Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
A friend asked me the other day whether he should connect his computer to his router via WiFi or over a wired Ethernet connection.
My answer was…It depends.
First of all, is the computer in question sitting near the router or is it located in another room in the house?
I receive dozens of questions every week from readers of the “Tech Q&A” section of this blog, and a question I get fairly often is “How do I retrieve my forgotten WiFi password?“.
It’s very easy to forget your WiFi password (aka Network Security Key) if your devices store it and log you into the network automatically.
Some people go months, or even years without typing in their WiFi password, only to discover they can no longer remember it when it comes time to connect a new computer or mobile device to the network.
If you’ve forgotten the password to your own WiFi network, I strongly recommend that you retrieve it from your PC and write it down for future reference.
Luckily, that’s very easy to do as long as your Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 PC is currently logged into the network. Here’s how: [Read more…]
Question from Deborah: I’ve been using my Dlink wireless router without a password on the WiFi connection for several years.
My boyfriend told me I need to put a password on the WiFi connection but I don’t think it’s necessary because I don’t have any neighbors living close by to piggyback off of it.
I like being able to let guests connect to my network without having to hassle with a password.
Do you think it’s ok if I leave it without a password, or is my boyfriend right? [Read more…]
Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
Question from Kellie: I was messing around with the network settings on my Windows 11 laptop last night.
While I was in there I noticed that my WiFi network is set to “Public” instead of “Private”.
I’ve always heard that public networks are dangerous.
Is that true? And if it is, how can I change it to private? [Read more…]
Question from Mitchell: Love your site, Rick. I have a question for you if you don’t mind.
I recently retired from a job that required me to travel frequently to multiple states.
As you can imagine, I stayed in a lot of different hotels and now my Chromebook has a long list of WiFi networks that pop up when I go to connect to a network.
Since I’m not traveling anymore I’ll never need to connect to most of those networks again. How can I remove them? [Read more…]