How to: Replacing A Broken Laptop Screen

Whether it's cracked or has one too many blown pixels, a broken laptop display can stop you dead in your tracks. But with the right tools, a little technical know-how, and a bit of patience you can replace a damaged LCD.

Broken laptop screen

Note: In this article, I show you how to replace the screen on an Asus UL50V notebook, which has an LED-backlit LCD.

Depending on the make and model of your laptop, the internal hardware and specific steps may vary. The general process however, should be the same.







Should you try this fix?
If accidental damage is covered under your laptop's warranty, don't do this fix yourself. Get the laptop repaired under the warranty.

Lastly, understand that if you follow the instructions in laptop screen replacement, you do so at your own risk.  I am not held responsible for injury, damage, or loss of data.

Getting a replacement screen and tools
To begin your fix, you'll need a few simple tools and a replacement LCD screen. For tools, I recommend a screwdriver with a variety of small bits, such as a Phillips #00 and a Torx T5. It's also a good idea to have a few thin metal blades or plastic spudgers. These are really handy for removing the trim that surrounds the screen.

As for the replacement LCD, you should be able to buy one either from the laptop manufacturer's authorized parts dealer or a third-party supplier. Depending the screen, they usually cost between $50 and $150 dollars—more if it's a high-end display or you buy an OEM replacement. Regardless, you'll want to buy a new screen that matches your broken one exactly. The only sure way to do this is to remove the broken one.

1. Remove the screen bezel
After disconnecting the power supply and removing the battery, carefully examine the bezel around the screen. You'll need to remove this bezel to access the screws that hold the LCD panel in place.
On this laptop, several rubber cushions hide screws, which hold the bezel in place. I'll need to remove these cushions and the screws that are underneath.

With the hidden screws removed, I used a thin metal blade to pop loose one of the bottom corners and worked my way around the bezel with a plastic spudger.










Note: Your laptop may not have cushions or hidden screws. The bezel may simply snap onto the lid or be held in place with double-side tape. Just, adapt my instructions to fit your specific laptop.
Regardless of how you do it, you'll need to completely remove the bezel.

2. Remove the broken LCD panel
With the LCD's mounting brackets exposed, you can remove the screws that secure it to the lid. Then rest the display front-side-down on the case and disconnect its cable.

If your laptop was made before 2010 and has a LCD with fluorescent backlights, it will likely have two cables. But as this is an LED-backlit LCD, it only has one.

Now, locate the manufacturer's label and note the model number. Using this information you should be able to buy an exact match for your broken screen.

3. Install the new LCD panel
Once your new screen arrives, unpack it and make sure it matches the old one.

If the dimensions, mounting brackets, and connector all match, you ready to install the screen. Connect the new panel to the cable, position the panel in the lid, and secure it using the appropriate screws.

4. Test the new LCD panel and reinstall the bezel
Before reattaching the bezel, it's a good idea to test the new panel. Reconnect the battery and power cable and turn the machine on. If the display works, you can reattach the bezel and any external screws and rubber cushions. The repair is now complete.

As fixes go, this one isn't too tough, but it does take a little patience and planning to make sure you get the right replacement screen.

Original article at Techrepublic

What is Crossfire?

Previously I worked on a customers system that had two ATI 4800 GPU's using Crossfire. It's a technology that ATI developed so up to four graphics cards can be used in a single computer to improve graphics. Crossfire has the advantage over Nvidias SLI (Scalable Linked Interface) where you don not need to have both cards the identical GPU. 

You'll usually only find systems that use Crossfire or SLI in high end gaming machines. The customer I recently visited had a quad core AMD processor running 3.2ghz, 8gb ram, 600gb HD, and CCL lighting galore in the case.....very nice.

How to: Have Cortana use Google instead of Bing in Windows 10

Windows 10 has a pretty amazing search assistant called Cortana. She comes hand in hand with Bing, as Bing is owned by Microsoft. So every search result that comes back is from Bing. That's all fine and dandy but if you're a fan of Google that's a big no-no.

Here's how you can force Cortana to use Google instead of Bing.

1. Navigate to Settings. You can get there from the Start menu.
2.Select System.
3. Click Default apps in the left pane.

4. Click Microsoft Edge under the "Web browser" heading. ...

5. Select the new browser (ex: Chrome) in the menu that pops up.











6. Great....Now that you've changes the default browser you'll need to install a Chrome Browser extension called Chrometana. You can download it here.


7. Once the extension has been installed you'll see a webpage welcoming you to Chrometana and to choose your default search engine. Simply click Google here and you're all set.

Now when searching with Cortana in Windows you'll see results from Google instead. 

If you ever feel to change the search engine or remove Chrometana click  click the triple bar button in the upper-right corner of the window, select “Settings” from the drop-down menu, and then click “Extensions” in the list of items on the left side of the “Settings” tab that displays (under “Chrome”).

Tech History: How Google got its name

We use it on a daily basis...that web page to look up an infinite amount of online information what we know as the internet. But why the name Google? 
And what in the world does the word Google mean?

Google web page in 2000 (Waybackmachine.com)

Back sometime in the late 90’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin were classmates at Stanford University and the internet was still in it's infancy. 

Bulletin Board Systems and Compuserve were out the door and making way for HTML and web pages. Larry and Sergey noted that conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page. 

The two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites and developed Page Rank. 

Page Rank determined a website's relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site. They called the technology 'Backrub' because their search engine searched through backlinks. Get it? ;-D

Believing that nobody in their right mind would invest in a technology called 'Backrub' (sounds more akin to anything related to porn than a search engine), they rename it to Google.

The name comes from a misspelling of Googol, which is the number one (1) followed by one hundred 0's.

What's "Googol" you may ask?

Well, here's a little trivia.

The words googol and googolplex were originally coined by Milton Sirotta, a 9 year old nephew of Edward Kasner a famous American mathematician. As Milton put it, googolplex was shorthand for a number that was otherwise so large you would have to write “one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired.”

10,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000,­000

A Googol

During yet another name brainstorming session, their friend Sean, a fellow graduate student, suggested the word googolplex.

Larry responded that he liked the smaller term 'googol', but felt like the term in general was a great fit for what they were trying to do: index an unfathomable number of Internet web pages. When Sean did a search for googol to see if the domain was available, he had accidentally misspelled it as Google. Larry realized that Sean had mispelled it but liked the word he came up with and Google was born.

How to: Removing malware, viruses and spyware

Often malware, the overall term for any virus, worms, spyware, and adware, is installed and can infect a users system without their knowledge. By the time it's realized a system is infected, a system can have constant pop-ups, is slowed to a crawl when accessing files, unable to access or even leave specific web pages, or worse... you're not even able to access the internet at all.

The steps in removing malware are standard throughout the computer industry.

1. Enter Safe Mode
On a Windows system, Safe Mode is a diagnostic tool that includes only the minimum drivers needed to boot your system safely to the desktop without any settings or problematic software interfering. Once there, you can troubleshoot further, to eliminate the problem and boot the system normally again.

The following steps apply for Windows XP through Windows 8. If you have a Windows 10 machine, check out the PC Worlds' video how to enter Safe Mode here.

   a. Turn on (or reboot) your computer.
   You can find Safe Mode in your Advanced Boot Options menu.
   b. Wait for the computer to initialize the hardware and prepare to load the operating system.
   c. Press and hold the F8 key while you wait for the Windows logo to appear. if the Windows logo appears or if the operating system begins to load, you may need to restart the computer and try again.
   d.The Advanced Boot Options screen for Windows will appear. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to select Safe Mode, and press Return.
   e. If you need access to the Internet or network while in Safe Mode, select Safe Mode with Networking.
   f. Windows will boot into Safe Mode. When the desktop appears, it will display 'Safe Mode' in all four corners to let you know that you're in this special mode.

For Windows 10 getting to Safe Mode is a little different. Check out PC Worlds' video here.

Once you're in Safe Mode, you may find that Windows runs faster. This is usually a good indication that your system has some sort of malware or just alot of programs which are supposed to run in the background at startup.

2. Delete/Remove Temporary files
Before conducting a virus scan you'll want to remove temporary files. Doing this will speed up the scan of the antivirus software. To use the Disk Cleanup utility included with Windows, enter diskcleanup in the search bar at the Start Menu, or select Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup.

3. Download and install Antispyware/Antivirus software.
It's first recommended to install and run a program to remove spyware and adware first. A good tool for the job is Malwarebytes or Spybot Search & Destroy.

Then scan for antiviruses. There are a number of antivirus/antivirus software which come bundles with both antivirus, anti spyware that also scan for the entire malware spectrum. These commercial products such as Symantec or McAfee are known as 'End Point" software, are very reliable when detecting threats. Avg, Panda, and Kaspersky also provide well known products for removing viruses & spyware. The products come with a yearly subscription, however most of the companies offer a limited free version which scans for viruses only.

 Which provides the best protection? That my friends depends on who you ask. There are dozens of reviews on the internet. Just Google "Symantec vs Mcafee" ad you'll get a host of reviews comparing the two. CNET, PCworld and Techradar have some thorough reviews on antivirus/antispyware packages.

Whichever products you use, it's safe to say it's worth it to have your system stay clean and protected.