Featured Articles - The Best of How-To Geek

How to Tell a Hardware Problem From a Software Problem

Your computer seems to be malfunctioning — it’s slow, programs are crashing or Windows may be blue-screening. Is your computer’s hardware failing, or does it have a software problem that you can fix on your ...

Secure Your Wireless Router: 8 Things You Can Do Right Now

A security researcher recently discovered a backdoor in many D-Link routers, allowing anyone to access the router without knowing the username or password. This isn’t the first router security issue and won’t be t...

What You Need to Know About Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1 is available to everyone starting today, October 18. The latest version of Windows improves on Windows 8 in every way. It’s a big upgrade, whether you use the desktop or new touch-optimized interface....

How to Use Windows’ Advanced Search Features: Everything You Need to Know

You should never have to hunt down a lost file on modern versions of Windows — just perform a quick search. You don’t even have to wait for a cartoon dog to find your files, like on Windows XP....

6 Ways to Free Up Hard Drive Space Used by Windows System Files

We’ve previously covered the standard ways to free up space on Windows. But if you have a small solid-state drive and really want more hard space, there are geekier ways to reclaim hard drive space....

10 Windows Tweaking Myths Debunked

Windows is big, complicated, and misunderstood. You’ll still stumble across bad advice from time to time when browsing the web. These Windows tweaking, performance, and system maintenance tips are mostly just useless, b...

Windows 8.1 Will Start Encrypting Hard Drives By Default: Everything You Need to Know

Windows 8.1 will automatically encrypt the storage on modern Windows PCs. This will help protect your files in case someone steals your laptop and tries to get at them, but it has important ramifications for data recovery....

Bad Sectors Explained: Why Hard Drives Get Bad Sectors and What You Can Do About It

A bad sector on a hard drive is simply a tiny cluster of storage space — a sector — of the hard drive that appears to be defective. The sector won’t respond to read or write requests....

7 Skype Tips for Power Users

Now that Skype has been merged with Windows Live Messenger, it’s more popular than ever. There’s no way to use Skype with a third-party client, but Skype does offer hidden features that can make it more powerful....

How to See Which Browser Extensions Are Slowing Down Your Browser

Browser extensions are useful, but they can increase your browser’s memory consumption, make it take longer to open, and slow it down in general. But how do you measure the impact a browser extension has on your system?...

Beginner Geek: Everything You Need to Know About Disabling Startup Programs on Windows

Programs that automatically start with Windows can slow down your computer’s boot time, making you wait to get a useful desktop while icon after icon loads into your system tray. Fortunately, it’s possible to prev...

10 Useful Features Hidden in VLC, The Swiss Army Knife of Media Players

There’s a good chance you already use the VLC media player. But VLC isn’t just a media player — it’s a complete Swiss Army Knife for digital videos and music, filled with useful and fun features you ha...

5 Reasons to Install a Custom Android ROM (and Why You Might Not Want To)

Android is open source, so developers can take its code, add features, and build their own operating system images for Android phones and tablets. Many Android geeks install such custom ROMs — but why?...

HTG Reviews the Sculpt: a Quirky Ergonomic Keyboard

Anyone who logs serious time at their computer desk knows the toll the keyboard and mouse can take on your wrists, shoulders, and even back. Today we take a look at the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop, a highly ergonomic k...

3 Ways to Make Your Old Netbook Suck Less

Netbooks are terrible, as most people now agree. They seemed like a good idea at the time, offering a cheap laptop experience in a small package. But they were ultimately too slow, too small, and too poorly built....

Revive Your Old PC: The 3 Best Linux Systems For Old Computers

Windows 8 may be lighter than Windows Vista, but it’s nowhere near as lightweight as these free Linux distributions. If you have an old Windows XP PC or a netbook, you can revive it with a lightweight Linux system....

Keep It Simple: Here Are The Only 4 System and Security Tools You Need on Windows

Windows is complicated and needs many different system utilities and security tools to run well — or does it? We recently covered the many types of system tools you don’t need. Here are the few utilities you actua...

10 Types of System Tools and Optimization Programs You Don’t Need on Windows

Windows users see advertisements for all sorts of system tools and optimization utilities. It’s easy for companies to tell you that you absolutely have to run these tools, but you don’t need most of the junk on of...

Take a Secure Desktop Everywhere: Everything You Need to Know About Linux Live CDs and USB Drives

Computers normally run an operating system installed on their hard drives, whether it’s Windows, OS X, or Linux. But they can also boot from removable media devices, allowing you to boot a Linux desktop from a USB drive...

Why Old Programs Don’t Run on Modern Versions of Windows (and How You Can Run Them Anyway)

Windows is all about backwards compatibility, allowing people — especially businesses — to keep using their important applications on new versions of Windows. But there are limits. The older a program is, the more...

HTG Reviews the Doxie Go: Simple Computerless Scanning

Portable scanners aren’t exactly brand-new technology, so what makes the Doxie Go portable scanner special? Read on as we take one for a test drive, show you how to set it up in the process, and highlight exactly why th...

How to Play Old LAN Games Over the Internet

On a PC, you can still play old games — which isn’t true for consoles. You may even find yourself actively buying these old games as they show up on great sales on Steam and elsewhere.

Why You Can’t Just Copy a Program’s Folder to a New Windows System (and When You Can)

When moving to a new Windows system, either after getting a new computer or reinstalling Windows, you may be tempted to copy a program’s folder to your new system just like you’d copy your files. But this normally...

Danger: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Cheap Third-Party Batteries For Laptops or Smartphones

Official replacement batteries can be expensive. Whether you’re looking at a laptop or smartphone battery, you may be tempted to take the cheap route and buy an aftermarket battery. But this decision could blow up in yo...

How to Create a Separate Data Partition for Windows

Windows normally installs itself to a single partition on your hard drive. However, you can split your hard drive into several different partitions and store your data files separately from your system files....

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