Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Windows Forums member and owner of Real Security, geohac, has updated his comprehensive guide to help users remove malware from their PC. In the guide, geohac covers steps you should take to prepare for removal such as disabling proxy servers (to give you a better chance at getting online and getting to the sites you need for virus removal software.) The guide then goes on to show you how to boot into safe mode to fight a virus (something we recommend ourselves) and then shows you which tools you should use to remove a virus (downloading these tools on a non-infected PC is the safest bet and making sure, if you have to use a USB drive to transfer the files, that you don’t put the same, now potentially infected, thumb drive back in the clean PC.)

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve used PCs for years or haven’t used some of the older versions of Windows, you might appreciate The Restart Page—a site that displays the restart sequence for many of the older operating systems including Windows 1.1, 2000, XP, NeXT, and Apple operating systems.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re using Internet Explorer (IE) and you want to open more than one homepage when you start a web browsing session, this guide will help you get set up.

Read the rest of this entry »

You probably have a hard drive in your home that’s one terabyte or more. If you open Computer (Windows Key + E), you’ll see your terabyte hard drive might only show a capacity of around 930 GB. Where did all those extra gigabytes go? Aren’t there a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte? If you have questions like these, this guide answers them.

Terabyte vs. Tebibyte

Hard drive manufacturers use the International System of Units (SI) convention to when listing hard drive capacity. Kilo-, mega-, giga-, and tera- are some of the prefixes used in accordance with the SI and are base-10 (decimal.) “Tera” means trillion so a terabyte is one trillion, 1,000,000,000,000, or 10²⁰ bytes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over time, dust and dirt build up inside your laptop; thereby, restricting airflow, increasing heat, and putting a strain on your laptop’s fans. A hot laptop is not a happy laptop. In fact, most modern processors (CPUs) reduce their clock speed when temperatures get close to 80C (think of it as a “survival mode” for your CPU), which is generally accepted as the highest temperature you should let your CPU reach. The dirtier the airways in your laptop, the quicker your CPU’s temperature can jump to dangerous levels—especially when the airways are further restricted by a pillow, your jeans etc.

To help stop your laptop overheating, consider clearing the channels by which air is designed to flow through your hardware. This guide provides a few tips to help you keep your laptop’s airways free of dust and dirt.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re using an older computer or a computer that came without a dedicated graphics card (GPU – Graphics processing unit), you may have considered getting a more powerful GPU. An upgraded GPU will let you:

• Play games at higher resolution, detail, and frame rate
• Play HD video without stutter
• Use two or more monitors (helpful if you can only use one with your current setup)
• Speed up photo and video editing

In this guide, I’ll show you the basics of finding out what your upgrade options are and how to install a new graphics card.

Read the rest of this entry »