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Listener Jay listens on Silicon Valley News KLIV 1590 and asked: “I lost my remote for my Vizio TV, so I can’t watch it. I’m old and not very tech oriented. How do I get a replacement? One option is to get a universal, but I prefer a Vizio remote.”
Jay, like you said, you can get a universal remote and it will probably work just fine, but for a Vizio replacement you can just head to their website.
They have different options from regular remotes, to remotes with full keyboards in the back, to WiFi remotes, so whichever one you’re replacing will probably be listed there.
Amazon also lists a lot of Vizio remotes for cheaper prices than the Vizio website, so they’re probably worth a look too.
Roberta in Estill Springs, Tennessee listens on SuperTalk WTN 99.7 and asked us: “I have a Dell laptop. When I try to input my password to sign on no letters show up in the log on box. So I can’t get in. Is there something I can do to fix that?”
Roberta, you may have a hardware problem. It’s possible that something happened to your keyboard that made it stop working. If that’s the case, plugging in an external keyboard and trying to type in your password may do the trick.
There are ways to check and see whether the keyboard is working outside of Windows or not
There are ways to check and see whether the keyboard is working outside of Windows or not, the easiest one would be to see if you can enter your computer’s BIOS setup via some key combination. You may get a prompt telling you what to hold down as the computer is turning on.
If you take it to a repair shop, they should be able to tell you what’s happening pretty quickly.
If it’s not a hardware issue, it may be harder to get around it, but it would be very rare for Windows to be failing on the login screen like that.
Before you do take it to a repair shop, though, make sure you’ve restarted the machine.
We know, it’s hard to select a restart option when you can’t log in to it in the first place, so you’re going to have to do a “hard” shutdown.
Press and hold the power button until the machine shuts off. (It should take almost exactly five seconds.) Then wait ten seconds and power the machine on.
See if your keyboard works now. And, as we recommended earlier, try that external USB keyboard and see whether it works. All of these things will help you decide what might be at the root of your password entry issues.