There are some things you can only do from the command line—even in Windows. Some of these tools don’t have graphical equivalents, while others are just plain faster to use than their graphical interfaces. If you...
You turn on your computer one day and Windows refuses to boot—what do you do? “Windows won’t boot” is a common symptom with a variety of causes, so you’ll need to perform some troubleshooting. Modern versions of...
We have shown you a lot of tips and tricks over the years that involve modifying Local Group Policy. If you would ever like to see all the Group Policy settings in effect on your PC, here’s how to do it. In the...
The built-in backup utilities in Windows are pretty solid. Let’s take a look at how to create a full backup image of your PC without the need for a third party utility. Open the System Backup Image Tool. In...
The "Send to" menu has been a cool and useful feature in Windows for generations. Use it to send, copy, or print an individual file to a specific location, device, application, or other item. But you may not think...
Windows automatically suspends your USB devices when they aren’t being used. This helps save power , but may cause problems with some USB hardware. Your USB devices will use more power if you disable this feature,...
Windows 10 includes several different types of backup and recovery tools. And we’re going to take a look at all of them. Sometimes, bad things happen to good computers. Fortunately, Windows includes a number of...
Your computer’s BIOS is the first thing that loads when you start your computer. It initializes your hardware before booting an operating system from your hard drive or another device. Many low-level system...
The Windows Task Manager is an important tool for every Windows user. It can show you why your computer is slow and help you deal with misbehaving and resource-hungry programs, whether they’re draining CPU, RAM,...
If your Taskbar, System Tray, or Start menu acts up, you might be tempted to restart your PC. Instead, you can usually just restart Windows Explorer—and Windows makes it pretty easy. Windows Explorer (Explorer...
If your Windows PC is throwing an error message at you before it even begins to load Windows, it’s possible that the boot sector on your system partition is damaged, corrupted, or has missing files. Here’s how to...
Crackling, popping, and other sound problems can occur for a variety of reasons. You may be able to fix the problem by adjusting your audio device settings, updating your sound driver, or pinning down another...
By default, Windows stores your personal folders like Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos in C:\Users. If you want to move them to a secondary drive—say, if you have an SSD that can’t house all your files—you...
If you find that your old hard drive is bursting at the seams and you want to upgrade to a larger one, it’s really easy to do so without losing any of your data. This is thanks to a process called disk cloning ....
Of all available backup options, the most reassuring one is the image backup, which creates a snapshot of your system configuration, complete with apps and settings and data files, ready to be restored in the event of...
Windows PCs should shut down fairly quickly—unless there’s a problem causing a shutdown delay. Here’s how to make your computer shut down faster. Ensure Windows Isn’t Clearing Your Page File at Shutdown Windows...
Windows Hello, a new feature in Windows 10, allows you to sign into your computer with your fingerprint or facial recognition. It now allows you to sign into apps and websites via Microsoft Edge, too. What You’ll...
Oops, Windows is acting funky. Maybe you've installed a new application or driver or other piece of software that's wreaking havoc with your system. Perhaps Windows is crashing or blue screening and you have no...
Image: iStockphoto.com/Cindy Haggerty A colleague recently enabled Windows 10's hibernation feature on his new laptop with an SSD drive and mentioned that he was concerned about the hibernation file taking up...
There are lots of tools out there for taking screenshots in Windows. However, you may not need to install a third party app. Snipping Tool, included in Windows Vista and later, allows you to take screenshots, as...
Any time you have hard drive errors—or even strange behavior you might not at first associate with a hard drive—Check Disk can be a lifesaver. Here’s a full guide to using the Check Disk tool that comes with every...
When using Windows there will ultimately come a time when you need to close a program that is frozen, is malware, or is simply not behaving properly. Unfortunately, sometimes just clicking on the Windows close button (...
Windows Update is supposed to work silently in the background, but it may refuse to continue if it can’t install an individual update. This can happen on Windows 7, 8, or 10, but it’s become especially common with...
Did you upgrade to Windows 10 or install a new Insider test build? Then use this guide to get rid of the Windows.old folder that is only wasting gigabytes of space in your PC's hard drive. Every time you upgrade...
Barely a month had passed after we told you to let Windows Update automatically keep your PC updated before Microsoft decided to make us look bad by releasing a couple of really bad updates that broke people’s...
Duplicate files waste precious space on your computer’s hard drive — especially if you have an SSD — and make your computer’s backups bigger for no good reason. Here’s how you can free up some disk space . ...
As PC hardware continues to get faster, so does software, and Windows 10 is no exception. This is especially true of startup time: If you upgrade from Windows 7 or earlier, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how...