Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Trevor: Rick, I have an HP laptop running Windows 11.
When I close the lid it goes into sleep mode, but I’d rather have it just shut down all the way because I’m usually going to just leave it in my laptop bag and not use it for a while.
Is there a way to make it do that? Thanks.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
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Question from Andie: I have a gorgeous photo of a sunrise over Lake Michigan as my desktop background.
The problem I’m having is all the icons scattered around the screen make it hard to enjoy the photo.
I know you can hide the desktop icons because my boss has them hidden on her computer screen.
Is there an easy way to hide them when I don’t need them and then make them reappear when I do? [Read more…]
As you probably know, Windows PCs tend to accumulate tons of “junk” that takes up valuable storage space on your machine’s hard drive or SSD.
There are numerous “system cleanup” apps that will clear this junk out for you, but Windows 11 now has it’s own native tool for this. It’s called “Cleanup Recommendations” and it’s very easy to use. [Read more…]
Windows’ native “Uninstall a program” utility is an extremely inefficient and cumbersome tool for removing programs from your machine.
In addition to being slow to display a list of installed applications and remove the ones selected, the removal process sometimes fails and almost always leaves behind traces of uninstalled programs which clutter up the Windows registry and slow your system down.
As luck would have it, there are several excellent third-party alternatives to Windows’ Uninstaller utility. [Read more…]
Question from Kerry: I have a Windows 11 question for you if you don’t mind.
I used to be a Windows guy, but when Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7 I decided to switch to a Mac.
Well, my Mac recently bit the dust and I decided to switch back to Windows. Long story short, I ended up buying an HP all-on-one desktop computer with Windows 11 on it.
Back when I was using Windows 7 I could open the Control Panel from the Start menu, but that’s apparently not the case with Windows 11. I’ve looked high and low and I can’t find it.
I’m pretty sure Windows 11 still has a Control Panel because I think I remember seeing it mentioned on your site before. Can you tell me how to find it? [Read more…]