From The Tips Box: Open Walls, Slow Windows Laptops, TV Storage

Readers offer their best tips for knowing whats behind your walls, diagnosing slow Windows laptops, and storing stuff behind your TV.

Every day we receive stacks of great reader tips. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or send it using our contact form.

Ed shares a simple tip for when you have construction done:

We recently had to have drywall in my home office replaced after a bad roof leak. Before they put the new drywall back up, I took pictures so I would know exactly what the interior layout of the walls was in case I wanted to do work later. Now, I know where studs and cross supports are, where electrical and phone cables run. When it comes time for me to install network cabling (my spring project), I know just how to plan the run.

I know its a simple trick, but I thought it was worth sharing. Any time you have the walls (or anything really) open, snap a picture. You never know when it might come in handy.

Photo by mel0808johnson

Mike shares a possible solution for slow-running Windows laptops:

Im the family and friend tech support guy, just like Im sure a lot of Lifehacker readers are. Over the years, Ive come across this particular problem several times when people have told me their laptops seemed to be running really slowly or accessing the hard disk all the time.

Many times, the culprit is Windows Update stuck in an updating cycle. I think that when people are using the laptop wirelessly, Windows starts the download and installation automatically, but then they put the laptop to sleep before its finished and Windows doesnt recover well from that. The installer or updater process just sits there eating up cycles.

The fix is simple, though. Plug the laptop into the network with an Ethernet cable and run Windows Update. Let it install everything and then update it again to make sure theres nothing left over. When youre done, adjust the Windows Update settings so that instead of downloading and installing updates automatically, Windows just notifies them when new updates are available.

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From The Tips Box: Open Walls, Slow Windows Laptops, TV Storage