If you were a fan of the Aero visual style on Windows 7 and Vista with transparencies, blur, glow and other fancy effects, you would surely have missed it on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Many people were disappointed that the sleek, transparent glassy look of Windows 7 with rounded corners, glossy buttons and blur was gone in Windows 8 and replaced with flat, opaque colors without even as much as a gradient to make things look nicer. Well, you can have it back on Windows 8.1 and Windows 8. Here's how.
Launch your favorite apps with useful aliases from the Run dialog
Ever since Windows 95, Windows has had a cool feature known as app paths. It allows end users to create their own commands to run anything. Throughout its long history, this little known feature never gained much popularity, probably because it was initially designed for developers to prevent them from adding their apps to the system path variable. Even in Windows 8.1, this feature still exists without any changes, and is still secretly hidden from the eyes of the average Windows user. In this article, we will look at what app paths are and how you can create your own aliases to tremendously boost your working efficiency.
Nature HD#34 theme for Windows 8
Windows 8 reboots (restarts) instead of shutting down
A number of Winaero readers write to me regularly saying they have various shutdown-related issues with Windows 8 (and now Windows 8.1). The most popular issue is that their PC reboots instead of shutting down. When they click shut down, Windows 8 doesn't shutdown, but instead restarts.
It is hard to tell what is the exact cause of such behavior, because the reason can be different from PC to PC, but in this article we will explore some solutions which can be helpful if you are facing this problem of the computer rebooting instead of doing a shut down.
How to disable or enable Fast Startup in Windows 8.1
Fast Startup is a new feature which is introduced in Windows 8 RTM. It allows your computer to start faster than normal by logging off the user session and then saving a part of system related files and drivers to a hibernation file. When you turn on your PC again, it resumes from hibernate and logs you in again. In other words, the fast startup feature combines the classic shutdown mechanisms with hibernation, so it can be called 'hybrid shutdown'. Hybrid shutdown is enabled by default in Windows 8 and its successor, Windows 8.1. Follow this article to learn how to disable the fast boot feature or enable it back, and why you may want to do so.
How to perform a clean boot of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 to diagnose issues
If you suddenly got some unexpected behavior on your Windows 8 PC, then the first thing you should do is take a diagnostic approach by way of elimination. There are plenty of factors which can be the cause of issues like slowdowns, BSODs, freezes and even sudden reboots. The best way to detect what exactly is the cause of the trouble is to perform a clean boot. Using a clean boot, you can find if the OS is damaged by some third party app or a bad driver. By preventing them from loading, you can exclude the influence of these two factors.
Nature HD#33 theme for Windows 8
How to use the Quick Access Toolbar of File Explorer with keyboard only
The Quick Access Toolbar is a feature of File Explorer which exists in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. It is part of the Ribbon UI in File Explorer and is located in the title bar. I consider this toolbar very useful because it allows you to have fast access to any ribbon command with one click.
Using keyboard shortcuts, you can execute any command from the Quick Access Toolbar. Sometimes keyboard shortcuts are faster than the mouse and can improve your productivity and save your time.
How to reset the Start Screen layout in Windows 8.1 and Windows 8
In Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, the Start Screen is designed as a touchscreen-friendly Start menu replacement. It focuses on the concept of pinning. Everything must be pinned to the Start screen and it appears as a tile. Earlier in Windows 8 RTM, it pinned every single installed app automatically, creating a real mess of random icons splattered all across the Start Screen. Thankfully, in Windows 8.1, Microsoft has changed this behavior. Windows 8.1 does not pin anything automatically, so you are able to keep your Start Screen well organized. With help of apps like Pin to 8, you can even pin any file, folder or system location.
If you want to change the way your Start Screen is organized, you may want to reset its layout to the defaults. It's pretty easy to do this.
Customize the taskbar date and time formats in Windows 8.1, Windows 8 and Windows 7
One of our readers wanted to know what is a good clock replacement for the default Taskbar clock in Windows because he didn't like the format in which Windows shows the time and date. While many power users would want to replace the system tray clock on the Taskbar with a more powerful one for extra features, the format of the built-in clock in modern versions of Windows is customizable. In this article we will see how we can change the format.
