How-To Geek

Windows 8 is strongly aimed at tablets, most of which allow use in both landscape and portrait orientations. Depending on your personal preference, you may wish to disable this auto-rotating behavior. Here’s how to do it.

Would you like to know how many days old are you today? Can you tell what will be the date 78 days from now? How many days are left till Christmas? How many days have passed since your last birthday? All these questions have their answers hidden within Windows! Curious? Keep reading to see how you can answer these questions in an instant using Windows’ built-in utility called ‘Calculator’.

One of the awesome things about the Windows Store is you are allowed to install any app you purchase on up to 5 Windows machines. This means that the PC you install the app on gets added to your Trusted PC list. Here’s how to clean up that list.

The average Windows 8 user can only download apps that Microsoft has approved from the Windows Store. Windows 8 offers two ways to sideload unapproved apps, which are intended for developers and businesses with internal apps.

If you use iOS or Android devices, you’re familiar with the drag-and-drop method of creating folders. If you like that method of grouping files, you can get the same functionality on your Windows PC using a free utility, called Smart Folders.

One of the new features in Windows 8 is the improved Task Manager, which provides access to more information and settings. If you don’t want to upgrade, there is a way you can use a simple Windows 8-like Task Manager in Windows 7, Vista, or XP.

Dropbox is a hugely popular cloud storage service beloved by many. Unfortunately, it’s had a history of security problems, ranging from compromised accounts to once allowing access to every Dropbox account without requiring a password for several hours.

Windows 8 includes an all new Task Manager, which brings a whole bunch of new features. One of my favorites is the App history tab, which allows geeks like us to monitor our applications resource usage. Sometimes you may wish to reset the counters though, so here’s how.

If you’re currently using any 64-bit version of Windows you may have noticed there are two “Program Files” folders, one for 64-bit and one for 32-bit apps. Why does Windows need to sub-divide them? Read on to see why.

We have all had to connect to a network share at some point only to have the authentication dialog pop up. There are many ways around it, for example mapping a network drive, but if you have a lot of users connecting to copy some files you may want to disable the password dialog instead of distributing your password.

Although you can use metered connections to get the most of your bandwidth in Windows 8, at times you may want to know how much data you have used for a single browsing session. Here’s how to do it.

Have you ever been connected to a network and wanted to know if you could see who is copying stuff from your PC? Here’s how to do it with the built in Windows tools.

Many people think Aero is completely gone in Windows 8, but this isn’t true. Microsoft hasn’t helped matters by saying they’ve “moved beyond Aero” in several blog posts. However, hardware acceleration and most Aero features are still present.

The Windows Surface tablet, like most touch devices, comes with an on screen keyboard which makes a clicking sound every time you tap a key. This becomes very annoying, so here’s how to disable it.

Windows 8’s new touch-first Modern interface includes quite a few apps. Before you start looking at the Windows Store to find new apps, take a look at the included apps and what they can do.

When you use the Search Charm in Windows 8 it remembers everything you search for, which is very useful, but if you share your PC with someone you may want to delete your history or even disable it. Here’s how to do it.

You’re sporting the newest edition of Windows but you need an older edition of Internet Explorer? Read on to see how you can wrangle a vintage browser into a modern operating system.

Windows won’t allow you to modify files that open programs have locked. if you try to delete a file and see a message that it’s open in a program, you’ll have to unlock the file (or close the program).

When Windows 8 was finally released to everybody they updated the Mail app to support IMAP, which means you now use any generic email account in the Metro Mail app. Here’s how to get set up.

Aero Glass is gone in Windows 8. If you really miss Aero Glass, there’s a trick you can use to re-enable the transparent window title bars and borders – although Microsoft doesn’t want us to.

Have you ever wondered why the background color in the Windows Photo Viewer is white? Well after some thinking of our own, we thought it would be nice to show you guys how to change it. Read on to find out more.

This week’s edition of WIG is filled with news link coverage on topics such as Mozilla Firefox turns 8 and Android turns 5, Windows (File) Explorer is the app that crashes most on Windows 8, Classic Mode (Session) will be dropped from GNOME 3.8, and more.

Computers can sleep, hibernate, or shut down. Sleep allows you to quickly resume using your laptop at the cost of some electricity. Hibernate is like shutting down your computer, but you can still resume working where you left off.

Windows RT and Windows 8 aren’t the same thing. While Windows RT has a desktop that looks just like Windows 8’s, Windows RT’s desktop is very limited. The difference doesn’t just matter to geeks; it matters to all Windows users.