Category: Windows 95

How to Shutdown Windows 8

I have had a number of people who are trying out Windows 8 that are stumped by how to actually execute a shut down. Since Windows 95, you could shut down a computer by clicking “Start” then “Shut down” but with Windows 8 that doesn’t work as the Start Menu has been replaced with the …

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Another Way to Close Windows in Windows

Here’s a quick tip for tonight for Windows users. Back in Windows 3.1 there wasn’t a dedicated button to close a window so instead you had to double click the menu button in the top left corner. It wasn’t until Windows 95 that a dedicated close button made its appearance in the top right corner …

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Why You Should Only Install Applications in the Program Files Folder

Most Windows software these days follows the convention introduced back in Windows 95 to install applications into the “Program Files” or “Program Files (x86)” folder on your computer (usually located in C:\). With more recent versions of Windows such as Windows Vista and Windows 7 this has become quite important as the “Program Files” folders …

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Learning About Application Compatibility Mode in Windows

Application Properties (Compatibility Tab - Dropdown List)

Yesterday, I wrote about an old game that was a favourite of mine back in school, WinTrek as well as some nostalgia from that time of my life. Anyway, with games written for really old operating systems like Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 you might need to tweak things a little bit to get these …

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ARM CPUs and Windows 8 – What Does it Mean?

It’s no secret now that Windows 8 is going to be compatible with ARM CPUs. This is an interesting move as the general belief in the technical ranks was that Microsoft would scale up Windows Phone to the tablet form factor rather than have another tilt at shoehorning its desktop operating system into low powered …

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Reclaim Space by Emptying the Recycling Bin or Trash

Here’s a quick tip. While some of us may think this is a very obvious tip others may not have any idea about the concept of the Recycle Bin (or simply “Trash” in Mac OS X) and the fact that stuff that’s in there still chews up hard drive space. Sure, these days with drive …

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Diagnose Dataflow Problems: The Traceroute

Traceroute with Unresponsive Hop

Leading on from yesterday’s post about how to do a ping test we move on to another test which might uncover more information about where dataflow problems may be occurring. In a nutshell, a traceroute shows you all of the various entities (also known as “hops”) on the Internet that sit between you and a …

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Use the Character Map to Find Unusual & Lesser Used Symbols

Character Map

Here’s a quick tip for tonight. Sometimes we need to get a hold of certain symbols like the copyright symbol (i.e. ©) when we don’t know the keyboard shortcut (Alt + 0169) or we want to preview a whole stack of characters at the same time for unusual fonts like Wingdings and Webdings. Sure, for …

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No Pen and Paper? Use Notepad!

Here’s another quick tip. In many cases when I make or receive a phone call I am in front of a computer but also, for the life of me, I never seem to have a pen. One trick I have used for many years is to use the good old Windows Notepad application to jot …

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Visually Track Hard Drive Space with WinDirStat

WinDirStat - Folder Summary Screen (Completed)

Here’s a quick tip for this evening. If there is one thing that Windows has lacked all of these years it is a way to quickly assess from a macro level which folders are taking up the most space without having to take a “divide and conquer” approach by right clicking each folder, going to …

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