Category: Windows 8

Shortcuts to Restart, Hibernate, Standby or Shutdown Your Computer

Here’s a tip that might be handy for those using Windows 8 or most other recent versions of Windows. If using the charms bar in Windows 8 makes your head explode then you might fancy creating a shortcut to restart, hibernate, standby or shutdown your computer. It’s very easy to do as follows: Right click …

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Boost Windows Security With EMET 3.0

Thanks to John Tomic for this tip. While Microsoft does a reasonable job keeping on top of the various security vulnerabilities found in its software your system will still be exposed to threats between the time they are identified (if at all) and the time when the patch is successfully installed. Like insurance, it can …

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Muting Windows 8 Metro Apps

Sometimes, my desktop computer needs to do a few things at the same time and most commonly this takes the form of playing a video on the television (connected by HDMI to my computer) and playing a game be it Team Fortress 2 or even a quick game of Minesweeper on my desktop monitor. One …

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Access the Control Panel Quickly Under Windows 8

Another Windows 8 tip for you out there. Since the move away from the Start Menu to the Start Screen some user may find the process of getting to a specific control panel applet a little more involved that it used to be back Windows 7. Unfortunately, in the Start Screen you can’t just start …

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COM Surrogate Process and High CPU Usage

Just an observation on Windows 8 that I wanted to share which may also help others using Windows Vista and 7. Recently, I was seeing some graphical glitches occur under Windows 8 as well as CPU usage getting stuck at 25% for unusually long periods of time on my quad-core i7 desktop. This meant that …

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Switch Between 32-bit and 64-bit Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8

Update 22/09/2013: Looks like there is a bit more under the hood regarding Enhanced Protected Mode – read more here. Here’s another quick tip for Windows 8 users. In prior versions of 64-bit Windows there were two versions of Internet Explorer that came as part of the operating system. One was the regular 32-bit version …

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Mounting ISOs in Windows 8

Here’s another Windows 8 tip. With prior versions of Windows you would normally require third party software in order to mount ISO files as a native drive in Windows Explorer. This changes in Windows 8 with its ability to mount ISOs without additional software. All you need to do is the following: Locate the desired …

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The Many Ways to Shutdown or Restart Windows 8

Leading on from yesterday’s tip on how to unlock Windows 8 there are several ways to shutdown and restart Windows 8 as well. Alt + Ctrl + Del Hit Alt + Ctrl + Del on your keyboard, Click the power button in the bottom right corner and select your shutdown option.   Charms Bar Hit Window + …

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The Many Ways to Unlock Windows 8

With many things from Microsoft, there are a myriad of ways to do the same thing and this goes for unlocking a Windows 8 computer. Essentially, you have the following options from the lock screen: Hit the space bar on the keyboard, Hit Enter on the keyboard, Click the primary button on the mouse (the left …

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Middle Click – The Unknown Shortcuts

For those on Windows 7 and Windows 8 you may not have known about the special functionality provided by middle clicking (or pressing down on the scroll wheel). If you want to open a new instance of an application, then do the following: hover your mouse cursor over the application on the taskbar, middle click. …

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