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Windows

10 Useful Windows Commands You Should Know
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...
What to Do When Windows Won’t Boot
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...
How to See Which Group Policies Are Applied to Your PC and User Account
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...
How to Create a System Image Backup in Windows 7, 8, or 10
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...
How to Customize the 'Send to' Menu in Windows
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...
How to Stop Windows From Powering Off Your USB Devices
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,...
How to Use All of Windows 10’s Backup and Recovery Tools
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...
What Does a PC’s BIOS Do, and When Should I Use It?
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...
What Every Windows User Needs to Know About Using the Windows Task Manager
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,...
How to Restart Windows’ Explorer.exe (Along with the Taskbar and Start Menu)
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...
How to Repair Windows Bootloader Problems (If Your Computer Won’t Start)
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...
How to Fix Crackling or Popping Sound on a Windows PC
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...
How to Move Your Documents, Music, and Other Folders Somewhere Else in Windows
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...
How to Upgrade to a Larger Hard Drive Without Reinstalling Windows
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 ....
Create a full image backup using this hidden tool in Windows 10
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...
How to Make Windows Shut Down Faster
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...
How to Log In to Your PC With Your Fingerprint Using Windows Hello
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...
How to Fix Windows PC Problems Via a Restore Point
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...
How to use Windows 10's Storage tool to find out the size of the hibernation file--and much more
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...
How to Use the Snipping Tool in Windows to Take Screenshots
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...
How to Fix Hard Drive Problems with Chkdsk in Windows 7, 8, and 10
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...
How to close a program using Task Manager
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 (...
How to Fix Windows Update When It Gets Stuck
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...
How to delete the Windows.old folder on Windows 10
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...
How to Roll Back or Uninstall a Problematic Windows Update
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...
How to Find and Remove Duplicate Files on Windows
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 . ...
10 Ways to speed up a slow windows pc
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...

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