Recent content by britechguy

I would take a look on YouTube for "Replace CD (or DVD) Drive" plus your make and model of laptop. Generally, these are a cinch to replace as they're generally held in by a single screw, that is accessible from the outside of the case, and are unitary. It's a pull out, push in affair in most...

This could be secondary to icon cache having become corrupted. See the search results from: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Windows+10+Rebuild+icon+cache There is a long list of tutorials and I have no idea which will suit you best, but I would try rebuilding the system icon cache.

I'd try: Doing a Windows 10 Repair Install or Feature Update Using the Windows 10 ISO file

It doesn't matter if the CD is brand new if it has a defect (and it could) nor, even if it's perfect, will it matter if your CD drive has gone wonky or just doesn't like it. Laptop optical drives are notorious for being finicky and failing far earlier than others do. You need to do some...

What is the make, model, and age of your laptop? All it takes is a cracked solder connection on a sound card, which can happen, for "sudden death" to occur with regard to external connections while anything that is still not dependent on same works fine. If push comes to shove, and even just...

Agreed. And in this case I would remove the battery and leave the phone that way for however long is convenient before putting it back in and trying to fire it up again. How I miss having a phone where the "hard complete power down" via battery removal is possible.

I would be inclined to do a completely clean reinstall, presuming you were doing either a Reset with "keep nothing" or have a backup of your user data files you can restore. Doing a completely clean reinstall (options a & b are downloadable PDF files): a) Completely Clean Win10...

Brave and AdBlock browsers for mobile take care of that. I haven't browsed the web without an ad blocker practically since the moment they (ad blockers for any platform) hit the streets.

Indeed, as stated by Clarke's Laws: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little...

Because there will likely come a time when you get a new computer, and want to most easily port over your user data. If you (any you) don't want to take separate user data backups then follow your own path. I will continue recommending full system image backups for "recovery from disaster"...

The recovery mechanism for Windows 10 has always gone straight to Windows 10. There has never been a requirement to start at Windows 7/8/8.1 on systems that were upgraded. You cannot reinstall Windows 8 absent having either the OEM Recovery partition or install media, but why would you want to?

Not exactly. See: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/124150-hide-show-cortana-button-taskbar-windows-10-a.html I have never used the Personal Digital Assistant or voice-activated component thereof of Cortana and disabled that part of Cortana when my machines had 1507 and this could be...

One does want the Microsoft Recovery partition, but it's highly unlikely one would want the factory Restore partition if one takes full system image backups and has those available to restore from.

That depends on what you're talking about. You are absolutely correct with regard to Backup & Restore (Windows 7). This was the full system image backup and it was deprecated, see: Microsoft Announcement of things removed/deprecated as of Fall Creators Update, including SIB [Backup and...

Do you have any USB devices (and that would include SD Cards) plugged in? When USB devices or cables start going wonky you'll sometimes get disconnect/reconnect looping.