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I am not computer savvy at all but I know that many freepers are....All of the sudden my laptop's internal speakers quit working. Did a systems restore. Trouble shooter found nothing wrong. Computer thinks the speakers are working but there is no sound. Zip. Nada. Is it time to purchase external speakers?

My daughter is a senior in high school. She wants to major in Computer Science and minor in French She has mostly looked at small (<5,000 students) liberal arts schools. Can anyone recommend some conservative schools? ACT = 26 3.26 regular GPA 3.64 weighted GPA She is also interested in playing the cello in the orchestra.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said that President Barack Obama's actions against Russia should have come much sooner. (Photos: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP; Susan Walsh/AP) House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., thinks the Obama administration was justified in retaliating Thursday against Russia with sanctions for interfering with U.S. institutions. But he said it should've been done long ago. Far from a full-throated endorsement of Obama's actions, Ryan's statement condemned the commander in chief for eight years of what he considers "ineffective foreign policy" that left the United States more vulnerable than it was when he took office in 2009. Nevertheless, Ryan agreed that...

Ransomware spiked 6,000% in 2016 and most victims paid the hackers, IBM finds Harriet Taylor 14 Dec 2016 Spam emails loaded with ransomware — malware that scrambles data and demands a ransom to decode it — increased 6,000 percent this year compared with 2015, a new study from IBM Security found. Ransomware was in almost 40 percent of all spam messages in 2016. The problem is, the business model works: 70 percent of business victims paid the hackers to get their data back, the study found. Of those who paid, 50 percent paid more than $10,000 and 20 percent paid...

Well my old windows 8 computer is slowly dying. I have a HP running windows 10 and want to have email like I used to. This new computer will not accept Win live mail or classic shell. Help needed. Thanks in advance.

Please, need help with Windows 7 Favorites. The Favorites folders are there but all are empty of their contents. Ran CCleaner, Malwarebytes and Avira a couple days ago and manually deleted the address drop down. Don't know of anything else that could have messed it up. Just did a restore at an earlier date but the file contents are still missing. I made two new files just now but they won't accept contents.

I want to buy a new laptop and would like to stay around 11-12" and under $500. I don't have a tablet, so I'm thinking of getting one that either docks to a keyboard and is detachable, or the type that flips & isn't detachable. I'm leery of the detachable, because I've read reviews of people having trouble with them after a while. I want it to have Windows 10 and a touchscreen would be nice also, but not imperative. I'm not a gamer but I do want speed ...I'd be using it for FReeping, surfing the web, email, etc,...

The source said an analysis of the metadata on Weiner’s computer has turned up “positive hits for state.gov and HRC emails,” which led Comey to revisit the FBI investigation into Clinton using a private email server system while secretary of state. A second law enforcement source confirmed the account. Weiner is the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. He resigned from Congress in 2011, after a sexting scandal. That Clinton-related emails were on Weiner’s computer, which he purportedly shared with Abedin, was reported first by The Wall Street Journal.

Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has told people she is unsure how her emails could have ended up on a device she viewed as her husband’s computer, the seizure of which has reignited the Clinton email investigation, according to a person familiar with the investigation and civil litigation over the matter. The person, who would not discuss the case unless granted anonymity, said Abedin was not a regular user of the computer, and even when she agreed to turn over emails to the State Department for federal records purposes, her lawyers did not search it for materials, not believing...

I need help with RealPlayer. I have the last free version that was made available. RealPlayer apparently tries to connect to the Internet whenever the program is opened. This is, I think, causing it to crash whenever I play videos. I was without internet access for a week and the program never stopped working once.

I am sure SOMEBODY is going to complain something about my posting this, but I have always gotten good computer advice from FR. I am getting started in voice acting, and have a website promoting my talents. Can anyone tell me how to make my main page play a sound file from a list of files? I want to have 20+ comic intros on the site, and have the webpage play one of them, at random, whenever the page is re/loaded. www.everybodyandme.com

Susan* bought her 6-year-old son John an iPad when he was in first grade. “I thought ‘why not let him get a jump on things?’ ” she told me during a therapy session. John’s school had begun using the devices with younger and younger grades—and his technology teacher had raved about their educational benefits—so Susan wanted to do what was best for her sandy-haired boy who loved reading and playing baseball. She started letting John play different educational games on his iPad. Eventually, he discovered Minecraft, which the technology teacher assured her was “just like electronic Lego.”

Florida AG Shuts Down Boynton Beach Tech Support Scam August 24, 2016 11:12 AM TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami) – A Boynton Beach tech support company which reportedly scammed its customers out of $25 million has been temporarily shut down again by court order, according to Florida’s Attorney General’s Office. The company Client Care Experts, formerly known as First Choice Tech Support, LLC, is owned by CEO Michael Seward and his partner Kevin McCormick. The state’s Attorney General’s Office said the operation was run out of a boiler room in Boynton Beach and employed more than 200 telemarketers at the location. The court...

A seminal moment in the quantum technology field just happened: Google's team of scientists have simulated a hydrogen molecule from its quantum computers, a breakthrough that suggests it could “simulate even larger chemical systems,” writes one of Google Quantum’s engineers, Ryan Rabbush. The search engine’s achievement underscores the technology’s potential as Rabbush posits it can “revolutionize the design of solar cells, industrial catalysts, batteries, flexible electronics, medicines, materials and more.”

I have done a fresh install of Win 7 OS but I can't get the windows updates. It's been a few days and I am getting nothing from MS - I've tried several "fixes" suggested on different OS forums, but still nothing. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks

Those who demand a disarmed population claim that it is the easy availability of guns that causes people to do bad things with guns. The core assumption is that guns have no useful function.  The people who wish to disarm the population constantly say that guns are only made and used for one thing - to kill people.  It is implied is that no person actually wants to kill people, and they would not, if there were no guns. From that follows the idea that people do not really want guns.  If only some barriers were put in place...

I need some help from you computer gurus. Just powered up my Toshiba laptop a little while ago and began surfing. Suddenly a tone started beeping and a message filled the screen saying a malfunction had been detected and gave a toll-free number to call to get help from a technician (yeah, right). Underneath that message is a screen saying that Windows 8.1 64-bit Defender encountered an error code: 0x80016CFA. Can't close the windows, and powering down the laptop fails, it just powers back up. I sure could use some help FRiends.

My Pine64 Media Center Several months back, I participated in a Kickstarter campaign for the PINE A64, First $15 64-Bit Single Board Super Computer. The campaign started in December of 2015, and was designed to fund the production of a 64-bit computer on a card for the masses priced at $15. Initial estimated delivery was January or February. Their initial estimates on shipping were somewhat optimistic, as I just received mine the other day (5/21/2016). Reading through some of the comments on the project, some people were rather bent out of shape about the shipping delays, which is something I...

Need expert help from any who speak 'normal' English as we have no computer gifted language experts living under the roof here. Have been using Windows XP and Outlook Express (with which I am familiar and have had no problems using) Recently during a storm, the computer fried to crispy bacon and died. Guru able to save the hard drive from the old, puting same hard drive into a reconditioned make with Windows 7 operating system....making the puter available for wifi. Problem, windows 7 is not compatible with Outlook Express and unable to reconfigure the files from old programs. Now...

The government’s cyber spying outfit has an ‘unbelievable’ child porn problem. But the NSA can’t—or won’t—say how often it finds such criminal images on its workers’ computers. Two senior U.S. intelligence officials said recently that defense and intelligence employees have an “unbelievable” amount of child pornography on their work computers and devices, and that child porn has been found on the systems of the National Security Agency, the country’s biggest intelligence organization. But the NSA, which is responsible for keeping tabs on its own computers as well as military and intelligence agency networks, cannot say just how many times employees...