How-To Geek

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.

System Restore is a Windows feature that can help fix some crashes and other computer problems. To know when to use it, you’ll have to understand just how System Restore works.

The general release date for Windows 8 is almost here and Microsoft has released a terrific set of free ‘Work Smart’ guides to help you get started with the new operating system. Whether it is an overview of Windo...

Windows 7’s backup control panel has the ability to create full system image backups. While Windows says you can’t restore individual files from these backups, there’s a way to browse the contents of a system image and extract individual files.

When you a delete a file, it isn’t really erased – it continues existing on your hard drive, even after you empty it from the Recycle Bin. This allows you (and other people) to recover files you’ve deleted.

Internet Explorer-haters often say that the only good use for Internet Explorer is downloading Firefox or Chrome. But if you really don’t like IE, you can use Windows’ built-in FTP support to download and install Firefox without ever opening IE.

We’ve previously written about a tool that allows you to create a bunch of folders at one time from a list of words or phrases. However, what if you want to create one or more folders from a bunch of selected text files?

Group Policy is a Windows feature that contains a variety of advanced settings, particularly for network administrators. However, local Group Policy can also be used to adjust settings on a single computer.

This week’s edition of WIG is filled with news link coverage on topics such as Virgin Mobile USA customers are vulnerable to a password security flaw, Google Chrome will use a single profile on Windows 8, the Raspberry Pi gets a turbo mode, and more.

The Windows Task Scheduler can automatically send email at a specific time or in response to a specific event, but its integrated email feature won’t work very well for most users.

VNC allows you to remotely access a computer and use its desktop, either over the Internet or from another room in your house. Windows includes a Remote Desktop feature, but it’s only available in Professional editions of Windows.

Are you someone who loved using desktop gadgets in Windows 7 and Vista, but felt disappointed when learning they were removed in Windows 8 RTM? Then 8GadgetPack is just the app to put those gadgets back on your desktop!

User Account Control is an important security feature in the latest versions of Windows. While we’ve explained how to disable UAC in the past, you shouldn’t disable it – it helps keep your computer secure.

VirtualBox’s experimental 3D acceleration allows you to use Windows 7’s Aero interface in a virtual machine. You can also run older 3D games in a virtual machine – newer ones probably won’t run very well.

Do you want to save time when installing Windows 7? You can create a customized installation disc and have it perform an installation without asking you questions, integrate updates and drivers, tweak Windows, and remove Windows components.

Have you ever wanted to monitor who’s logging into your computer and when? On Professional editions of Windows, you can enable logon auditing to have Windows track which user accounts log in and when.

Do you pin a lot of programs to your Windows 7 Taskbar and run a lot of programs at once? Between pinned programs and other programs running, your Taskbar can get crowded. There are a few ways you can reclaim the space on your Taskbar.

Some of the most powerful Windows features are only available in Professional or Enterprise editions of Windows. However, you don’t have to upgrade to Windows Professional to use these powerful features – use these free alternatives instead.

The Windows Task Manager is often used for troubleshooting – perhaps closing an application that isn’t working properly or monitoring system resource usage. However, there’s a lot more you can do with Windows 7’s Task Manager.

Clearing your browser cache is made easily accessible in the desktop version of Internet Explorer, however, in the Metro version it is a little bit more hidden. Read on to find out more.

Do you still launch programs on Windows by hunting down a desktop shortcut and double-clicking it? There are better ways – Windows has several built-in tricks for quickly launching applications.

Want to allow a standard user account to run an application as administrator without a UAC or password prompt? You can easily create a shortcut that uses the runas command with the /savecred switch, which saves the password.

Internet Explorer has a secret mode called InPrivate which is pretty much the same as Chrome’s incognito mode. It can be accessed on the desktop by right-clicking on the Internet Explorer icon on the taskbar, but how do you open an InPrivate tab in the Metro IE? Read on to find out.

This week’s edition of WIG is filled with news link goodness covering topics such as Windows 8 Pro downgrades to Windows 7 and Vista will be possible, the Ubuntu Live CD is now dead, Guild Wars 2 is suffering an ongoing password attack, and more.