Sergey Tkachenko, Author at Winaero

Fix: Skype hangs after start for a few minutes

Skype is one of the most popular applications for video and audio calls via the Internet. It is available for various plarforms including WIndows, Linux, Android and Windows Phone. Microsoft purchased it to replace their own Windows Live Messenger with Skype. Now it is closely integrated with Windows and even shipped with Windows 8.x as a Metro app.

If you are a Skype user, you might be affected by the application hanging after the first start, especially if you started it for the first time on your PC.

How to get back Windows Update balloon notification in Windows 8.1 and Windows 8

In previous Windows versions (Windows 7, Windows XP etc), when new OS updates were available, Windows used to show a special icon in system tray notifying you of them. It was a very useful way to instantly know about new updates. You could click on the icon and open the Windows Update Control Panel item to see which updates were available and install them. With Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 Microsoft has removed the tray icon. Notices about updates being available are shown on the logon screen, which appears only for a few seconds if your account has no password protection, e.g. in case when you are automatically logging in to Windows. Fortunately, it is possible to get those notifications back in the system tray.

Daily Bing #38 theme for Windows 8

Daily Bing #38

FIX: Windows 8.1 Metro apps do not work or crash

Windows 8.1 comes with a number of built-in Modern apps which are suitable for touch screens. While they are generally stable, sometimes, due to various causes, these apps can stop working or crash when they start. There are several general recommendations to restore normal Modern apps behavior in Windows 8.1 and get them working again.

Valentine’s Day 2014 theme for Windows 8

How to use wake on LAN on Windows 8.1 and Windows 8

Wake-on-LAN (WOL) is a great feature of PCs which allows you to wake them up from sleep or shutdown over your local area network or over the Internet. It is like a remote power on button. If your hardware has WOL support, you can power on the computer remotely using any of the dozens of freeware tools available on the web to initiate the wake up event. In this article, I will cover the basic steps which are required to configure WOL under Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.

Download TrayIt!

TrayIt!

Note: The official website of the app is not online any longer. There is no way to download the app from the official website or find the author's contact information. You can download TrayIt! from Winaero. We are using it ourselves and store it here for our personal needs. The app is distributed 'as-is', all rights belong to its author, Igor Nys.

TrayIt! is a small free utility that allows you to minimize any program to the Windows tray rather than the Windows taskbar. TrayIt can send any window or application to the notification area, even when the app doesn't support such a feature.

[Fix] Desktop Tile is missing on the Start screen in Windows 8.1

By default, Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 come with a special tile on the Start screen called 'Desktop'. It shows your current wallpaper and allows you to switch to the classic Desktop mode to work with desktop apps. But sometimes something goes wrong and Desktop tile disappears from the Start screen. Here's how you can restore it.

Download Desktop Tile for Windows 8.1

Desktop Tile for Windows 8.1.

Desktop Tile for Windows 8.1
Allows you to restore the missing Desktop tile on the Start screen.
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Get a customizable brightness control for your Android home screen

Like many people, I have several Android devices for daily use, including a smartphone and two tablets. All of them have Android's auto-brightness feature, which allows changing the display brightness automatically when the light around you changes its intensity. However, I am not a big fan of this feature. Instead, I prefer setting the brightness level manually. For that purpose, I use a free open source widget for the home screen.