What Else Is Needed For A Home Theater PC?

After you’ve built your base, expandable PC, there’s not a lot needed to make it into a home theater PC. Those required things are: home theater PC software, and a TV tuner card or TV tuner USB device If you’re going to use Windows 7, you can choose to use the Windows Media Center software [...]

CPU Usage Stays Way Too High

New subscriber Jiten Doshi wrote to ask: Hello sir, I have a problem with my laptop. I have a hp pavillion dv6 entertainment series laptop with AMD Turion x2 as a processor, 4 GB DDR2 RAM, 320 GB Hard disk, 1 GB Graphic card and windows 7 as my operating system. The thing is my [...]

Turned On Computer and Everything Is Large

Subscriber Kelley wrote with a couple problems: Hi Terry, I turned on my computer yesterday morning but when it loaded up, all of my icons were very large. When I open programs like Word, Wordperfect and even Internet Explorer and AOL, and the font, screen and everything is large. I have no idea what happened. [...]

Speeding Up Windows XP – Removing and Preventing Adware

Every couple months, our computer club in Baton Rouge has a PC Tune-up Day for our members. This is a fund-raiser as well as a service to our members. A few computers arrive in good shape and give us only options to optimize how they run. Many arrive with one or more adware programs, downloader [...]

The Computer Keeps Dialing

Reader Harold wrote to ask: I am have problems finding it but I just know that you have dealt with the problem of a computer dialing the internet and how to track down the program that is causing it. Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks, Harold I responded to Harold: First, do [...]

Security Programs for Average Users

In every issue of my online newsletter, I have my current security software recommendations — and it’s even available as this web page My Computer Security Recommendations. In that article, I write about the programs that I choose for antivirus, antispyware/antiadware, firewall and antispam. I also include a paragraph in the article on using a [...]

Popups and Popup Blockers

Subscriber Russ Alor wrote me recently about popup problems: Terry: I have been very satisfied with my virus protections but still struggle with pop-ups even when Google has implied “protection” running. Is there available a popup guard? Russ Allor I wrote back to say that I’m assuming he meant popups from specific web sites. In [...]

Is your computer slow?

If your anti-virus and anti-spyware are up to date (your ARE running both, aren’t you?), the problem usually falls into one or both of these categories: There are too many slightly-valuable programs running all the time Not enough RAM — not enough physical memory in your computer WinPatrol and WinPatrol Plus can help you control [...]