Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
AskWoody subscribers are an eclectic bunch, as evidenced by this quartet of interesting — and exceptionally wide-ranging! — reader-submitted questions. This week’s topics include: using a command-line trick to reveal a PC’s digital license, preserving system data through a UEFI/BIOS reset, managing a PC with dual SSD/HDD drives, and calculating a system’s total power draw….
AskWoody subscriber John Mackin’s laptop was badly malfunctioning, and the problem remained unresolved even after some top-notch troubleshooting and maintenance. “Fred, I have a three-and-a-half-year-old laptop (Dell Inspiron 13”, i7, 12 GB RAM, 1TB M.2 SSD, Windows 10) that has recently begun to periodically shut down during use. “Suspecting CPU overheat, I downloaded the CoreTemp…
AskWoody subscriber John Mackin’s laptop was badly malfunctioning, and the problem remained unresolved even after some top-notch troubleshooting and maintenance. “Fred, I have a three-and-a-half-year-old laptop (Dell Inspiron 13”, i7, 12 GB RAM, 1TB M.2 SSD, Windows 10) that has recently begun to periodically shut down during use. “Suspecting CPU overheat, I downloaded the CoreTemp…
ReadyBoost is a storage technology available in Windows 10 that lets you enhance PC performance by using ordinary USB flash drives as fast disk caches. Debuting in Vista, ReadyBoost was once cutting-edge technology. But does it still make sense with today’s PCs? That’s the main topic of my column in this week’s AskWoody Plus newsletter. My…
Earlier this week, Microsoft released the semi-annual refresh of Windows 10, this one dubbed “2004,” meaning it was finished last month, 2020-04. So far, I’ve updated four PCs, including my primary-use, personal system. All have gone smoothly, with nary a hiccup. Microsoft’s install routines seem to be getting better at picking up existing software, too….
We were up at 5AM to catch the dawn bus for the long ride to Christchurch. (See previous New Zealand posts.) The above photo is actually from later, after we were well on our way. Yawn. The Piwaka Lodge was packed with hikers (“trampers”), but we were up early enough to avoid the rush for the…
More New Zealand pix are in the queue; but meanwhile, the newest AskWoody Plus newsletter is also now available! In it, AskWoody subscriber Stan Palen requested help with a hard drive that’s continually busy: “Fred: I am running a fairly new windows 10 machine. The machine is super slow. I can hear the hard drive running almost…
(Answer requested by Gabriel Yeung) You want the technical answer, or the practical answer? Technically speaking, if your average working dataset is larger than 64MB, then YES, a HDD (hard drive) with a larger internal electronic cache (aka “buffer”) will probably perform better than the same drive with a smaller cache because the cache can…
Windows 1.0 was released 34 years ago, in November 1985. It wasn’t much: Just a standard DOS setup (on a single 5.25″, 1.2MB floppy disk) wrapped in a simple point-and-click interface and displayed in CGA 640×200px resolution or Hercules monochrome green or amber. This combination of OS and “shell” was primitive, but it could run…
If a PC is running slow despite having reasonably current and otherwise-healthy hardware, then too-little RAM is for sure a prime suspect — especially if the PC was originally configured at the low end of the OS’s RAM recommendations. Of course, if your PC is old, or has an underpowered CPU, or an old spinning-platter…
