Episodes

I’m on Facebook quite often, and it’s not just to talk about my computer repair business here in Safety Harbor, Florida. I’m in groups with a variety of topics, including ultramarathon running, using diet to avoid preventable diseases such as cancer and heart disease, cooking with my Instant Pot, and lots of others. When someone posts a really good question or idea on Facebook, and you want to hear what others have to say about it and make sure you don’t miss anything, what do you do? A lot of ...

If you found a flash drive on the ground or someplace out in public, what would you do with it? A kind-hearted person would of course want to get it back to its rightful owner. But to do that, you would need to connect it to a computer and see if anything on the drive might indicate who the owner is. But… you might want to think twice about doing that. There’s a new kind of flash drive being made now, and anyone can buy one for $50. But it doesn’t store any files or folders. In fact, you couldn...

That area in the bottom right corner of your Windows screen is just loaded with valuable information. But in a lot of cases you don’t see everything that’s going on down there because some of the icons are hidden. Here’s how to get all those icons to be visible all the time. The image shown above is the Notification Area on my main computer. I don’t always have all of those icons there, but what I like is that whatever is running there at any given time is visible at a glance. Microsoft does no...

Sometimes it’s nice to know how to do things really quickly on your computer. And sometimes you might need to delete your browser history (the list of all the websites you’ve visited in a certain period of time). Why would you need to delete your browser history? Lots of reasons. Maybe you’re shopping for a Christmas or birthday gift and you don’t want your spouse to see that you’ve been visiting some jewelry websites. Maybe you borrowed a friend’s computer and you don’t want your web history m...

The hackers and scammers continue to come up with new ideas to trick you into downloading a virus to your computer. The latest scheme is a pop-up in Chrome that says the page won’t display properly because you’re missing a font. Here are the details so you don’t fall for it. This is targeted at people who use the Chrome web browser (which is currently over half of all computer users). Here’s how it works: You’re browsing whatever sites you normally visit, and maybe a few you haven’t visited be...

In Windows 7 (and earlier versions of Windows), the Start menu was simply a way to navigate to whatever program or file you needed to open. In Windows 10, Microsoft seems to think that it should now be used as their own private little billboard on your computer. Today we’ll talk about how to take back some control of that space. One thing that I really, really dislike is advertising being forced on to me. It’s one of the reasons I don’t watch television, and it’s the primary reason I don’t list...

There are lots of things you can do to stay safe while using your computer. Probably hundreds. But a few things I keep seeing come up over and over. I really believe that if everyone at least kept these three rules while using their computers, a lot of problems would be avoided and everyone would be a happier computer user. Tip 1: If you know a website’s address, don’t type it in the search bar A lot of people have their home page on their web browser set to be a Google search page. Nothing wro...

One of the annoyances about chatting with someone in Facebook Messenger on your computer is the fact that they other person knows when you’ve seen their most recent message. So you kind of feel obligated to go ahead and reply sooner, since you know the other person knows you’ve read that last message. Too much pressure to keep the conversation going! Here’s how you stop that. Since I’m at my computer much of the time, this happens to me fairly regularly. If a friend or a client sends me a mess...

For a while, Adobe has proven that they are a software company not worthy of our trust or respect. And recently they provided us with another reason to question their integrity. This applies mainly to people using the Chrome web browser. For quite some time, Adobe has been trying to sneak unwanted software on to all of our computers. If you go to their website and install Adobe Flash, or Adobe Reader, partway through the installation process you have to be careful to UNcheck a couple of boxes t...

Recently I had a client with a Windows 10 computer that would power on, but it wouldn’t boot all the way into the Windows operating system. Sometimes Windows will run self-diagnosis and repair the problem and reboot. But what if you reboot, and it just keeps coming up to the same error screen? That’s when you need a Windows 10 recovery drive. If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about with that bootup error screen, here’s what it might look like: Of course, the one you might see may not look ex...

I use my Google calendar for just about everything that goes on in my life. This includes all of my onsite computer repair appointments here in Safety Harbor of course, but also birthday and anniversary reminders, dentist appointments, online webinars, etc. So I don’t like it when I get an email to remind me of an appointment, and it automatically ADDS that appointment to my Google calendar. Here’s how to disable that from happening. Here’s what usually happens. I’ll go to the dentist for the ...

Did you know there’s a free program you can run, and it will check your computer’s hard drive to see if it’s showing any signs of failure? Disclaimer: This software is not foolproof, it’s just one of the best at detecting signs of hard drive failure. The program I’m referring to is called Crystal Disk Info. It’s actually the hard disk checking program that many computer techs use, especially when the test is being done remotely. You can check the website here. The download you want is the Stan...

Sometimes there are things that on the surface seem to be true, but when you dig a little deeper you find out they aren’t true at all. Or, there might be something that you know in your head is false, but your mind still thinks about a different way. For example – what’s the moon made of? Obviously you know it’s not made of green cheese, but for most people that’s the first answer that pops in your head. In the world of computers, there are things like that as well. Here are a few. Myth: “I ca...

If you’re still using Windows Live Mail as your email program, you need to be aware that Microsoft support for this program ends on January 10, 2017. This means that there will be no more security updates – so when security problems are discovered, they won’t be patched. Translation: it’s time to go to an alternative. You know the email program that lots of people really loved? Outlook Express. It was easy to use, didn’t have a lot of confusing bells and whistles, and millions of people used it...

I use the Copy – Paste process every day, and you probably do as well. For the most part, it’s pretty straightforward – you choose a word or section of text and copy it from one location, then you go to another location and paste it. But when you’re pasting into a Word document, there’s another thing that comes up – the “Paste Options” box. What is that thing? You’ve probably seen this thing, even if you don’t know it by that specific name. Let’s say you get something in an email, like an addr...

I created my first Yahoo email account back in the late 1990s, but I stopped actively using it when Gmail introduced their email service and I made that switch. So that Yahoo account is still there, just not being used. I recently got an email from Yahoo that was pretty outrageous in light of recent events. That email started like this: “Dear Scott, We’re committed to your account security…“. If there’s any company that is unable to keep my account secure, it’s Yahoo. A few months ago, I wrote...

One of the changes Microsoft made with Windows 10 was how to create a shortcut to a file or a program and have that shortcut on the desktop screen. A lot of people – myself included – weren’t too happy the first time we tried to make a shortcut to the desktop using Windows 10. The “old” way, which was used for years with Windows XP and Windows 7, was to just find the file or the program in the “All Programs” list on the Start menu, do a right click and choose “Send to” then “Desktop – create s...

Today’s tip came about as a result of a question from a reader, Mike. He wrote: “A topic for your podcast: How to limit search results. I use Google, Yahoo, and Duckduckgo for making searches. Today I happened to search for “episodic dvd ripper” and got many hits as old as 15 years back. Is there a way to limit searches to only posts from 2015 and newer? The older stuff is out of date, wrong, or misleading. Thanks.” Yes, you can narrow down your searches based on lots of different criteria. Fo...

One of the most commonly-used processes on my computer is the ability to create a shortcut icon on the desktop. Just right-click on a a file and choose “Send to” and then “Desktop-create shortcut”. But sometimes that little “create shortcut” item can disappear from your “Send to” menu. Here’s how to get it back. If there’s a particular program or file that you need access to all the time, the easiest and quickest way to get to it is if you have an icon for it on your desktop. But that icon shou...

Want to check your hard drive for problems and have your computer fix them? Today I’ll show you how to do this using a method that’s usually only used by technicians, because the typical computer user is not aware of it. Maybe you are a geek after all! At my computer repair office here in Safety Harbor, Florida, I regularly have people that bring me their computer because it won’t boot up. Or it suddenly started running very slowly. Or it has lately been doing some very odd, random things. Thes...

Millions of people use the service called “Web of Trust”. It’s a crowdsourced process that is supposed to tell you if a website you’re about to click on is trustworthy or malicious, based on the input of the other Web of Trust users. Recently, information has been uncovered about Web of Trust that indicates this service itself is not to be trusted. I tried Web of Trust a while ago but stopped using it after a short time. However, I know a lot of people do use it. The theory behind it is good. ...

Outlook has so many great features, and a lot of Outlook users are not aware of many things that Outlook can do. One of the greatest time-savers is the ability to delete large amounts of email in a very short time. If you use Outlook for your email, and your inbox or some other folder has gotten out of control with too many emails, today’s tip is for you. Sometimes email can get a little out of control. Or maybe a LOT out of control. And suddenly you see your inbox or one of your email folders...

Time for another set of cool websites! I like to do this every once in a while, just to tell you about some websites I’ve run across that I think you might find interesting, informative or entertaining. 1. Online solitaire for free http://solitaireforfree.com/ Everyone’s favorite game – and now you can play directly on a website. In the early days of computers, I remember browsing the local office supply stores and computer stores for software that was delivered via a CD that you would use to ...

Last week we talked about all the nonsense things that are thought to be the “magic pill” to speed up your Windows computer (clean the registry, defrag, etc). Today we’ll talk about what actually DOES speed up your Windows computer. 1. Stop programs from running in the background When you install software, in many cases it designates itself to start up and run every time you turn on your computer. You might not see a window on your screen that shows it running, but it’s running. And the more p...