How-To Guides Archives - Page 10 of 15

Windows 7 Shortcut Keys

Alan McCloskeyJun 3, 2008June 26, 20141

The “Windows” key (or Start key) was implemented on standard PC keyboards shortly after the release of Windows 95. I suppose Microsoft wanted to increase

Windows Shells Without Rebooting

Alan McCloskeyMay 7, 2008June 26, 20140

There are a few shell and desktop enhancements for Windows Vista. These third-party shells run in place of Explorer, which sometimes require registry edits or

How to Recover Windows that Disappear

Alan McCloskeyApr 15, 2008June 26, 20140

David Copperfield may be able to make an entire house disappear, but missing windows are an event that nearly everyone has encountered. This occurs more

Boost USB Drive Performance in Windows

Alan McCloskeyApr 1, 2008August 3, 20142

Another one of our articles shows you how to speed up SATA hard drive performance in Windows Vista by enabling advanced write caching. A similar

Speed up SATA Drives in Windows

Alan McCloskeyMar 25, 2008June 26, 20147

We showed you in a previous tip how to increase performance with USB drives in Vista by enabling write caching. By default this option isn’t turned on

How to Upgrade CPU and Memory

Daniël PielageMar 21, 2008June 26, 20140

Ever since computers have invaded all of our homes the one thing that might have always daunted the normal user is “I want to upgrade

Who Disabled My Task Manager?

Alan McCloskeyMar 18, 2008June 26, 20143

I recently became the victim of a trojan virus… it was my own fault, and I have only myself to blame. This virus wasn’t a

Fix Windows’ Wasteful Shadow Copy (VSS)

Alan McCloskeyMar 17, 2008June 26, 20143

As storage has gotten more expansive, Microsoft has gotten very good at unnecessarily using up this extra space. One of the biggest storage hogs is

Unleash Windows Address Bar

Alan McCloskeyMar 14, 2008August 2, 20140

If you’re a power-user, then you like to execute tasks in the quickest way possible. One of Vista’s tools that is greatly under-used is the

Generate a Blue Screen of Death (on purpose!)

Alan McCloskeyMar 13, 2008June 26, 20143

Microsoft claims that Windows Vista is the most stable version of their OS yet… so stable that you may not ever see the dreaded BSOD

List Windows Drivers from the Command Prompt

Alan McCloskeyMar 13, 2008August 2, 20141

If you’ve had your PC running for any length of time, then you’ve no doubt added and removed hardware since Windows was first installed. Even if you

What Firewalls Do and Don’t Do

Guest WriterMar 6, 2008November 28, 20140

Over the last few years, security threats to companies have grown and altered dramatically and so have the defences. Traditional firewalls, installed over three years

Tweak Windows Auto-Tuning Network

Alan McCloskeyMar 5, 2008August 2, 20140

Once again, Microsoft thinks it can solve all of your problems by being smarter than you are. Unfortunately, some of the “automatic tuning” features of Vista

Run System Restore from the Command Line

Alan McCloskeyMar 4, 2008June 26, 20147

It sometimes happens that you install some new hardware or program which then wreaks havoc on your computer. You may experience unusual program crashes or

Clear IE From Command Line

Alan McCloskeyFeb 24, 2008August 2, 20140

There’s lots of little files accumulating on your computer… like bacteria. Every time you browse the interenet, little bits of data are saved onto your