One of the things I’ve really missed with Windows 7 has been the Run command on the Start button’s menu. The Run command has been available via the Start button’s menu for a lot of versions of Windows — but not for Windows 7. Fortunately, during a series of emails back and forth with Clif [...]

I learned some things about the 64-bit version of Windows 7 when I built my new home theater PC. I initially thought about installing the 32-bit version of Windows 7, but it can only access 4 GB of memory. I installed the 64-bit version of Windows 7, which came in the same Windows 7 retail [...]

Long-time reader Chet Norris wrote to ask aout a couple problems he was having: Hi Terry 2 questions for the price of one if I may. 1.When I try to copy ‘my pictures’ to a CD they come out as addresses or locations instead of pics. I don’t know if that’s normal but if possible [...]

Subscriber Ray Lenz wrote after my articles recently Terry, I enjoyed your Q & A with Alice. I’m 76 myself and slowing down a little with my computer savvy even though I have been working with computers since 1966. I was a programmer on an IBM 1401 with 8K of memory using SPS (Symbolic Programming [...]

Recently, subscriber Peter Killick had a question about protection from downloads: I was under the impression that my combination of a router plus a software firewall completely prevented anything ever being downloaded on my computer over the web without my approval, typically indicated by clicking a button. My router is a Netgear, properly and carefully [...]

Every once in a while, I like to write about new sites (or, at least, new to me) that are designed for fun. First, let’s take a look at some ASCII art. ASCII stands for “American Standard Code for Information Interchange.” In the 1960′s and 1970′s, before the days of dot-matrix printers and other printers [...]

Longtime subscriber Greg wrote to ask: Terry, My desktop has started to have a couple really aggravating problems and I wanted to run them by you. 1) Every morning when I go to check my email before work, I find that all my desktop icons have disappeared and I am looking at the wallpaper only. [...]

Reader Teri Scott wrote me to ask about her slow dialup Internet connection: Hello, I have a desktop and a laptop and live in a remote area so the only internet I can get is dial-up. We recently moved and in our previous home, my desktop and laptop connected consistently at about 36.8kps. Now my [...]

Subscriber James McClellan wrote to let me know he was finally successful with backing up… Terry, I hadn’t been able to get my external back-up drive to work since buying a new dell. At your recommendation, I tried Karen’s Replicator ( www.karenware.com ) It worked great and I’m now doing daily backups to the external [...]

One of the easiest ways to document web pages and other printable content is to “print” them into a PDF file. Adobe’s Acrobat program provides a printer driver to create such files from anything that you can print. Of course, Acrobat is out of reach for many people, or at least, we don’t have any [...]