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Barry asked how to remove the login from his new Windows 10 laptop. Recently Answer Line discussed getting rid of the Windows 10 password by tinkering with Windows’ power settings. Those tips to remove the password prompts certainly work as long as you’re not on a laptop, but I’m going to show you how to remove the password entirely so you’ll never need to enter it. Of course, this unsafe maneuver comes with all the typical disclaimers such as this isn’t secure and it will allow anyone to access your PC, so you’ve been warned. This is just for people whose PCs live at home, in an environment with little to zero strangers passing by, and no need for it to be under lock and key all the time. Also these instructions were carried out on my personal system, which runs Windows 10 Home. Netplwiz is a “hidden” tool used to control user accounts.  First, click the Windows 10 Start Menu and type Netplwiz. Select the program that appears with the same name. This window gi...

Aren’t you glad you have a backup? Without it, you would lose everything—instead of just the hardware. I’m going to assume here that you used Windows 7’s built-in backup system, because that’s the default and the one you want for recovering data. (An image backup is for recovering Windows itself, which you don’t want to do on a new PC.) I’ll also assume that your new PC runs Windows 10. So the real trick here is to restore a Windows 7 backup in Windows 10. Plug your backup drive into your new PC and make sure you can access its contents. Then, in the search field near the Start button, type backup and select Backup and Restore (Windows 7). Once the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) window comes up, click or tap Select another backup to restore files from. (Microsoft apparently doesn’t mind ending a sentence with a preposition.) If there’s more than one backup on the drive, select the appropriate one (probably the most recent). In the Restore Files (Advan...

If there’s a website you visit several times a day, there’s no reason to take the slow lane to get there. You can add a button to your home screen that looks just like an app icon and will launch that webpage directly in Chrome. To do this, first navigate to the site that you want quick access to (you know, like Greenbot). Then touch the overflow button (three vertical dots) and select Add to Home Screen. All you have to do is touch Add and the site will join your other apps and widgets. One recommendation: you can customize the text below the icon, Just touch the text inside of the Add to Home Screen box and change it up.  In our example, I removed the site description so that just Greenbot appears with the icon. While this type of functionality goes all the way back to the days of the original iPhone, it’s still useful for quick access to a site you visit with great regularity. This story, "How to add a web site to your Android home screen with ...

Yes, Windows 10 is great, but there are some tips and tricks from older versions of Windows that are still plenty useful. Windows 10 may have all the modern conveniences, like Cortana, multiple desktops, and app notifications. But that doesn't make some of the old-fashioned Windows tricks from previous versions any less useful. Here are three Windows golden oldies worth remembering. Desktop shake Sometimes you have too many windows open and it's difficult to focus on that spreadsheet in front of you, or just to stay organized. That's when it's handy to know about desktop shake, which first appeared in Windows 7. All you have to do is click and hold the top of a program window, and start shaking your mouse (and thus the window) back and forth. After a few shakes, all open windows on your desktop will disappear save the one you're shaking. More Send To options If you wish there were more Send To options when you right-click a folder, try th...

To install a case fan, hold the fan in place with one hand and tighten the four screws with the other. Many of the chips inside a typical PC generate a lot of heat and require some form of active cooling to remain stable. System builders usually rely on heatsinks and fans to manage the heat within a PC. If you’re upgrading or building a new PC—or your PC is overheating—you may need to install new or additional fans.  Here’s how to identify when you need to replace a fan and how to do it yourself. Identifying Faulty Fans Often, a fan will start to emit strange grinding noises or vibrations in its last death throws. Sometimes there is no warning at all, and a fan will silently come to a stop. Open up the computer’s case, turn it on, and look around with a flashlight (but try not to touch anything while the computer is on). In all but the lowest-power, passively cooled systems, you’ll likely find at least four fans: an intake fan, an exhaust fan, a CPU c...

Frank Miller (and no, I don’t know if he’s that Frank Miller) asked if there was “a way to stop or reduce the spam mail that I receive?” Short of cutting yourself off from the Internet, there’s no way to eliminate spam entirely. The best you can do is filter out most of it, and even that has some unfortunate consequences. Your email client (the local program or cloud-based service you use to access and send email) almost certainly filters spam, moving suspicious messages to a separate folder. But it’s not perfect. Some spam tricks the filter and ends up in your inbox. And some legitimate messages, called false positives, end up in the spam folder. While we can’t remove these errors entirely, we can reduce them. [Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector. Send your query to answer@pcworld.com.] 1. Train your filter When you find spam in your inbox, don’t just delete it. Select it, and tell your mail client that this particular message is spam. ...

If you live in the US and have a computer, tablet or smartphone connected to the internet, then this may be the most important news you read all year. Earlier this month we saw thousands of people across the US get their hands on the the latest Online ID protection from SaferWeb, after yet another increase in identity theft and web-history monitoring. We have however been advised that because of its unexpected popularity, availability is very limited and is now on a first come first serve basis. Experts Are Now Calling SaferWeb, “A Game Changer For Internet Users” As part of the special promotion due to end July 7, 2016, a group of Engineers teamed up with innovative new software provider SaferWeb, to provide the latest ID Protection thats just gone viral. If you have a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone connected to the internet, your activities could be monitored and private information collected when you’re Internet shopping or banking. Even just browsing onlin...