My Troubleshooting & Maintaining Your PC All-in-one Desktop Reference For Dummies is not only my longest titled title, and one of the most popular, but it was getting old. I’ve recently updated the book to cover Windows 10, and it is now available in those few bookstores that still exist.
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June 12, 2017More Trouble, More ShootingApril 17, 2017Windows 10.1 Finally Shows UpApril 6, 2017The Downside of the SSD“Do you want an SSD in that?” For a moment, the question tempted me. I was buying a new PC and as we worked down the hardware list, the dealer posed the question. The traditional, spinning hard disk drive (HDD) was cheaper, but the solid state drive (SSD) was so fast it was scary.
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February 23, 2017Power Supply Goes Pop!It seems like just a few months ago, I replaced a power supply in my son’s PC. And just the other day, the power supply killed itself.
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February 7, 2017The Keyboard Adores USB 2.0It’s been awhile since it mattered which port you used to connect a PC’s keyboard. Back in the old, old days, you had to use the DIN port — and the PC had to be turned off when you connected or disconnected the keyboard. Then came the PS/2 ports, one for the mouse and another for the PC. Today, everything is USB, so you’d think that using any old USB port for the keyboard would be okay, right? Nope! January 26, 2017Safe Mode HellA good writing day is one when I can pound out the words, hour after hour, all while standing at my PC. It’s fun! I enjoy my job, especially when I spend most of my day writing. That’s not always the case.
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January 17, 2017System Restore to the Rescue – MaybeMy mom called in a panic. She thought she was visiting Google Maps, but instead she opened another web page, downloaded a program, and suddenly Google Chrome had been hijacked. The start page had changed. And any websites she wanted to visit were redirected elsewhere. It was a nightmare.
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July 26, 2016Replacing the Graphics CardAs I predicted in the last blog post, my son’s PC received a new graphics adapter. Unlike the old one, this newer model featured 2GB of graphics memory. It also sports two fans, and to us that feature was appealing because we figured the issue was the system overheating. We were wrong. July 21, 2016Replacing a Power SupplyAfter two days, a new 500W power supply was delivered to my abode. My son and I took no time to install the beast into his PC. And right away we noticed that the new power supply featured a larger fan. It looked more efficient. If heat was causing his PC to restart, then the new power supply might help. July 19, 2016Too Darn Hot!My son’s PC has an annoying habit of restarting. It goes just fine for days, then it will run for 20 minutes, restart, and repeat that cycle all day long. Seeing how I’ve written books on PC troubleshooting, I figured that I would take a stab at fixing the thing. |