EZ Computer - Janis Hellew

  Every storage drive dies eventually, and when it's near death, you'll see the signs. Strange noises, corrupted files, crashing during boot, and glacial transfer speeds all point to the inevitable end. This is normal, especially if your drive is more than a few years old. Older spinning  hard drives  have moving parts that can degrade over time, or the drives' magnetic sectors can go bad. Newer  solid-state drives  (SSDs) don't have moving parts, but their storage cells degrade a little bit every time you write to them, meaning they too will eventually fail (though SSD reliability is much better than it used to be). Unless your drive experiences excessive heat or physical trauma, it'll probably fail gradually. That means, even if your drive isn't making strange noises, you should keep an eye on its health once in a while, so you can prepare for death before it happens. Here's how to do that. Most modern drives have a feature called  S.M.A.R.T.  (Self-...

  Before making any substantial changes, it's always a good idea to back up your data—and that goes double when you're messing with your drive. If you have a  backup tool  you really like, go ahead and use that. I also recommend  cloning the entire drive . That way, if something goes wrong, you can restore an exact image of the original drive and try a different approach. For this process, we've found  DiskGenius  to be one of the few free options left.

Motion smoothing is a video-processing feature found in most TVs. It works by injecting new frames between the frames in a video signal to make the image motion look less jerky.  (often in conjunction with patterns of backlight flickering to further enhance the effect). It works, but the result is a video that looks unnatural. It's often called the "soap opera effect," and it makes the movies and shows you're watching look like they're all recorded for daytime TV. Film content is usually recorded at 24 frames per second, and TV content is usually kept at 30fps. Motion smoothing bumps those numbers up to 60, 120, or even (depending on the TV manufacturer) 960 with different tricks. Most content was created, edited, and mastered at 24 or 30 frames per second, so making it look smoother is extremely jarring. Why Motion Smoothing Is Good for Sports   The motion smoothing is a useful feature when you're watching live sports, especially sports involving a ball that ...

  For anyone who wants to  take screenshots in Windows 11 , the Print Screen and  Alt + PrtSc  options are still available. A new  Windows Key + PrtSc  shortcut will place your screenshot into the  Pictures > Screenshots  folder and Windows' Photos app. You can also use PrtSc with  OneDrive . Open  Settings >   Backup  in OneDrive and check  Automatically Save Screenshots  to ensure all screengrabs are saved in a folder in the cloud.

  Windows+Period :  Inserts emojis, GIFs, and symbols Windows+Plus :  Zooms in Ctrl+K :  Types an internet address or starts a new search Ctrl+Shift+T :  Restores closed browser tabs Windows+Tab :  Switches between apps and desktops Windows+L :  Locks the computer Windows+X : To Menu that  Shuts down the computer