Windows 8.1 shows you a list of all user accounts available on your PC on the logon screen. You can click the user avatar, enter the password if it is necessary, and login using the provided credentials. Did you know that it is possible to hide a specific user from this list, so the account becomes hidden. Nobody will be able to see that you have such a user account. This can be done with a simple registry tweak, which I will cover in this article.
Daily Bing #46 theme for Windows 8
How to pin Favorites to the taskbar or the Start screen in Windows 8.1
The Favorites folder in File Explorer is a very useful way to visit your favorite hard drive locations quickly with one click. It is a folder located at the top of the Navigation Pane of the File Explorer window. The user is able to add folders to Favorites by dragging the select folders to the Favorites icon or clicking the 'Add current location to Favorites' context menu item of the Favorites icon in the Navigation Pane. Here is how you can pin the Favorites folder to the taskbar or the Start screen in Windows 8.1.
How to pin Switch between windows to the taskbar or the Start screen in Windows 8.1
Switch between windows is a special button which can open the same dialog as you see when you press the Alt + Tab shortcut keys together on the keyboard. Using that dialog you can quickly preview all of your open windows (for example, open files, folders, and documents) without having to click the taskbar. It displays your open windows in a table. To switch between windows, you can press Alt + Tab the required amount of times. In Windows 7 and above, the Switch between windows button is gone with the Quick Launch toolbar. It is possible to get that button back again. Here is how.
Hotkeys to clear download history and rotate PDF in Google Chrome
Google Chrome is very popular web browser, which comes with interesting features and extensions. Like any other browser, it has a set of useful shortcut keys. In the upcoming versions of Google Chrome, two additional useful keyboard shortcuts have been added. This change is available in the Canary build only at this moment, but it will appear in the stable builds in the near future. Let's take a closer look at what these hotkeys do.
How to pin Run to the taskbar or the Start screen in Windows 8.1
In Windows, the Run command is used to start various documents and applications quickly. Using the Run command is a quick way to open programs, files, folders, and - when you are connected to the Internet - websites. Even some built-in tools like Registry Editor can be executed only via the Run command as they do not have a shortcut in the Start menu or on the Start screen. In Windows 8, Microsoft has removed the Start menu, where the Run command was located in previous versions of Windows. If you are using the Run command very often, you might be interested in pinning it to the Start screen or to the taskbar for easy access. Here is how you can do it.
Here is how to enable the Aero Peek feature in Windows 8.1
Windows 8 comes with three useful features to help you to manage and arrange opened windows. These features are Aero Snap, Aero Peek and Aero Shake, all of them were available since Windows 7. The Snap feature, which is present in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 as well, allows you to work on two programs side-by-side by showing two windows side-by-side on the same screen. Today, I would like to cover Aero Peek. This feature allows users to quickly view the desktop by moving the mouse pointer to the bottom right corner of the taskbar. It is really useful if you need to view your desktop without minimizing all open applications. In Windows 8, this feature is disabled by default, so we will look, how to enable it back.
Change the download location in IE, Chrome, Firefox and Opera
In this article I would like to show you how to change the default download location in popular browsers: Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Most of the mainstream browsers keep downloaded files in the user's Downloads folder, located at C:\Users\<Your User name>\Downloads. If you would like to set some other location for downloaded files, i.e. change it to the Desktop folder for faster access, then read the rest of this article.
How to change the default Program Files installation directory location in Windows 8 and Windows 7
Program Files is the one of most important directories in Windows. Usually it is located on the system drive and serves as the default installation location for all software. It is recommended by Microsoft to use this folder to store installed apps. In more recent versions of Windows, the Program Files folder is protected by special file system access rights so only administrators with elevated permissions can write to it when UAC is on. The default path to this folder is C:\Program Files. 64-bit versions of Windows additionally have the C:\Program Files (x86) folder which is used to store 32-bit programs. In this article, we will see how to change the location of the Program Files default installation directory used by app installers.
Set how many times a window flashes on the taskbar to notify you in Windows 8 and Windows 7
When some application in Windows, which is not running from the tray, requires some action from you, or wishes to notify you, its taskbar button flashes (turns orange) to seek your attention. A good example of such apps are instant messengers such as Yahoo! Messenger or the open-source Miranda IM. Any application which is not focused (opened in the background) but requires your attention will flash its button. By default, the taskbar button for such an app flashes 7 times in Windows 7 and Windows 8. Here is how to change this value to reduce the number of times it flashes or make it flash until you click on it.
