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Printers are notorious for failing frequently. A quick restart of the printer or computer usually fixes most intermittent issues, but occasionally it’s best to reset your printing settings and reinstall the printer completely. Consider this a final troubleshooting step; it’s best to try other options first. You can read our guide for troubleshooting printing problems on macOS for some other potential solutions. Reset the Printing System Search for “Printers” in Spotlight, or open up the “Printers & Scanners” settings from System Preferences....

Closing browser tabs one by one is a pain. Chrome and Firefox let you select tabs on your address bar, and you can quickly close those tabs with a keyboard shortcut or your mouse. How to Select Multiple Tabs and Close Them To select individual tabs, hold down the Ctrl key and click the tabs you want to close. To select a range of tabs, click a tab, hold down the Shift key, and then click another tab....

Using your iPhone or iPad with your voice is as easy as saying “Hey Siri” and speaking a request out loud. You’ll have instant access to Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant. Here’s how to set it up. What Is “Hey Siri”? “Hey Siri” is a feature in Apple products that listens for the spoken words “Hey Siri” to bring Siri to attention. The command is a verbal replacement for needing to hold down the home or side button on your iPhone or iPad to call up Siri....

Do you need to pump large amounts of data to a multitude of clients simultaneously, while only using a single IP address? By using “link aggregation” we can join several separate network cards on the system into one humongous NIC. Overview Link aggregation was designed to give you the option of increasing available network bandwidth and resiliency, without completely changing your infrastructure to do so (with the cost that such a move would entail)....

Nintendo’s Island Transfer Tool With the new Island Transfer Tool, players have two options to transfer their data to another Nintendo Switch console. You can either transfer your entire island to a new Nintendo Switch system, or you can transfer an individual player data to their very own island. A Nintendo Switch Online membership is not required for save data transfers, although you will need to download a separate free tool from the Nintendo eShop....

There are plenty of task applications and reminder apps on the market. But if you already use Google Calendar, it may simply make sense to display tasks and reminders in the same place as your appointments. This can make Google Calendar your go-to application for everything time- and date-based. Display Tasks and Reminders on Google Calendar You can easily display tasks and reminders in your Google Calendar, or one or the other....

In previous versions of Windows the SmartScreen filter was a feature of Internet Explorer, with Windows 8 it becomes part of the Windows file system. But how does it know which files have been downloaded and which ones originated from your PC? Read on to see how How-To Geek went exploring in the file system. Note: The information provided in this article is for educational purposes only. So What’s The Magic?...

Buy something at an electronics store and you’ll be confronted by a pushy salesperson who insists you need an extended warranty. You’ll also see extended warranties pushed hard when shopping online. But are they worth it? There’s a reason stores push extended warranties so hard. They’re almost always pure profit for the store involved. An electronics store may live on razor-thin product margins and make big profits on extended warranties and overpriced HDMI cables....

This year, How-To Geek’s own Justin was on-site at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where every gadget manufacturer shows off their latest creations, and he was able to sit down and get hands-on with most of them. Here’s the best of the bunch. Make sure to also check out our list of the Worst of CES 2011, where we covered the gadgets that just didn’t make the cut....

Every week we bring you interesting trivia and milestones from the archives of Geekdom. Today we’re taking a peek at the birth of Twitter, ten years of Mac OS X, and the longest space stay in history. Twitter Turns Five Twitter officially launched in July of 2006, but the first tweet went out on March 21, 2006 when Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey sent out the first tweet, “just setting up my twttr”....

Visual Studio Code v1.57 launched in May 2021 with a new “Workspace Trust” feature. This is a security mechanism which helps you avoid accidental code execution when you can’t trust a repository’s origins. Workspace Trust is active by default. When you open a new folder, Code will display a dialog asking you to trust the files within. If you say yes, the editor will function normally. If you press no, Code will enter a new “restricted mode” with reduced functionality....

A WAN, or “Wide Area Network,” is a computer network designed to connect multiple smaller Local Area Networks (LANs). Your home network is your LAN, and it is connected to your neighbors over a WAN, often managed by your Internet Service Provider. You could think of the internet itself as one gigantic WAN. While the Internet itself is a WAN, it’s possible for a smaller WAN to exist that runs over the internet, like a business that wants to connect multiple offices....

PunkBuster is an anti-cheat program installed by some PC games. It includes two processes—PnkBstrA.exe and PnkBstrB.exe—that run in the background on your computer. PunkBuster monitors your system for evidence of cheating in online games. What Is PunkBuster? PunkBuster, developed by Even Balance, Inc., has a long history. It was created in 2000, and was first integrated into 2001’s Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It’s currently available for Mac and Linux as well as Windows, so even Mac or Linux gamers may notice PunkBuster running in the background....

The $WINDOWS.~BT and $WINDOWS.~WS folders are associated with the Windows 10 upgrade process. They may appear on either Windows 7, 8, or 10, using gigabytes of disk space. These are hidden files, so you’ll have to show hidden files in Windows Explorer or File Explorer to see them. On Windows 7 and 8 RELATED: How to Show Hidden Files and Folders in Windows During the free Windows 10 upgrade period, Windows 7 and 8 automatically downloaded Windows 10 installation files and stored them in the $WINDOWS....

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite malware fighting tricks. Now we’re back to highlight some of the tips and tricks you shared. Our Ask the Readers series gives our awesome and technologically literate readers a chance to show off their know-how. Today we’re rounding up some of the tips and tricks from Wednesday’s Ask the Reader post What Are Your Best Malware Fighting Tricks and highlighting them here....

Send a Command’s Output to the Clipboard Note: This will work for any command. How many times have you used the ipconfig command only to copy and paste the output? You will never have to do that again as you can simply send the output directly to the clipboard. Open Command Prompt From a Folder Have you ever opened the command prompt and entered endless cd commands trying to get to a folder ?...

Play Video This isn’t quite a full retirement. The Scout will not be taken into the woods and shot, or forced into the risky life of a bomb-defusing robot. Instead, the program is being reoriented. “As a result, we are ending our field tests and reorienting the program.” According to Bloomberg, there were approximately 400 workers on the project, and nearly all will be moved to other teams, leaving behind a skeleton crew to explore autonomous robots....

Once a week we round up some of the reader letters we’ve answered and share the advice with everyone. This week we’re looking at how to search within web sites, downloading apps from places other than Google Play, and getting started with dual booting operating systems. How Can I Find an Article I Forgot to Bookmark? Dear Home Theater, I saw an article on HTG a few months ago that covered how to build your own high-gain projector screen....

Windows 7 adds functionality to your login screen to give you additional logon options. If you want to lose the clutter, here is how to disable some or all of your credential providers. Whether it was installed from the factory or add-on software you installed, these registry settings will disable the unwanted credential providers at your login screen. It will not be obvious what some of the providers are but you should be able to determine which one goes to which provider by looking at the value of the (Default) DWORD inside each key....

A few weeks ago we covered installing Tomato, an open-source router firmware, on your Linksys WRT54GL. Today we’ll be going over how to install OpenVPN alongside Tomato, and setting it up to access your home network from anywhere in the world! What is OpenVPN? A virtual private network (VPN) is a trusted, secure connection between one local area network (LAN) and another. Think of your router as the middle man between the networks that you’re connecting to....