How-To Geek

The modern (or “Metro”) version of Internet Explorer in Windows 8 supports Flash, but only for some Microsoft-approved websites. You can add your own favorite websites to Microsoft’s whitelist to view Flash on any website.

Caching is term used a lot when it comes to technology, here’s a brief introduction to the subject as well as some tips on how to view and edit cached file settings in Internet Explorer.

Want a Start menu on your Windows 8 desktop? While Microsoft no longer includes the Start button, opting instead for a click in a hidden corner and a new Start screen, there are quite a few Start menu replacements you can choose from.

Several programs can prevent the app switcher and charms from appearing when you move your mouse to the corners of the screen in Windows 8, but you can do it yourself with this quick registry hack.

If you need to install Windows or Linux and you don’t have access to a CD/DVD drive, a bootable USB drive is the solution. You can boot to the USB drive, using it to run the OS setup program, just like a CD or DVD.

Windows 8 opens many types of files in the Windows 8 interface formerly known as Metro by default. If you’re at the desktop and double-click many types of media files, you’ll see a full-screen media viewer.

Lets face it, Windows 8 is a major change to Windows, and for many, quite confusing. Today we’re releasing our very very first book: The How-To Geek Guide to Windows 8, which is written to be easy enough for anybody to understand, but comprehensive enough for experts to enjoy.

If you don’t have a touchscreen computer and spend all your time on the desktop, Windows 8’s new interface can seem intrusive. Microsoft won’t allow you to disable the new interface, but Classic Shell provides the options Microsoft didn’t.

Windows 8 ships with built-in apps available on the Modern UI screen (formerly the Metro or Start screen), such as Mail, Calendar, Photos, Music, Maps, and Weather. Installing additional Modern UI apps is easy using the Windows Store, and uninstalling apps is just as easy.

You’ve got a dozen windows open, your media player is buried underneath somewhere, and the phone rings. Do you reach for the speaker power button, dig through the windows, or simply wave your hand to pause the music? Wi...

Windows 8 has a new feature that allows you to automatically run scheduled daily maintenance on your computer. These maintenance tasks run in the background and include security updating and scanning, Windows software updates, disk defragmentation, system diagnostics, among other tasks.

File extensions can be faked – that file with an .mp3 extension may actually be an executable program. Hackers can fake file extensions by abusing a special Unicode character, forcing text to be displayed in reverse order.

The Windows clipboard is like a scratch pad used by the operating system and all running applications. When you copy or cut some text or a graphic, it is temporarily stored in the clipboard and then retrieved later when you paste the data.

The Windows Store is similar to the app stores for Apple iOS and Android devices and Windows phones. It allows you to buy and download both free and paid Metro-style apps for Windows 8.

Sometimes in Windows 8 you may find your application notifications getting stuck from time to time, the fix to this problem is to clear the notification cache at log off, here’s how.

This week’s edition of WIG is filled with news link coverage on topics such as new malware seeks to lock Skype users out of their PCs, Dell will stick to Windows 7 after Windows 8 debut, Mozilla Thunderbird users now get 25 GB of cloud storage for free, and more.

When burning a CD or DVD with Windows, you’ll be asked whether you want to use a Live File System or a Mastered disc format. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

If the User Account Control dialog box displays, click Yes to continue.

We have all been in that awkward situation where you sit down in a meeting room only to have your Windows laptop play the Startup sound. Here’s how to disable it or even enable it if you so choose.

Windows uses a page file to store data that can’t be held by your computer’s random-access memory when it fills up. While you can tweak the page file settings, Windows can manage the page file fine on its own.

The boot options have been consolidated in Windows 8 into a single menu, called the “boot options menu,” providing access to repair tools and options for changing Windows startup behavior, such as enabling debugging, booting into safe mode, and launching into a recovery environment.

There are a lot of different versions of Windows, but you probably didn’t know that short of the Enterprise edition, the disc or image that you own contains all versions for that architecture. Read on to see how we can use them to make a universal Windows 8 install disc.

While Windows 8 may seem a bit out of place on hardware without a touch screen, trackpad gestures can help bridge the gap. Gestures on a trackpad work similarly to gestures on a touch screen.

While you can’t get rid of the Start screen in Windows 8, there are lots of ways to customize the look and feel of the Start screen and make it your own.

Hard drives are getting larger and larger, but somehow they always seem to fill up. This is even more true if you’re using a solid-state drive (SSD), which offers much less hard drive space than traditional mechanical hard drives.