable media to make the system run a little faster.
That meant we had to “Eject” a removable drive before disconnecting it from the PC to prevent losing any cached, but unwritten data and possibly corrupting the drive’s file system.