At the edge of tweaking
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Windows 8.1 comes with one really annoying feature: it shows removable drives, optical drives and hard drives in one group together. This is one of the the worst changes made to Windows. Sadly, the OS does not offer you any option to the ungroup drives logically so local drives are in one group and the rest in another.
Today, I am going to share with you a simple tutorial on how to ungroup and display hard drives and removable drives separately in This PC.
This question was asked yesterday by one of my friends. He was bored with the default Windows sounds, which are very limited in Windows 8. He tried to find some good sound schemes, but all he found was some paid Stardock app with a proprietary soundpack format. This made him really unhappy, so we decided to find some source for free sounds and sound schemes. Luckily, we found a great web site for sounds!
I decided to write this article, because lots of people are still trying to use my Skip Metro Suite, which was not designed for Windows 8.1 and isn't actually required on Windows 8.1 any more. Windows 8.1 already offers you a native way to skip the Start screen and boot directly to Desktop! Let's see how to activate this useful feature.
Despite the Charms Bar being an annoyance on the Desktop, in Windows 8.1, Microsoft has only decided to allow users to disable the top left corner (also known as Switcher) and the top right corner, so when you point your mouse pointer to those corners, the Metro Charms Bars will not annoy you. However, the bottom right corner remains. If you find no use for the Charms Bar especially on the Desktop, you might be interested in disable that bottom right corner too.
In this article, we will look how to use settings in Windows 8.1 to disable active corners. Also, we will look at a workaround to disable the bottom right corner.
Winaero Charms Bar Killer.
Winaero Charms Bar Killer is freeware and portable application which allows you to get rid of Charms Bar in Windows 8.1/Windows 8 completely.
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Specially for touchpad users: if app "does not work" for you, please refer to this article: How to disable Metro edge swipes and touch charms bar gestures for trackpads (touchpads) in Windows 8.1 and Windows 8
Even if you recently switched to Windows 8.1, you probably noticed new features which allow you to disable top left corner, top right corner and skip Start screen to boot directly to Desktop. Those options are accessible inside properties of the taskbar:
However, there is still no way to rid of Charms Bar completely. For example, the bottom right corner can't be disabled using OS settings. So I decided to fix it and made this simple app: Winaero Charms Bar Killer
This app can kill the top left corner, the top right corner and the bottom right corner in Windows 8.1 and Windows 8. This can be handy for Windows 8 users too since they do not have options to disable those active corners.
The Win+X menu is one of the handy features of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 on the desktop. When you press the Win+X hotkey on the keyboard, it appears in the bottom left corner.
It contains quick links to the main control panel items, some administrative tools and provides quick access to the command prompt or PowerShell. Additionally, in Windows 8.1 it allows you to quickly sign out, shutdown and restart.
On a tablet with a touch screen, you might need to open that Win+X menu, but without a keyboard or a mouse, you may not be aware how to access it. Here's how to access it.
The developer of the famous Start Menu, StartIsBack, has written another app called OldNewExplorer and as the name indicates, it aims to restore some of the Windows 7 Explorer features to Windows 8's Explorer. The name appears to be a play on the famous blog, OldNewThing, by Microsoft's Shell developer, Raymond Chen. OldNewExplorer brings a couple of very interesting features back to Windows 8 Explorer. Let's see which.
