One of our readers posted a question related to corruption in the Component Store of Windows 8. The Component store is a core feature of Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7 and Vista which stores all of the system files related to the OS grouped by components and as hardlinks (since files are shared between two components). When the OS is serviced, the component store is updated. It is part of Windows Imaging and Servicing stack. If you got the error 14098 'The component store has been corrupted', it means that something went wrong with Windows updates and its packages. Thankfully, Windows 8 has all the necessary tools to fix this issue.
Add custom searches to Internet Explorer’s address bar to save your time
Recently we posted a detailed tutorial on how you can add custom keywords in Google Chrome to perform searches from its address bar faster. Today, we should like to show you how to do the same for Internet Explorer. IE does not come with any options in its UI to configure these searches, but we will try to make it simple. Using the custom searches feature, you can save a lot of time and speed up your daily search-related tasks for Internet Explorer.
Download A set of custom searches for Internet Explorer
A set of custom searches for Internet Explorer.
A set of custom searches we created for Internet Explorer. See more info here:
Add custom searches to Internet Explorer’s address bar to save your time
//build 2014 roundup of improvements coming to Windows 8.1
The //build/ 2014 Microsoft conference started yesterday and on Day 1's keynote, Microsoft announced a number of exciting improvements coming to their products. While most of their announcements are related to Windows Phone, there were also certain changes announced for Windows. Previously, we wrote about the changes in Windows 8.1 Update 1 designed to make it more usable and friendlier for mouse and keyboard users. In addition to those, Microsoft announced the following new additions coming soon to improve the Windows experience.
Add custom Chrome searches for address bar to save your time
Google Chrome has a nice feature ever since it's earliest versions, which allows you to search from the address bar, customize search engines and their keywords, and define your own searches. Using this feature, you can save a lot of time and speed up your daily search-related tasks. In this article, we will look at how you can define and use your own searches in Google Chrome with some popular examples.
How to download all the data associated with your Google account
If you are an active user of Google's services, then you probably have over time, entered lots of data in various Google products and apps. Wouldn't it be nice if you could view all this data that Google stores about you in one place? You might also be interested in getting a downloadable archive with all the data you have posted in Google's services. Specially for such a case, Google have their 'Takeout' service.
How to prevent Windows 8 from automatically rebooting for update installations
If you configured Windows 8 or Windows 7 to install updates automatically, you might notice that it performs an automatic restart when updates are installed. This can be a really annoying thing if you had no plans to restart your PC and were busy with some important stuff. It can even reboot while you are watching some TV show or important online transaction. Fortunately, it is possible to change the OS behavior and prevent Windows from automatically rebooting for update installations.
How to disable the targeted ads (bubbling) in Google
If you use Google services, you might be knowing that Google collects some data about you to target you with relevant ads. Of all the information collected by Google, the most notable are your search queries when you are signed in (or even if you aren't), your location, your web browser cookies, and even your email. For example, if I Googled on how to buy tablets, I will see ads about online shops which sell tablets. Some users care a lot about their privacy and some of them just do not want any targeted ads. For those users, Google has a special set of settings.
Daily Bing #43 theme for Windows 8
Disable the taskbar transparency in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 with this freeware
Some time ago I created a little application, Opaque Taskbar to make the taskbar in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 non-transparent so that the white text on it becomes more readable. Today, I am proud to introduce a special native code build of Opaque Taskbar which is coded in pure C++ for faster performance and lighter resource consumption than the .NET app. It has some improvements over the .NET-based Opaque Taskbar app.
