Submit Your Question

If your question is used on the air, you will receive a FREE lunch at Krieger's!

*Name:

*E-mail:

*Question:

*required fields

Eric, I have software on floppy disk (PC MARS, LOTUS) that I still use.  Now that my new computer doesn’t have a floppy, can I move my floppy disks to CD.  If I do, will the programs install from CD, like they did on floppy?

There are lots of options really.  First, despite the fact that most new computers do not come standard with a floppy drive anymore, we have customer request us to add a floppy drive periodically.  Both internal and external are options and both are priced at or under thirty dollars.  The external plugs in USB and sits beside or on top of your existing “tower”, and has the advantage of portability (you can easily move the external floppy drive from one to computer to another (great if you have both a desktop and laptop for example and don’t want to buy two floppy drives) or keep the same external floppy drive for your next new computer).

Another option is to take the floppy disks and put them on CD.  Its really easy, and provides the advantage of taking the entire set of floppy disks and putting them on a single CD.  This process is simple, just go to a computer that does have both a floppy disk drive and a CD Burner, and create a folder on the desktop of your computer (or anywhere else that you would like), then after putting disk 1 into the floppy drive, simply open the “My Computer” icon and double click the “A” drive (the floppy drive is the “A” dive on most computer), and simply copy and paste the files from the floppy disk into the new folder that you had earlier created.  Do this for all of the floppy disks in the set, all into the same folder on your computer, and then record that folder to CD, where you will be able to use this CD to install those programs in the future.

Eric, I was “cleaning up” my computer and accidently deleted several pictures that I didn’t want to delete.  Is there a way to get them back?

Absolutely, and pictures are among the easiest files to recover after they have been accidently deleted.  With software that we use, we are able to recover data from a computer’s hard drive that has been deleted, even after having been deleted from the computers Recycle Bin.  This includes data from memory sticks, digital camera flash cards and other storage devices.

The key is to do as little as possible or nothing at all, after the files have been deleted, before recovery software is run.  The reason for this is that files can be recovered from a computer’s hard drive that have been deleted only if the area that the files were previously stored on the computer’s hard drive, hasn’t been rewritten with new information.  Something as simple as browsing the web stores files on your computer and could potentially overwrite the same area of the hard drive that stores your deleted information.   Bring the computer into Computing Made Easy as quickly as possible to yield the best results.

My computer is running slow, my kids use the computer to download music from the Internet, could my computer be getting to full?

Sure it could be getting full, and a full computer can mean slowness, however I just don’t see this very often, as computer hard drive now store so much information and slowness is more likely to result from several other things.  The first thing we should do is to check on our available storage space of our computer and see how much that we have used and how much is still free to use.

This is simple to do and displays the information in a pie chart format to make it easy to see and understand.  Simply open the “My Computer” icon and look for the “C” drive (this is the “main” hard drive on  most users computer and serves as “storage’ for almost every computer).  Now, right click on the “C” drive and choose properties and your there.  This window shows you in blue the used space and in purple the free space.  You can easily see how much of your total hard drives storage is already in use.  Unless there is very little space free (the general rule is 10% or less of the total hard drive capacity), it will not affect the performance of your computer).

If your hard drive is full, or near full, options include simply getting rid of old programs, games or unneeded files that you no longer use or need to free up space; adding more storage space, such as a second hard drive or external hard drive to store files and move files from the full hard drive to your new storage space, such as pictures, music and more; or simply getting a larger hard drive and having Computing Made Easy move the files from your current hard drive to the new larger hard drive that includes more free space.

Computer are often times slowed down by viruses, adware, spyware, program installations that add themselves to the startup of the computer, age and the need for upgrades like RAM that will boost performance (among several other reasons).  For a complete computer inspection and recommendation talk to Computing Made Easy.