Posts

What to Do When Windows Won’t Boot

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You turn on your computer one day and Windows refuses to boot—what do you do? “Windows won’t boot” is a common symptom with a variety of causes, so you’ll need to perform some troubleshooting. Modern versions of Windows are better at recovering from this sort of thing. Where Windows XP might have stopped in its tracks when faced with this problem, modern versions of Windows will try to automatically run Startup Repair. First Things First: Has Anything Changed? Be sure to think about changes you’ve made recently—did you recently install a new hardware driver, connect a new hardware component to your computer, or open your computer’s case and do something? It’s possible the hardware driver is buggy, the new hardware is incompatible, or that you accidentally unplugged something while working inside your computer. If the Computer Won’t Power On At All If your computer won’t power on at all, ensure it’s plugged into a power outlet and that the power connector isn’t loos...

Basic Computer Security: How to Protect Yourself from Viruses, Hackers, and Thieves

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People often think of computer security as something technical and complicated. And when you get into the nitty-gritty, it can be—but the most important stuff is actually very simple. Here are the basic, important things you should do to make yourself safer online. Enable Automatic Updates All the software we use every day is likely riddled with security issues. These security issues are constantly being found—whether we’re talking about Windows, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, the Adobe Flash plugin, Adobe’s PDF Reader, Microsoft Office—the list goes on and on. These days, a lot of operating systems and programs come with automatic updates to close these security holes. No longer do you need to click a button or download a file to update your software; it’ll update itself in the background without any input from you. Some people like to turn this off for one reason or another. Maybe you don’t like that Windows restarts after installing an update, or mayb...

Why Don’t My Friends See My Emoji Correctly?

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Emoji are a graphical shorthand for emotional states, jokes, and nuances of language, so it’s particularly problematic when your friend sees a different emoji than the one you sent. Here’s why your messages might not be coming through like you intended. How Emoji Work: A Code for Every Smile We, the end users, only see the graphic fruit of the emoji system. Beneath all those millions of smiley faces, hearts, and tiny piles of poop people send every day, there’s a detailed—and standardized!—code system designed to ensure everyone sees the same thing. The backbone of emoji is shared by the very text messages their embedded into: Unicode. Unicode is a computer industry standard, dating all the way back to the 1990s, that ensures all the world’s writing systems and symbols will be correctly displayed across electronic devices. The entire standard contains more than 128,000 characters across 135 modern and historical writing systems, including symbols. When emoji wer...

Microsoft, Please Stop Breaking My PC With Windows 10’s Automatic Updates

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Hey Microsoft, could you please stop breaking my PC? The latest WPD driver update released on March 8, 2017 is just the latest in a long string of bad updates. If Windows 10 is going to force these updates on my system, the least Microsoft could do is test them properly first. Don’t get us wrong: automatic updates are very important for security reasons, and we believe they are a good thing. The problem is that Microsoft isn’t just releasing security updates. They’re making major changes to Windows, and not testing the updates properly. They need to do better. Microsoft Just Released a Bad Driver Update, and I Have to Fix It The latest and most obnoxious update—at least for me, personally—was the “Microsoft – WPD – 2/22/2016 12:00:00 AM – 5.2.5326.4762” update released on March 8, 2017. Microsoft removed this update from Windows Update, but not until after my and other PCs installed it. As a Microsoft representative  explained in a discussion post ...

What’s the Difference Between FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS?

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Whether you’re formatting an internal drive, external drive, or removable drive, Windows gives you the choice of using three different file systems: NTFS, FAT32, and exFAT. The Format dialog in Windows doesn’t explain the difference, so we will. A  file system  provides a way of organizing a drive. It specifies how data is stored on the drive and what types of information can be attached to files—filenames, permissions, and other attributes. Windows supports three different file systems. NTFS is the most modern file system. Windows uses NTFS for its system drive and, by default, for most non-removable drives. FAT32 is an older file system that’s not as efficient as NTFS and doesn’t support as big a feature set, but does offer greater compatibility with other operating systems. exFAT is a modern replacement for FAT32—and more devices and operating systems support it than NTFS—but it’s not nearly as widespread as FAT32. NT File System (NTFS) NTFS is the mode...