Windows
If we bought a desktop or laptop PC with pre-installed Windows 8.1, in most cases we didn't get a full Windows installation DVD with it. Just a "recovery partition" or a "recovery disk," bloated with all the manufacturer's useless third-party apps. Thankfully, Microsoft allows us to download Windows 8.1 ISOs, for
The run command window is one of the fastest and most efficient ways to directly access a multitude of Windows' functions, without sifting through the Control Panel or other menus. We have compiled for you a comprehensive list of 134 commands, confirmed to work in Windows 7, Windows 8, and
We need a Windows installation medium to reinstall Windows, install the OS on a new PC, or even hack the Windows administrator password. If we don't have one, it's quick, easy, and free to create a Windows installation disc or bootable Windows USB. We just need to download a Windows ISO, and
Hundreds of millions of users have upgraded their Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. However, the free update might not be the right choice for everyone. If you haven't made your decision yet, let's see five reasons to upgrade to Windows 10, and five reasons to wait.
Formatting the hard drive and installing Windows is easy. What's hard is setting up all the individual programs, with their full settings, which can take days. Now, the freeware CloneApp can backup program settings, and restore them after reinstalling the OS, or transfer them to a new version of Windows.
Compressing files into a Zip Archive is essential if we want to send multiple files by email. It is also a good way to save bandwidth, as certain types of files can be compressed more than 90%. Let's compress files into a Zip archive, with Windows and PeaZip.
No matter how long you have used Windows, there is a good chance that you aren't using Windows Explorer columns to their full potential. Part of the "Details" view, those columns offer valuable information on all the folder's contents, at a glance. Let's make the most of them.
Windows tends to crash without warning, and the system will automatically reboot, by default, before we have a chance to write down the stop code. WhoCrashed is a freeware app that will analyze blue screens from the minidump and memory dump, to help us find out what caused them.
Every version of Windows since Windows XP has the default option to automatically reset the PC after a "Stop Error" - what we call a Blue Screen of Death. This makes troubleshooting harder, and can lead to an infinite loop. Here's how to stop auto reset in any version of
Having a recent Windows backup will ensure that if anything happens to the operating system, we can restore our PC to a functional state in just a few minutes. Let's see how to create a Windows backup using both the free and the paid versions of EaseUS Todo Backup.