(This is the second in a series of posts covering information taken from my latest book, Upgrading and Fixing Computers Do-It-Yourself For Dummies.)

What do you do with your old computer once you’ve bought your new one? With a little creativity, you can salvage a lot of it. That makes you a recycler in the truest sense of the word, giving new life to your old computer’s parts.

For example, I turned my old computer’s hard drive into a portable hard drive for about $20. Portable hard drives work very well for making backups and system images.

Follow these steps to create a portable hard drive from any hard drive: one from your old computer, a new hard drive, or a drive that’s just gathering dust in your closet:

Click to read more »

Q: When using Microsoft Works on my old computer, I could change the font and text color, save it, and it would be there for the rest of my letters.

On my new computer, I can’t seem to find a way to keep my selected font for new letters. How do I save the font so I don’t have to reset it every time?

A: It sounds like you’re only changing the font and color for your current document. You need to tell Microsoft Works’ word processor that you’re making a permanent change.

To do that, follow these steps:

1. Open Microsoft Works, and open a blank document in Microsoft Works Word Processor.
2. Click the Format menu, select Font, and choose the font and the font size that you want to use for all new documents.
3. On the File menu, click Save As, and then click Template.
4. Type a name for the word processor template, click to select the “Use this template for new Word Processor documents” check box, and then click OK.

The next time you open a document in Microsoft Works, you can automatically start typing with your favorite font and color.

When I first created this Web site in the late 90s, I fumbled in the dark. Like many newbies, I eventually bought Elizabeth Castro’s classic “HTML for the World Wide Web” book, fired up Windows Me’s Notepad, and typed in some HTML coding.

The results were quite awful, but at least I had a Web site up and running. I eventually found a theme and a Web page editor, which simplified things, but not by much.

A few months ago, I switched to WordPress, an open source, free Web publishing platform, and my idea of Web publishing changed completely. What once took hours, now took only a few minutes.

I quickly figured out how to create posts, add categories and tags, and install plug-ins — things which WordPress makes fairly easy.

Yet, I still found myself fumbling in the dark when trying to tweak small things, which brings me to Thord Daniel Hedengren‘s new book, Smashing WordPress. (Disclaimer: My own publisher, Wiley, offered me a review copy of the book, a common practice between publishers and book reviewers.) Click to read more »

Q: Internet Explorer doesn’t fill the screen when it opens. I can press F11 to make it fill the screen.

But how can I open Internet Explorer so the Web page fills the monitor without hitting F11 or clicking the resize icon in the top-left corner?

A: When you open Internet Explorer, it normally opens to the same size as when it was last closed. So, to make it open as a window that fills the screen, drag the window’s corners until they fill the screen.

Then close Internet Explorer; when you reopen it, the window will fill the screen once again. (That trick works for any window, actually.)

But if you want Internet Explorer to open so a Web page fills the entire screen, without the visual baggage of Internet Explorer’s menus and toolbars, you want “Kiosk Mode.” By tweaking Internet Explorer’s shortcut on your Start menu, you can make Internet Explorer open to fill the screen and display just your Home page, as seen to the left. Since you’re only seeing the Web page, you won’t even know Internet Explorer’s there.

Follow these steps to make Internet Explorer open in full-screen mode, just as if you’d pressed F11: Click to read more »

Q: On Figure 16-5, page 319 of Windows 7 For Dummies, I don’t have any photo layout options for printing other than full page.

How can I get a choice of layouts, please? I am tired printing single photos.

A: Windows 7’s built-in Photo Printing Wizard normally lists a variety of photo layout choices along its left pane. Some choices let you print a large photo across the entire page, for example; other options let you print wallet-sized prints, or contact sheets.
Those options vanish, however, under two conditions:

• You’ve set the program’s Paper Size options to something besides “Letter.” To fix that, click the program’s “Paper Size” drop-down box, shown to the right, and choose “Letter.”
• Your printer isn’t set up to accept a normal, 8×11 inch sheet of paper. To switch your printer to that paper size and restore the layout options, follow these steps: Click to read more »