How-To Geek

Tired of the System Restore feature in Windows 7 using up way too much of your drive space? You can easily tweak it with a simple slider bar, you just need to know where to look.

Are you tired of small text areas in web forms and wish that you could simply make them bigger? Say goodbye to those small text areas with the Textarea++ extension for Firefox.

One annoyance you may not like about Windows is when it highlights newly installed programs which is enabled by default in XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Today we will take a look at disabling it in all three versions of Windows.

The new version of Windows seems to be a lot for stable than previous releases, however you never know when a malfunction might occur. Today we take a look at an option in Windows 7 that lets you create a System Repair disc in case you need to boot from it to recover your OS.

One item that seems like you should be able to easily pin to the Taskbar in Windows 7 is Windows Update, but unfortunately it’s not. With a bit of work however, we can get it pinned to the Taskbar or Start menu and here we will show you how.

Looking to add new toolbar buttons that are not included in the default set? Then you will certainly enjoy the variety of buttons that are available with the Toolbar Buttons extension for Firefox.

Note: This is a review of a commercial software package, which shouldn’t be considered an endorsement, but rather a tour of how the software works so you can make up your own mind. It is for this reason that we only include the excerpt in the syndicated feed or email newsletter.Read the Review: Cakewalk Guitar Tracks Pro USB

If you’re worried that some of your old but trusty software applications won’t run on Windows 7, Microsoft solves the issue with XP Mode. Today we bring you an overview of XP Mode by looking at how to install it, what it looks like, and determining if your system can run it.

Do you find searching through your browser’s history frustrating because the default History Menu & Manager are not as intuitive as you need? Now you can make that history easier to search through with the History Submenus extension.

If you regularly search for a certain group of files in Windows 7, saving searches is a great way to access them more quickly. Here we’ll take a look at how to share and organize searches in Windows 7.

If you’ve been playing around with the new Themes feature in Windows 7, you might have noticed that the themes can also change out your icons and mouse cursors—but if you don’t want to allow that, there’s a simple tip to make them behave.

Aero Peek is one of the more useful new features in Windows 7… just move your mouse to the taskbar for half a second, and everything else hides so you can see the desktop or application window. But why does it take half a second?

Are you looking for a clean looking start page or new tab page for your browser without all the clutter? Then New Tab Page just might be what you are looking for.

So you’ve upgraded your XP to Windows 7, Linux, or Mac OS X and decided to keep using Windows XP in a Virtual Machine so you can run those old, incompatible applications that don’t work anymore on your platform. So why does XP look so awful in a VM?

If you’re a home user who skipped the Windows Vista release and are moving from XP to Windows 7, one thing you might want to do is create new user accounts for other members of the household. Since the interface is laid out quite differently than XP, we will take a look at user accounts in the new OS.

If you’re looking for a new source for links to awesome random geek stuff, you’ve come to the right place. Or rather, you’ve found the right page that will lead you to the right place. Or… never mind. You should just click through and check it out for yourself.

One of the greatest new features in Windows 7 is the Jump Lists that show up when you right-click on the icons in the taskbar, but have you had a problem with them getting stuck? This happened to me, and luckily I found a solution.

Slaving away for the corporate office all week sucks except for Friday. It means two days of freedom are near. and you get to waste the afternoon playing a fun flash game. Today we take a look at physics based game called Compulse.

Aggravated with having to view webpage source code in external windows? Get rid of all those extra windows and enjoy viewing your source code in tabs with the Source Viewer Tab extension for Firefox.

BitDefender Total Security 2010 provides the ultimate proactive protection for your PCs, without slowing them down. It combines advanced protection against viruses, spyware, hackers, spam and other e-threats. Moreover, its system maintenance and backup tools keep your PC running fast and protected from data loss.

Windows 7 is being officially released on October 22nd, which also happens to be today. The team here has been furiously writing Windows 7 articles, and updating old articles for Windows 7—and we now have more than 175 articles covering Windows 7.

One of the best things about our Stupid Geek Tricks series is that we get to share those tiny little tips that only geeks pay any attention to. They aren’t always terribly useful, but it’s fun to learn new tricks. Today we’ll show you how to duplicate a tab the easy way in Chrome or Firefox.

Have you ever wished you had an extra Hard Disk to store files, share, or set aside as an encrypted vault? One of the new features in Windows 7 is the ability to create Virtual Hard Disks and we’ll show you how.

Do you wish there was a way to combine all that Wolfram Alpha and Google goodness together when you search for something? Now you can with the Wolfram Alpha Google extension for Firefox.

Are you worried about running an application on your machine because you’re not sure how it will affect it? Today we take a look at Sandboxie, which lets you run your browser, email, or other apps in a secure sandbox environment without making changes to your Windows system.