But is this necessary? If you’ve ever used a driver cleaner, it was probably quite a few years ago. You shouldn’t need to run them anymore unless you encounter problems after upgrading drivers. What is a Driver Cleaner? Hardware drivers aren’t just self-contained pieces of software. For example, perhaps you were upgrading your NVIDIA or AMD graphics driver to the latest version. This could cause problems, as these driver files were never designed to work together....

But is your history really deleted, and is there any way to find out what websites you visited? Read on to see several ways that your deleted web app history can be recovered. Clearing your net surf tool history merely deletes these files from your hard drive. Set your recovery software to scan those directories so that recover history. When you clear your surfing app history, your DNS cache is not touched....

Quick Links Zip files can be used for a lot different things. What Are Zip Files? Think of the way a folder works in Windows. What if you have a folder that contains 20 files, and need to email it to someone? This is where the definition of a zip file ends for most people. With the zip file created, just select and drag your files into the zip folder....

Here’s how to get your Steam Families set up properly. What Is Steam Families? Why would you want to do this? They can also earn their own set of Steam achievements for the relevant games. The system is not without limitations, however. Only one machine or user can pull up the library at one time. Originally, Family Sharing and Family Options didn’t play nice together either. This meant that library sharing and parental restrictions couldn’t be used in tandem....

But if you’re a geek, there’s a chance you’ve dabbled with a third-party uninstaller. Third-party uninstallers aren’t a system tool most users will need, but they’re not entirely useless. Unlikememory optimizersandregistry cleaners, they can potentially be useful in some situations. Why Aren’t Normal Installers Always Good Enough? Instead, the installer is free to do whatever it wants to your system. Typically, installers will create a directory in Program Files as well as scatter shortcuts around the system....

This still won’t protect your data if your setup is ever stolen. A Windows password helps keep honest people honest, protecting your gear from casual unauthorized access. However, all bets are off once they have physical access to your box. They can then boot from this equipment and access your files from the live environment. This is only possible if the computer’s BIOS is set to boot from removable devices....

How are spammers getting all our email addresses? And can we do anything to hide our email address from spammers? Unfortunately, there’s not a lot you could do to prevent spammers from bombarding you with emails. There are some tips that will help protect you, but spammers will probably find your email address eventually. Thesepassword leakshappen with frightening regularity. These leaked databases are normally considered a security threat because they often show account names and passwords....

Here are some of the more common ones, what differentiates them, and what to use them for. After that, we’ll tackle compressed formats. That is, an analog waveform is approximated in regular intervals. PCM is characterized by two properties: sample rate and bit depth. In terms of audio formats, this is pretty much the foundation. True sound, in the real world, is continuous. In the digital world, it’s not. It’s changing based on certain criteria at pre-defined intervals....

So what is it? It might be the most important technology we have. Most digital security measures, everything from safe browsing to secure email, depend on it. Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek Without encryption, we’d have no privacy. ThisCybersecurity Awareness Weekarticle is brought to you in association withIncogni. What Is Encryption? To anyone else, it’ll appear as gibberish or a meaningless collection of characters and symbols. An encryption scheme just describeshowa message or data is changed to make it unreadable....

Want to know what all the GitHub hubbub is about? Read on to find out. Git is similar to other version control systems—Subversion, CVS, and Mercurial to name a few. So, Git is a version control system, but what does that mean? Version control systems keep these revisions straight, storing the modifications in a central repository. Every developer can see these new changes, download them, and contribute. It stores file changes more efficiently and ensures file integrity better....

This allows you (and other people) to recover files you’ve deleted. This is a particularly important concern when you’re disposing of a computer or hard drive. A file recovery program can scan a hard drive for these deleted files and restore them. If the file has been partially overwritten, the file recovery program can only recover part of the data. Note that this doesn’t apply to solid-state drives (SSDs) – see below for why....

In the Beginning There Was IE, and It Was Good? 1999: Internet Explorer 5.x Microsoft invented Ajax. What Made It Go So Very Wrong? We take pride in our geek knowledge. So whys Internet Explorer a different story? It looks great, awesome! Even Internet Explorer 8 usage has dropped to single-digit percentages for many websites. Geeks dont hate something thats inferiorbut they do hate it when its forced on them....

Have you ever wondered why that photo paper works so much better? Surely, paper is paper, right? What can be so special about it? Isn’t Photo Paper a Ripoff? Everything associated with home printing is priced at a high premium—most notably ink cartridges. What is There to Know About Paper? Like many aspects of graphic arts, paper has its own set of complicated esoteric terms. Don’t expect a ream of 32 pound typing paper to weight 32 pounds!...