50 Windows 8 tips, tricks and secrets

Tutorial: Hints and tips to help you get more from Windows 8
It's far from finished, but the Developer Preview edition of Windows 8 is already packed with important additions, from the colourful Metro interface, to a revamped Explorer, appealing desktop applets, useful system repair options, and more.

In places, though, Windows 8 is also very different to what's gone before. So if you've installed the new Windows 8 build, perhaps on a virtual machine but found yourself a little lost, don't worry - read our Windows 8 tips and tricks and you'll soon be back on track, and taking a close-up view at some of the best features Windows 8 has to offer.

Windows 8 tips: getting started

1. Lock screen

Launch Windows 8 and you'll first see the Lock screen, which appears whenever your system boots, resumes or you otherwise need to log on. If you have a touch screen, swipe up to clear it and enter your password; otherwise, drag up with the mouse, use the mouse scroll wheel, or just to tap the spacebar to clear it and move on.

Official minimum specs for Windows 7

Windows 7 news. News about Windows 7

Microsofts new operating system has soon to hit the store shelves and Microsoft has now revealed the minimum computer requirements for running Windows 7. Windows 7 is way less of a resource hog than little brother Windows Vista, most people know that, but now we got real facts to support this, see the requirements after the bump.





Windows 7 minimum requirements
CPU: 1 GHz+ 32 or 64-Bit processor
RAM: 1 GB for 32-Bit, 2 GB for 64-Bit
GPU: 128 MB DirectX 9, WDDM 1.0 Compatible Video Card
HDD: 15 GB for 32-Bit, 20 GB for 64-Bit
Other:
DVD Drive
DX9 Capable sound card
1024x768 or better capable screen
Keyboard + Mouse
An internet connection for updates and activation.

Activation Windows 7

Force activation of Aero in Windows 7

If you are experiencing problems with activating and run Aero in windows 7 you can try the Aero Peek hack for Windows 7. Read more to learn how.

1. Open the registry (Write regedit in run)

2.Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ DWM
If the DWM key is not found in the registry, right click on the Windows folder and pick New -> Key and calll it DWM.

3. In the second detail window to the right, a new DWORD (32-bit value) has to be made, with the name UseMachineCheck, this has to be set to 0.

Update crashing in Windows 7

Fix for Installers and update crashing in Windows 7

Some users have been having problems installing or updating software in Windows 7, this happens when trying to install Microsoft Office, Windows Update or any other installer that are using Microsoft’s MSI installer to install or update software. Microsoft has released an official workaround for the problem.

Note: Microsoft deployed a configuration change which exposed this (installer) problem. New machines installing Windows 7 Beta will not experience this problem. An issue related to the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP also known as SQM) client in the Windows 7 Beta is causing crashes of Explorer, MSI-based installers and other applications. In order to resolve the issue, impacted customers need to run the following script from an elevated command prompt. This script will stop crashes related to CEIP and removes those changes (registry keys) to prevent further CEIP related crashes.

The print spooler service is not running

Some users may get a “print spooler service” error when you trying to install a printer in Windows that says:

Operation could not be completed. The print spooler service is not running.


To solve this error, try the following steps.

• Press Window key + R to open the Run dialog Start and type services.msc and click OK.
• Double-click the Printer Spooler service, and then change the startup type to Automatic. This sets the Spooler service to start automatically when you restart the computer. Click OK.
• Restart the computer and try to install the printer again.

Nvidia: Console Software Sales Flat, PC on the Rise

PC gaming is dead? Not so fast...

ZoomI'm not quite sure how it happened, but PC gaming seems to have gotten a bad rap over the last several years. It isn't from journalists like me, and it's certainly not coming from sites like Tom's Hardware; but at some point "they" decided that the PC should play second fiddle to the Xbox and PlayStation, instead of the other way around...or at the very least, seeing every player in the gaming space as equal.

Nvidia certainly has something to say about that, and the company's response isn't a sleek new near-$3,000 gaming laptop, nor is it some hot new PC title...despite Battlefield 3, Skyrim and Rage being right around the corner. Instead, Big Green is bringing cold, hard facts to the table. In short, it's all about the almighty dollar and how that cash is wielded by you, John Q. Consumer. I met with Nvidia recently to talk about gaming in general, as well as look at some exciting new hardware coming out in the near future. The latter is hush-hush until next month, but when it comes to the state of PC gaming, it's open season.

Microsoft Office 2010 review

There are a lot more SmartArt diagrams in Word, Excel and PowerPoint - and all three apps get powerful new image editing and style tools.

This includes standard correction options but the most dramatic are the Artistic Effects - Photoshop-style filters that turn images into pencil sketches, pastel or oil paintings, mosaics or rippled glass - and the amazing Remove Background tool.

This does what it says on the tin, removing the background from images; the automatic removal isn't perfect but it often gets the object you want first time and you can easily add and remove areas.

The new word processing features in Word are mostly about the look of text. Text effects replace the tired old WordArt with the same image effects that Word 2007 had for objects like shapes.

Microsoft Windows 7 (Ultimate)

The good: Strong design and Microsoft don't always go together, but they do in Windows 7. Users might take a while to get used to the new taskbar and Aero Peek, but they're a pleasure to use.

The bad: Performance is still hit-or-miss in Windows 7. At the ripe age of seven, Windows XP still performs better in some categories.

The bottom line: Windows 7 is more than what Vista should have been, it's where Microsoft needed to go. How much damage Vista did and whether Windows 7 is enough for people to finally abandon Windows XP are questions that nobody has the answers to right now.

Deserved or not, Microsoft had dug itself a cool, deep, dark hole with Windows Vista. Users demanding that Redmond extend the life of Windows XP wasn't exactly something they could be proud of, either. Bombarded by complaints and negative press even after the first service pack was released, the bar had been set high for Vista's successor: Windows 7.

Microsoft looks to 'Mojave' to revive Vista's image

REDMOND, Wash.--After months of searching for ways to defend its oft-maligned Windows operating system, Microsoft may just have found its best weapon: Vista's skeptics.

Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.

0digg "Oh wow," said one user, eliciting exactly the exclamation that Microsoft had hoped to garner when it first released the operating system more than 18 months ago. Instead, the operating system got mixed reviews and criticisms for its lack of compatibility and other headaches.

To be sure, the focus groups didn't have to install Vista or hook it up to their existing home network. Still, the emotional appeal of the "everyman" trying Vista and liking it clearly packs an emotional punch, something the company has desperately needed. Microsoft is still trying to figure out just how it will use the Mojave footage in its marketing, though it will clearly have a place.

Designing the Start screen

Designing the Start screen

Thank you for the comments and feedback on the previous post. We definitely get the message that there's a lot of feedback and passion around the design. We're going to continue talking about the design and answering your questions and comments through these blog posts. We designed Start to be a modern, fast and fluid replacement for the combination of launching, switching, notifying, and at-a-glance viewing of information. That's a tall order. And of course, we set out to do this for the vast majority of customers, who are more familiar with the Start menu, mouse and keyboard, as well as for new customers using touch-capable devices. This post is authored by Alice Steinglass, the group program manager for the Core Experience Evolved team. –Steven

As we wrote about in our post on evolving the Start menu, after studying real world usage of the Start menu through a variety of techniques, we realized that it was serving mainly as the launcher for programs you rarely use. As more and more launching takes place from the task bar, the Start menu looks like a lot of user interface for programs you don't use very frequently. And the Start menu is not well-optimized for this purpose. It affords limited customization, provides virtually no useful information, and offers only a small space for search results. We found that people “in the know” who valued efficiency were moving away from the Start menu, and pinning their frequently used programs to the taskbar so that they could access them instantly in one click. We see this quite a bit on professional workstations where there are set of tools that all fit on the taskbar and are all used regularly—machines used by engineers, designers, developers, information workers, etc.

Evolving the Start menu

Evolving the Start menu

This post kicks off a series of posts on the design of the Start screen and the evolution of the core activity of launching and switching programs. Some folks are calling the Start screen the "Metro shell" for Windows 8, but for us it is the evolution of the Start menu and associated functions. We've been watching the comments closely and have seen the full spectrum of reactions as one would expect when the core interface changes. We want to use these blog posts to have a dialog that reflects back on your comments, and so we’ll start by walking you through the history and decisions that led to the current design. Because the Developer Preview is focused on building apps, and the core user experience is still under development, we want to make sure our discussions start from first principles and work through the design to provide a fuller context for where we will be at the next project milestone.

This post was authored by Chaitanya Sareen, program manager lead on our Core Experience Evolved team. You might remember Chaitanya, as he also worked on the Windows 7 experience and authored posts on the Engineering 7 blog. –Steven

We’d like to share a series of blog posts on the how and why of reimagining Start. This first post talks about the history and evolution of the Start menu, and several of the problems and trends we’ve learned from you. We think it’s always important to understand where we’ve come from before we talk about where we’re headed. We’ll then have another post that dives into how we crafted the new Start screen, and then we’ll see where the discussion leads us from there. 

Reducing runtime memory in Windows 8

Reducing runtime memory in Windows 8

Fundamentals such as memory usage represent a key engineering tenet of Windows 8. In building Windows 8 we set out to significantly reduce the overall runtime memory requirements of the core system. This is always good for everyone and especially in a world where people want to run more and more apps at the same time or run on systems with only 1 or 2GB of memory. The laptop we talk about in this post is the exact same one we talked about at the Windows 7 PDC in 2008 – an off-the-shelf, first-generation, ATOM-based netbook with 1GB of memory. This post details our efforts around memory footprint and was authored by Bill Karagounis, the group program manager of our Performance team. --Steven

The runtime memory usage of Windows 8 is an important factor in determining the Windows 8 system requirements, as well as the broadened spectrum of devices that will host Windows 8. As you know, we’re delivering the complete Windows 8 experience on SoC-based devices characterized by low power consumption. This makes it even more important to leave lots of memory available for multiple concurrent apps and to sustain the overall responsiveness of devices.

Windows 8 Uses Less Memory Than Windows 7

Windows 8 Uses Less Memory Than Windows 7

Those of you who saw Microsoft demonstrate Windows 8 at their Build conference last month will know that Windows 8 uses less RAM than Windows 7. Microsoft used a low powered netbook which had just 1GB of RAM. They booted Windows 7 SP1 and the Windows 8 Developer Preview and after they had both been at idle for a while it was found that Windows 8 was using a lot less CPU and Memory compared to Windows 7. ( 5% vs 1% and 404 MB vs 281 MB)

Windows 7 was applauded for reducing the amount of memory that Windows uses, especially compared to Windows Vista but now Microsoft have gone even further with Windows 8. One of their goals was to make sure that all machines that are capable of running Windows 7, will be able to run Windows 8 without a problem. Microsoft have managed to surpass these expectations by making Windows 8 even less resource intensive.


So how do they do it? Well Microsoft went into great detail over on the Building Windows 8 blog but I’ll try and just give you some of the main points.

Windows 8 make use of a new feature known as memory combining. Basically Windows looks at system RAM use, then it finds duplicate code that could be running for a variety of reasons, it then removes these duplicates from the memory so that you only have one copy of the code running, thus freeing up memory.

Time-Walrus-Talk | to run a free scan for PC errors

Tip: Click here to run a free scan for PC errors “The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to talk of many things. . .”

Now you may find this an odd title for this article but indeed it covers many things. It all started when I was sorely tempted to buy an Apple iPad 2. This came about as two members of my family regularly extolled the virtues of their iPhones and their iPads.

So began a period of reflection when I looked at my three Windows type computers and wondered whether it was time for a “sea change”. This led to a long period of investigation and ended up with me trying out one of their iPads. I was indeed impressed and sorely tempted. With the demise of Steve Jobs and the media’s recognition of his important contribution this nearly tipped me over the edge. One should not overlook Bill Gates and his contribution to the development of the PC, DOS and Windows operating systems. History may well judge him by his recent philanthropy in helping those less fortunate rather than his work with computers.

Then, in the cold light of day I made a decision. While I loved the touch screen and all its features I decided to stick with what I knew. I was happy and comfortable with PCs. So, no iPad for me!