Putting your PC to sleep is a great way to save energy while still making sure you can resume work quickly. But what can you do if your PC keeps waking up on its own? Here’s how to figure out what’s waking it up, and how to prevent it. When you put your PC to sleep, it enters a power-saving state where it shuts down power to most of the PC’s components, keeping just enough power trickling to keep the memory refreshed....
The simple and blocky styling of Minecraft is endearing to many fans of the game, but if you’d like a more sophisticated 3D look with realistic lighting, reflections, and enhanced graphics you can achieve the shimmering 3D paradise you crave. Polished graphics are a prominent feature on most modern video games and we’ve come to expect well rendered shadows, beautiful surfaces and textures, and other GPU-intensive flourishes. Any fan of Minecraft can tell you, however, that despite the depth of gameplay Minecraft is short on any of the graphical flourishes found in popular games....
After switching to OS X, there was one big annoyance that kept happening over and over — every time I plug anything into my MacBook and it happens to have a DCIM folder on the file system, iPhoto will immediately launch and start scanning. RELATED: Why Does Every Camera Put Photos in a DCIM Folder? The problem is that I don’t want to use iPhoto all the time — I mean sure, I can use it to import my photos, but what if I’m trying to do something else like hack my Minecraft Pocket save files, or I’ve got other content on a removable drive?...
What Is Long Exposure? Before we dive in, let’s talk a little about what long exposure photography is and how it works. The basic idea is to show movement and the passage of time in a static image. This is accomplished by slowing down the shutter speed. Shutter speed is what determines how much light can hit the camera sensor. The longer the shutter is open, the more light can get in....
If Internet Explorer is crashing and burning, your problem likely lies with a buggy browser add-on. However, Internet Explorer crashes can have a variety of other causes, including incompatibilities with hardware rendering and possible malware. We have also covered ways to troubleshoot crashes with Google Chrome and issues with Firefox. The steps are remarkably similar for each browser, although how you go about performing them varies wildly between browsers....
The Windows Device Manager is an important troubleshooting tool. It displays all your installed hardware devices and allows you to view which ones have problems, manage their drivers, and even disable specific pieces of hardware. You should only need to use the Device Manager when troubleshooting your computer’s hardware and managing its drivers, but it’s an important system tool that you should know how to use. Opening the Device Manager The easiest way to open the Device Manager on any version of Windows is by pressing Windows Key + R, typing devmgmt....
Linux distributions tend to use two different types of release cycles: standard releases and rolling releases. Some people swear by rolling releases to have the latest software, while others like standard releases for being more stable and tested. This isn’t an option you change in your current Linux distribution — instead, it’s a choice the Linux distribution itself makes. Some distributions release regular standard releases and use a rolling release cycle for their unstable development release....
While it does not happen often, every once in a while a security update to patch Windows causes more problems than it solves. Case in point, security update 2823324 that was a part of this month’s Patch Tuesday release for Windows 7. Some users have been experiencing endless rebooting or a failure of their system to restart after installing the update. To counteract the problem Microsoft has published a KB article to help get affected systems up and running again....
There’s some 81 million unique IP addresses that expose UPnP functionality from the internet, and more than 6900 different devices are potentially vulnerable, at least, to being hacked from the outside. This means, theoretically, that your router could end up being hacked to forward ports from the outside world, which leaves you open to more hacking. The simple answer is to disable UPnP on your wireless router. Since each router is different, you’ll need to login to your wireless router’s admin panel (use the manual to figure that out), and then find the UPnP setting....
Internet Explorer-haters often say that the only good use for Internet Explorer is downloading Firefox or Chrome. But if you really don’t like IE, you can use Windows’ built-in FTP support to download and install Firefox without ever opening IE. Sure, you could just open Internet Explorer and download Firefox from Mozilla’s website, but where’s the geeky fun in that? This trick is about Firefox because Mozilla provides an FTP server, while Google doesn’t seem to....
Facebook’s Shadow Profile Practices Early in 2018, Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a congressional hearing that Facebook collects information on people who are not Facebook users. To be clear, Facebook does not use the term “shadow profile,” but that’s become the common term for information collected on people who are not Facebook users. (It can also refer to data collected about people who are users, but the information in question was not provided by them....
2-in-1 Computers Can Be Laptops or Tablets By definition, a 2-in-1 computer can be used as both a laptop or a tablet, but that’s not exactly what we mean. There are two major types of 2-in-1 laptops: Convertibles that transform from laptop to tablet and back, and devices with a detachable screen that turns into a tablet when pulled from the keyboard base. Convertible 2-in-1 Systems Convertible 2-in-1 computers are, first and foremost, laptops....
If you want to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your PC, you might consider disabling some of the built-in Windows services. But which ones should you disable? And which ones can you safely disable? Important: Disabling Services is Not a Silver Bullet Here at How-To Geek we’re not big fans of disabling Windows Services – at least, we don’t think that disabling Microsoft services that are built into Windows is a terribly great idea most of the time....
Build a Retro Game Console If you love playing old video games but don’t have room to collect the actual consoles and cartridges or discs (which are getting pricey), you can use a Raspberry Pi as an inexpensive retro console. All you need is a Raspberry Pi, the RetroPie OS, a controller, and a display. It’s worth noting that downloading ROMs or disc images of games you don’t already own is illegal, so proceed at your own risk....
Linux’s file system has quite a few differences from the Windows file system. You won’t find any drive letters or backslashes, but you will find an alien-looking layout where files can have the same name, differing only in capitalization. This isn’t an exhaustive list. It is intended for new Linux users who aren’t aware of all the differences between Linux and Windows. There are many more differences that apply....
Microsoft added User Account Control to Windows in Windows Vista, and it’s still used on Windows 7 and 8 today. UAC restricts what programs can do without your permission. Using an administrator account with UAC is a lot like using a limited user account. Programs don’t just get permission to do anything they want to your operating system — they have to ask first. The Problem UAC Solves Windows XP had a big problem....
Bit and Bits! Computers process data differently from human beings. But have you ever wondered how these massive amounts of data are actually stored? Welcome to computers are their core: bits. Ever piece of information, in most current computing systems, whether they be your desktop PC, your mobile or the intelligent screen on your smart fridge, is stored by means of ‘bits’. The single most granular piece of information a computer can “understand” and process is a bit....
If you just installed Windows 8 or Windows 10 on your laptop and the screen won’t stay at the brightness level you want, it’s probably because the adaptive brightness feature isn’t working right on your system. Here’s how to disable it. Naturally, it would be best to have the feature actually work, so you could make sure to update your drivers. If you still want to disable, here’s how to do it....
Most people have more than one email account and if you are using Gmail it’s easy to get things set up so that all of your messages can be accessed in the same place. But if you would prefer to keep things ‘together yet separate’ the Multiple Inboxes Labs feature could help you to work with emails more efficiently. I have accumulated numerous email addresses over the years, including – for shame!...
Windows 8 no longer comes with Windows Media Center. To get it, you’ll need to purchase both the Pro Pack and Media Center Pack upgrades from Microsoft for a total of $110. Consider using a free, Linux-based media center system instead. Once you have paid all this money, you’ll just have the old version of Windows Media Center without any improvements. Microsoft will probably discontinue Windows Media Center eventually, anyway, as they’re no longer focused on it....
