I get a lot of questions about stuck or broken keys in keyboards. Occasionally it's a software issue, but more often than not it's a physically broken key. On desktop machines that's not an issue, replacement keyboards are readily available, and easy to replace.

Laptops, however, are a different matter.

Sure enough, over the past few months my wife's laptop started having issues with the space bar and no amount of compressed air or other cleaning techniques would fix it. It was time to replace it.

I brought my camera along so I could show you what it took.

Continue reading: "How do I replace my laptop keyboard?"

Posted January 6, 2009 | Category: Keyboard, Mice and Other Input Devices

There are many CD burning tools out there, including several popular free ones as well as several commercial. In fact, there's a good chance you might have a trial version of on of the commercial products on your machine right now - they're often included in the pre-installed software.

I use ImgBurn: it's free, it's lightweight, it does more than I'd ever need, and it's relatively easy to use.

I say that it's "relatively" easy to use, because its interface can be just a tad intimidating to the first time user. To overcome that, let me show you how to do a few common operations using ImgBurn.

Continue reading: "ImgBurn - Free CD/DVD Burning Tool"

Posted January 5, 2009 | Category: Software

I made that question up, because I noticed today that masses of people are doing exactly that: including their email addresses within posts they make on Twitter.

You really, really, really don't want to do that.

The reason is an old answer: spam.

Continue reading: "Why shouldn't I include my email address in a Twitter post or 'tweet'?"

Posted January 3, 2009 | Category: Spam

I'm going to recommend an obscure long shot as something to try.

I'm also going to ask for help.

Continue reading: "I spilled water into my laptop, how do I get it working again?"

Posted January 3, 2009 | Category: Hardware

I vaguely recall the worst case scenario that you're referring to: an unpatched and unprotected version of either Windows 2000 or an early version of Windows XP lasted about 30 seconds after connecting to the internet before it was infected with a virus.

30 seconds.

Things are better today, but you still want protection. And turning your machine off isn't really helping.

Continue reading: "What's the risk of connecting to the internet without protection?"

Posted January 3, 2009 | Category: Malware Prevention

It's actually another of Windows buried and somewhat obscure settings.

In fact, I didn't even connect what this setting was for until I got this question.

Continue reading: "How do I get Windows Explorer to show folder names in its taskbar buttons?"

Posted January 2, 2009 | Category: Windows Configuration

Unfortunately, there's a very legitimate way to craft links that also happens to be easily confused with a technique used by phishing attempts.

It's a difficult position for both the publisher, such as myself, who wants to gather information, and the anti-malware software that doesn't want to inadvertently miss an actual phishing attempt. By erring on the side of paranoia, the anti-malware software often reports "false positives" - links that are "suspected" of being phishing attempts, but really aren't.

Let's look at this in more detail, and how you can tell the difference.

Continue reading: "Why does my anti-malware software say a link is suspected phishing?"

Posted January 1, 2009 | Category: Malware Detection

As you might expect, I have a small collection of useful tools that I keep available for assorted system maintenance and troubleshooting tasks. However, for the longest time I haven't really carried a file un-delete utility with me. Not because there aren't some good ones out there, but more because I never really got comfortable with any of the ones I had tried. I certainly was not comfortable enough to recommend any.

I recently discovered Recuva, which I just added to my toolkit. It's free, it's easy to use, and it's from the same people that bring you CCleaner, which gives added credibility.

When you delete a file, the contents of that file are not necessarily immediately overwritten or removed. Instead, the space used by that file is marked as "available" so that it can be used the next time data is written to the disk. As long as that doesn't happen and the old data is not overwritten by something new, there's a chance you can recover the file.

This is where utilities like Recuva come in. They scan the available space and the control information on the hard disk to identify files that might be recoverable.

Recuva starts with a Wizard that allows you to specify what drives to scan, and what classes of files to look for. Let's say you just deleted a picture on your flash drive by mistake, you can tell Recuva to scan all the removable media for pictures, and it'll do exactly that. Or, you can dive right into the programs advanced interface and have it scan a specific drive you specify, and then filter the results based on type or name.

Continue reading: "Recuva - A free, easy to use undelete and file recover tool"

Posted December 29, 2008 | Category: Software

I'm going to assume you mean slightly smaller, since that's a very, very common scenario. I see it myself all the time.

The answer, in a word, is margins. And depending on the PDF document and the capabilities of your printer, you may, or may not, be able to work around it.

Continue reading: "Why don't PDF's print at the same size as the original?"

Posted December 28, 2008 | Category: Internet

Sure, you can delete it. It takes some special steps, but it's not really all that difficult.

The problem is that you probably don't want to.

Continue reading: "Can I delete pagefile.sys? What is it?"

Posted December 27, 2008 | Category: Windows Configuration

Sure! You both are.

You see, it really depends on exactly what you're doing. Some of your scenario leads me to believe that you are right, and other portions of your scenario have me siding with your friend.

I'll give you the slight edge here because I can't see your friend's "almost as bad" comment really coming into play.

Continue reading: "Does accessing my computer's hard disk over the network impact the computer's performance?"

Posted December 26, 2008 | Category: Windows Performance

That's a composite question since I get many variations of it on a regular basis.

The scenario is simple: you've been infected with a virus of some sort, and your anti-virus program reports, much to your great relief, that it has cleaned it out for you. And yet, there's some nagging leftover specific symptom.

The solution isn't nearly as simple as the scenario.

Continue reading: "My anti-virus performed a virus removal but I still have a symptom, how do I get rid of it?"

Posted December 26, 2008 | Category: Malware Prevention

I want to use this question to clear up a misconception that appears to be surprisingly common.

Wireless internet is not just "out there" for you to connect up to. You need to take steps, whether it's setting something up, paying for something, or at a minimum, asking for permission.

It's definitely not the case that you can just grab a wireless card and suddenly be connected anywhere you want. The wireless capabilities of your computer are only half of what's needed.

Continue reading: "How do I get wireless internet?"

Posted December 26, 2008 | Category: Wireless Networking