Category Archives: computer tips

What does a yellow light on my Amazon Alexa Echo mean?! [SOLVED]

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Question: What does a blinking yellow light on my Amazon Alexa Echo mean? Answer: If your Alexa device starts showing a pulsing yellow light, it means that a message or notification* is waiting for you. To hear your notifications you can say things like: “Alexa, play my messages” or “Alexa, what did I miss?” 🙂 *NOTE: if you have not enabled messaging, it could be the new package notification feature… you can also check your notifications by saying “Alexa, what are my

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Prevent iTunes from opening when connecting iPhone

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It can be super annoying when iTunes keeps opening every time you connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac or PC 🙁 Fortunately, there is a very easy solution 🙂 Stop iTunes opening every time you plug in your iPhone or iPad Start iTunes Open Preferences Click the Devices tab Check the box marked Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically Voila, after that you can connect iPhones, iPads or iPods with impunity and not have to worry

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Can’t find network printer [SOLVED]

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Recently my mother-in-law could not get a network printer added to her Windows PC. The solution was fairly simple: #1 Connect the printer via WiFi (this involved going to the setup menu on the printer itself and pressing the WPS button on the internet router) #2 Changing the Windows 7 PC’s WiFi connection from “Public” to “Work” #3 Add the printer via Windows “add printer” button Thus, the solution involved: connecting the printer to the network and making sure the

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Fix bad sound on Lenovo ThinkPad [SOLVED]

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If you read my blog you probably know that I am a big ThinkPad fan. Lenovo has continued the classic IBM lineup and now there is a ThinkPad for almost any taste. My current favorite is the Lenovo ThinkPad T470. This 14″ beauty is nearly perfect for work and travel. However, from the factory it does suffer from a (fixable) issue that seems to plague many modern ThinkPads… terrible sound!  Specifically, the sound is extremely echo prone… After listening to

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[SOLVED] Lenovo BSOD on Windows 7, Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown

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One my clients uses a number of Lenovo mini PC systems. The systems perform very well for their intended purposes, however, some of the systems were sporadically shutting down (blue screen of death). Thankfully, disabling Bluetooth devices/adapters in Device Manager seems to have permanently resolve the issue. The client did not need the bluetooth capability in the first place, so now all is well 🙂 For reference, here is the error message and assorted diagnostic info: Problem signature: Problem Event Name:

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When closing TeamViewer it automatically locks my PC back to the logon screen?! [SOLVED]

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Recently I had a client dealing with a Windows PC always being locked when they logged into their machine via TeamViewer. They wanted to be able to login directly to the machine without a password prompt so they tried disabling automatic lock via Windows Power Settings, no luck. They tried auto logon via control userpasswords2, no luck. Thankfully, I was able to fix the issue by utilizing the following TeamViewer option: Actions -> Lock -> UNCHECK Lock on session end Screenshot:

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Orange solid status light on Synology NAS? [SOLVED]

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Q. What does a solid orange status light on my Snology DS 1813+ mean? -Sean T. A. Great question! Here are the meanings of the status lights Green Static Status LED Volume Normal Orange Static Status LED Available volume space < 1GB Available volume space < 1 % Orange Blinking Status LED Volume degraded or crashed DSM not installed Green/Orange Alternating Status LED No internal disk No Color / Status LED Off  HDD Hibernation In your instance, it would appear that

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