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CCleaner, the incredibly popular PC maintenance utility, has been hacked to include malware. Here’s how to tell if you were affected, and what you should do.
Windows 10’s taskbar clock can display the precise time down to the second. This feature requires a registry hack to enable, and only works on Windows 10. Windows 7 users will instead need a third-party utility like T-Clock Redux to do this instead.
From Enhance Pointer Precision to DPI and pointer speed, there are a lot of options that affect how your mouse pointer moves in Windows. The below tips will help you move your mouse pointer more accurately—and even allow you to move it pixel by pixel.
If you’re concerned a file might be malicious, you don’t need to download it and rely on your antivirus. You can scan the file for malware with over 60 antivirus engines before you download it—all with one single tool.
There’s more than one way to shutdown and restart your Synology NAS, including physical interaction with the NAS, software, and scheduled events. Let’s look at all three methods now.
Hacking in the movies is crazy exciting: fingers fly across the keyboard, and the screen is an ever flashing array of cryptic characters. It’s all so…interesting. Real hacking, sadly, isn’t that intense. However illegal what you’re doing may be, you’re still just someone sitting at a computer. Most the time you’re just trying to get people to use a fake Google sign-in page.
The bitrate of a video governs how much detail a video can display. Even a high resolution video with a low bitrate will look blocky and distorted. Fortunately, it’s easy to find out the bitrate of any video on Windows or macOS.
A video’s bitrate is a key piece of information in determining the quality of said video. Even if two videos have the same resolution, a lower bitrate is going to result in less detail and clarity. Here’s how to see the bitrate of any video you’re playing in real time with VLC.
With Firefox 57, scheduled for release in November 14, 2017, Mozilla will end support for legacy extensions, and only support newer WebExtensions. Here’s how to check if your extensions will stop working—and how to keep using them after November, if you need to.
Your computer stores the time in a hardware clock on its motherboard. The clock keeps track of time, even when the computer is off. By default, Windows assumes the time is stored in local time, while Linux assumes the time is stored in UTC time and applies an offset. This leads to one of your operating systems showing the wrong time in a dual boot situation.
If you poke around in your Task Manager, you’ll likely see an process named “Spooler SubSystem App”, “Print Spooler”, or spoolsv.exe. This process is a normal part of Windows and handles printing. If this process consistently using a high amount of CPU resources on your system, there’s a problem.
Windows 10 provides no way to restore Windows 7’s Aero, Windows Media Center, or other much-loved features. But, for some reason, there is a hidden registry setting that will re-enable Windows 7’s old volume control interface on Windows 10.
The latest version of the Xbox controller—the one included with the Xbox One S and the upcoming One X—includes Bluetooth! Microsoft finally included Bluetooth along with the older proprietary Xbox wireless connection, so Windows users can hook it up without an extra dongle. Here’s how to connect it to your Bluetooth-equipped laptop or desktop.
It’s a bad idea to fill a Windows system drive completely full, and this could cause a variety of problems. But just how much empty space do you really need?
Whether you work at your computer or just enjoy the occasional long gaming session, it’s important to take breaks regularly. Getting up to take a walk, grab a coffee, or do some stretches helps reduce eye strain, prevent repetitive strain injury (RSI), and is otherwise just plain good for you. And one study from the University of Illionoise at Urbana-Champaign shows that breaks might even enhance productivity by increasing focus.
Windows 7, 8, and 10 create a special “System Reserved” partition when you install them on a clean disk. Windows doesn’t normally assign a drive letter to these partitions, so you’ll only see them when you use Disk Management or similar utility.
Windows 10’s integrated Windows Defender antivirus has some “cloud” features, like other modern antivirus applications. By default, Windows automatically uploads some suspicious-looking files and reports data about suspicious activity so new threats can be detected and blocked as quickly as possible.
If you’re a regular PC gamer, you know that playing a game in full screen mode can sometimes be a frustrating experience. Switching to a background program, using a second monitor, or suddenly getting a notification that takes focus can mess up your game. Playing the game in a window fixes these problems, but it’s less immersive and doesn’t use your monitor’s full space effectively.
There’s nothing quite like free TV with the help of an antenna. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could get that live TV stream on your computer, or tablet, or Xbox? With a simple piece of hardware, you can.
Let’s say you’re trying to be quiet, browsing the internet at home, work, or a public space. You’re secretly filled with dread that anything you click will open a new tab with an autoplay video or blare an obnoxious audio ad. End that fear forever by keeping all your new tabs muted by default.
Microsoft Office applications have a built-in Safe Mode feature. This helps when you can’t use Office normally. Perhaps Word crashes every time you open it, or maybe Excel crashes when you open a single file. You can start the application in Safe Mode and there’s a good chance it will work normally.
When burning a CD, you can either burn it as a data disc or an audio CD. A data CD can hold up to 700 MB, while an audio CD can hold 80 minutes of sound. If you have 200 MB of MP3 files that add up to three hours of music, you can still only burn 80 minutes to the disc. Why is that?
When large-scale flash storage first came to the consumer market as an alternative to conventional hard drives, the biggest concern (aside from price) was longevity. Tech fans had a pretty good idea of the general reliability of hard drives, but SSDs were still something of a wild card.
Microsoft announced that System Image Backups will be deprecated in Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update. The feature is still available, but it is no longer actively being developed and may be removed in a future release of Windows 10. Instead, Microsoft recommends you use a third-party tool to create full system images of your PC.
DirectX is part of the Windows operating system. So why does it seem like every PC game you install from Steam, Origin, or elsewhere installs its own copy of DirectX?
