From ultrabooks to netbooks, computers are shedding their optical drives. If you still use an occasional CD or DVD, you don’t have to buy an external optical drive –  you can share another computer’s optical drive over the network.

The two computers must be on the same local network to share an optical drive. This requires using the Advanced Sharing settings in Windows – there’s no easy, HomeGroup-style way of doing this.

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How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

We have already shown you how you can change your IP address from the command prompt, which required long netsh commands, now we are doing the same thing in PowerShell, without the complexity.

Note: The following commands are new in PowerShell v3 and therefore require Windows 8, they also require an administrative command prompt.

Editors Note: This article is probably for our more geeky audience and requires some basic knowledge of IP Addressing and CIDR notation

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How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

The Windows Firewall is powerful, but it doesn’t offer an easy-to-use interface for its advanced features. Windows Firewall Notifier fills the holes in the built-in Windows Firewall, offering easy management of outbound connections and a console that displays network activity.

Windows Firewall Notifier is a lightweight application that works in tandem with the built-in Windows Firewall. It doesn’t add a lot of features that already exist in Windows or take up system resources by running in the background.

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How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

There’s more to CCleaner than clicking a single button. This popular application for wiping temporary files and clearing private data hides a variety of features, from fine-grained options for tweaking the cleaning process to full drive-wiping tools.

CCleaner is easy for beginners to use – just launch it and click the Run Cleaner button. But there’s a lot more you can do with it.

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How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

There are ways to run a screen capture utility – or any other program – from the welcome screen. Windows doesn’t make this easy, but it’s possible. The logon screen runs on the Winlogon desktop, an isolated Windows desktop.

Whether you’ve set a custom logon screen background and want to show it off, need a screenshot for your tutorial, or want to capture an error message, any of these methods will work for you.

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How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

So, you bought yourself a new 2 TB hard drive thinking, “I’ll never use this much space.” Well, think again. It’s amazing how fast photos, videos, music, and other files start to use up any hard drive space we have.

Then, you think, “How am I going to sort through all these files and figure out what is taking up the most space?” Luckily, we’ve gathered information about 10 free tools to help you do just that.

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How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

Ever wished you didn’t have to type in your password every time Windows starts up, but you don’t want to lose the additional security that comes with having a password? If that’s the case then today’s your lucky day, lets take a look.

Note: We’re showing Windows 8 in this example, but this should work in Windows 7 or Vista as well.

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How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

The Quick Launch Bar is a handy tool for quickly and easily launching applications. However, if you’ve put a lot of shortcuts on the Quick Launch Bar, it can get quite cluttered and you cannot rearrange the shortcuts or sort them into groups.

By default, the Quick Launch Bar is hidden in Windows 7. However, you can easily add the Quick Launch Bar to the Taskbar. We’ve previously written about a free tool that creates a launcher in the Windows system tray that is similar to the Quick Launch Bar.

There is also a free tool, called Free Launch Bar, that allows you to group shortcuts on the Quick Launch Bar and add titles, separators, and submenus. It is fully compatible with the Windows Quick Launch Bar because it is uses the same folder for the shortcuts.

To install Free Launch Bar, extract the .zip file you downloaded (see the link at the end of this article). Run the appropriate executable file, depending on whether you are running a 32-bit or a 64-bit version of Windows.

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How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

We have already shown you how you can share external folders with your SkyDrive, but what if you actually want to copy a file or folder into your SkyDrive folder? Of course copying and pasting is nowhere near geeky enough, so here’s how to add a SkyDrive entry to the Send to menu.

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How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

Windows 7 makes it possible to change the welcome screen that appears when you start your computer without any third-party software, but this setting is well hidden. You can set any image you like as your background.

This setting is intended for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to customize their systems, but there’s nothing stopping you from using it yourself. All you have to do is change a single registry value and put an image file in the correct location.

How To Customize Your Wallpaper with Google Image Searches, RSS Feeds, and More

47 Keyboard Shortcuts That Work in All Web Browsers

How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into