I have been having problems today with copying files to a USB drive, getting this error: “You’ll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file”, I used to not have this problem. Looked at this posting on the problem, but doesn’t seem to work. Lazyweb, can you help me?

My experience with the early Macintosh

With recent blog posts on people’s early experience with the early Macintosh, I thought I would add my story as well. When the Mac was rolled out in 1984, I was still in college. I did not have the money to buy one even at student discounts, but several people in my dorm did, and I was JEALOUS! I first used a Mac in 1985 to type the one typed paper I ever typed in college (I always used a typing service or hand-printed papers). It was in a grad student’s office, and my brother and I stayed up all night typing and editing the paper using MacWrite (a final report on a research project), then took it to Kinko’s in the morning to make bound copies and turned it in at noon – whew! I was able to get a Mac for business use (mostly using it for word processing and logging into mainframes), and finally got my own personal Mac in the early 90’s (a Performa, I think).

I used to get into discussions/arguments with my dad about Macs, he was a PC guy. He would point to the expense, and I would point out that Porsches were expensive, but nothing was stopping people from buying one. Eventually, I converted to PCs/Windows laptops at home (funny how lack of funds due to raising children brings clarity to life…), but I enjoyed Macs while I had them.

Getting my HP printer to print black again

I recently bought some 902XL black ink cartridges for our HP Officejet Pro 6978 printer. After putting a new one in, the printer would not print in black – all colors worked fine. I ran the “Clean Printhead” and “Align Printhead” commands, no luck. I checked to see that the “vent” on the top of the black cartridge was uncovered (it was). I then starting doing general searching on HP forums and YouTube. I found a video that talked about using wet paper towels to clean up dried/excess ink on the bottom of the print carriage. I did that, then ran the “Clean Printhead” command twice, and was FINALLY able to get black ink text on the test page – whew!

How I reset a Windows 7 password without a password reset disk

Recently, I wanted to try to resurrect an old Windows 7 laptop. However, I had forgotten the password, and I did not have a password reset disk. Until now, I did not even know there could be such a thing as a password reset disk. After consulting the Oracle (Google – heh!), I found the following video that had great step by step instructions:

The one thing that I had to overcome was that I had a multi-word username (firstname lastname). In the video, the username was a single word. After more searching, I found this post that showed the solution – add quotes around the words in the username (“John Doe”). It did take about 20 minutes for me to go through this process, so anyone needing to follow this solution should set aside at least that amount of time. Bonus: link to more details on the net user command. Good luck!

Turning off the trackpad

I had a problem with my new HP Spectre laptop. The arrangement of the trackpad and the keyboard is such that it is very easy to swipe on the trackpad with your hands in a regular typing position. I lost some text from a file recently as a result. Fortunately for Windows laptops, you can turn the trackpad off (since I use a mouse). Whew!

Bookmarked How to Stop File Explorer Sorting by Week and Month (answers.microsoft.com)

After the recent update Windows file explorer is now grouping items by day, week and month. I do not want this. I want the old way back please. How do I get rid of this new sorting? I hope this is not

I am really glad I found this! The grouping thing has been irritating me for a long time….

Got problems with Windows 10 sound/app focus? It might be a stuck key…

Recently, I had two problems with my Windows 10 computer at work. The first one was an inability to control the volume of the computer during Google Hangouts. The volume would always go to 100%, and I could not reduce it. Eventually, I figured out that there was a function key on my keyboard for increasing the volume, and it was pressed down and stuck. After fiddling with it for a few seconds, I managed to loosen it, and was able to control my PC volume again.

The second problem was that a Radeon Graphics setting pop-up started popping up. At first, I thought it was a computer problem again, but then I started searching and found that this particular pop-up is tied to Alt-R. Sure enough, when I looked at my keyboard, the left Alt key was stuck, and after more fiddling, I was able to type the letter “r” without bringing up this pop-up.

Moral: Look at your keyboard when weird things start happening on your PC. If they persist, maybe get a new keyboard…..