How-To Geek

Sure, anybody can end a process from the Task Manager, but did you know you can also do it from the command line?

Have you upgraded to Windows 8 yet? We’ve published a lot of Windows 8 articles here at How-To Geek, and I’ve written many of them, but I haven’t. I still use Windows 7 on my PC.

A few weeks ago, The Geek showed you how you can use the command prompt to find when your computer was started up last. In this last installation of Geek School for PowerShell, we are going to write a reusable PowerShell command to do the same thing.

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

As we move away from simply running commands and move into writing full blown scripts, you will need a temporary place to store data. This is where variables come in.

Are you one of those people that loves to see the screensaver come on when you get up from your computer? Here’s an easy way to make the screensaver show up as soon as you lock your PC.

Any parent will know that giving their children access to the internet is a double-edged sword. Access to the world’s biggest free library is invaluable, but there are plenty of unpleasant corners of the web that young eyes are best shielded from.  If you’re using Windows 8, Family Safety can be used to lock down your kids’ accounts.

PowerShell offers two ways for you to extend the shell. You can either use snapins, which are binary only and developed in a fully-fledged programming language like C#, or you can use modules, which can be binary as well as script based.

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

The All Apps view in Windows 8 is quite useful, considering many of the applications a geek might want to use won’t be pinned to the Start Screen – but it is a pain to get there. We set out to find a better solution.

So you have an antivirus guarding your system, your firewall is up, your browser plug-ins are all up-to-date, and you’re not missing any security patches. But how can be sure your defenses are actually working as well as you think they are?

Most of us have more than one email address these days – it makes it easier to keep different areas of life separate. But having to switch between email accounts can be a pain. With Gmail, you can set things up so you can send from multiple accounts without the need to keep switching.

PowerShell has four types of jobs – Background Jobs, Remote Jobs,WMI Jobs and Scheduled Jobs. Join us as we find out what they are and how we can use them.

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.

If you’re new to the world of PC gaming, it can all seem a bit complicated. Consoles don’t have upgradable hardware, desktop software running in the background, or graphics settings that must be tweaked for ideal performance.

There are probably countless streaming media services that you use regularly – YouTube for music videos, and any number of websites for listening to streaming music and live radio. Forget using endless apps and website after website; Tomahawk lets you access everything in the same place.

The news is full of reports of “spear-phishing attacks” being used against governments, large corporations, and political activists. Spear-phishing attacks are now the most common way corporate networks are compromised, according to many reports.

Shout “Windows 8” and you’re likely to hear “Vista” echoed back at you. For Microsoft, Windows 8 has received a Vista-like reception and it’s showing in tepid sales and an abysmal market share.

Since PowerShell is based on the .Net Framework and incorporates various other technologies like WMI and CIM, there is always more than one way to accomplish the same thing. Come join us for this short post where we learn how to choose the best method to accomplish our tasks.

Whether you’re installing the latest version of Windows or upgrading your Linux distribution, most geeks agree that you should probably perform a clean installation rather than try your luck with an upgrade.

WMI and its newer brother CIM can both be used to manage the Windows machines in your environment. But do you know the difference between them? Join us as we take a look.

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

Office 2007 saw the addition of the Ribbon feature, which some users found confusing. However, you can use it to your advantage by adding your own custom tabs containing commands you use often. This allows for quicker and easier document creation.

One of the best features PowerShell offers is the ability to remotely manage your Servers. It even lets you manage a bunch of them at once as well.

The Mini Toolbar and Live Preview are features in Word introduced in Word 2007 and continued in Word 2010 and 2013. They can be useful for quick formatting and to preview possible formats. However, if these features annoy you, they are easy to disable.