Audience Questions

Audience QuestionsHour 1

Hour 1 Hour 2 Hour 3

What website hosting provider should I switch to?

Watch Rob from Cedar Rapids, IA Comments

Rob's site has been down for 3 consecutive days and he needs a better hosting provider. The chatroom came through with several suggestions of better providers:

We use SoftLayer here at the Tech Guy Labs, and Leo's been very happy with them. They may be more expensive, though.

Audience QuestionsHour 2

Hour 1 Hour 2 Hour 3

Should I get an LG or Samsung TV?

Watch Pamela from Studio City, CA Comments

Pamela currently has a 35 year old 27" CRT TV, and is looking to buy a new HD TV. She's debating between the LG and Samsung. Leo says they both will be excellent. One thing that's important to consider is TV size. She should Google "HDTV Size Calculator" and figure out how big of a TV she should get based on how far away she will be viewing it.

How can I get back into my computer after something malicious took it over?

Watch Bruce from Glendale, CA Comments

Bruce got a virus on his computer that's preventing him from gaining full access to his computer, and is asking him to pay $300 to get it back. Leo says to try starting in safe mode. If he has access to another computer, Kaspersky offers a rescue disk that he can download and make a CD that he can boot to on his computer. Once he gets access to his data, he should wipe the drive and reinstall Windows from a known, good source.

Why do I have to force shut down my Windows computer every time?

Watch Alan from Orange County, CA Comments

Alan has a Windows 7 64 bit home built computer, and has an M-Audio Delta 1010 audio card. Every time he shuts down Windows, he has to hold down the power button to shut it off. He's figured out there are two services preventing it from shutting down: audiosrv and audioendpointbuilder.

First, he should check M-Audio's support site to see if they have any fix. He has checked into gpedit.msc, a Microsoft plugin that will allow him to configure the computer more. He plans to use that to insert a batch file that will shut down those services upon shut down. Leo thinks that's a good idea and should solve his problem.

Audience QuestionsHour 3

Hour 1 Hour 2 Hour 3

What can I use to scrape metadata from MP3s?

Watch Mach from Sydney, Australia Comments

Mach needs to be able to get metadata from MP3s and put them into a spreadsheet. Leo says he'll have to write a program to do this, and there are many different programming languages that could accomplish this. VisualBasic, Pearl, Python, Ruby, Microsoft Powershell, PHP, Java. He'd use a library to open each song's MP3 tags, put it into a database and go to the next one. It's fairly simple to do. Kingy from the chatroom suggests checking out taglib.github.com.

Why can't I access my Yahoo email?

Watch Larry from Santa Monica, CA Comments

Larry's Yahoo account was compromised and he couldn't get into it, so he contacted a company he thought was Yahoo. They asked him for money to fix it, but he still can't get into his account. Now they want more money. Leo says this is a hacker, and this is a scam.

This Yahoo Security Center page will help him recover his password and let Yahoo know his account has been compromised.

He should probably change his credit cards now too, because obviously they have his information now.

How can I make Windows 8 more like Windows 7?

Watch Steve from Westminster, CA Comments

There are a few ways to bring back a start menu:

  • RetroUI

    • This brings back a start menu to Windows 8, but not the exact same menu from Windows 7. It creates a kind of hybrid of the two user interfaces, and makes Windows easier to understand.

  • Classic Shell

    • This makes Windows 8 look exactly like Windows 7.

  • Start 8

    • This simply adds a start menu to the Windows 8 desktop view.

He can also close out apps by using the familiar alt + f4 combination.

Is the Panasonic Blu-ray player any good?

Watch Art from Scottsdale, AZ Comments

Leo says that all the Blu-ray players nowadays are pretty much the same. It's important to get one that can connect to Wi-Fi though because they do sometimes need updates. Other than that, it should be fine.