Windows 8.1 Archives - Page 9 of 25

How to disable the shutdown button on the Start Screen

With Windows 8.1 Update 1, Microsoft plans to bring a prominent Shutdown button to the Start screen. It is a useful addition because you no longer have to swipe from the right, then use the Settings Charm, and then click Power to shut down. However, should you want to hide this button to avoid clutter, there is a simple registry tweak which can be used to hide the Shutdown button from the Start screen.

Note: in Windows 8.1 Update 1 RTM (Spring Update/Feature Pack) MS did a change for value name and location. I've updated this article with the actual information.

How to disable or enable the Microsoft Confidential watermark in Windows 8.1 Update 1

Today, while playing with the leaked Windows 8.1 Update 1, I discovered a new registry tweak, which allows hiding the 'Microsoft Confidential' message from the Desktop. That huge watermark which Microsoft started to use since Windows 8 development can be hidden. Windows 8.1 Update 1 can also force the watermark to be shown even if the OS is activated.

How to change the Charms bar hover timeout delay

The recently leaked Windows 8.1 Update 1 build features some hidden tweakable settings. Amongst these are settings to control the Charms bar hover timeout which in my opinion, is a killer improvement. You can finally prevent the Charms bar from accidentally displaying when the mouse pointer goes to the screen corners. Let's see how it can be done.

Translate text to and from other languages offline using Bing Translator app for Windows

If you have a business need to translate text in international languages regularly, there are plenty of free online services today as well as paid app solutions for desktop and mobile. Google Translate is one of the most popular ones and also has Android and iOS apps. Microsoft Translator has also been long available. For Windows 8, Microsoft has an app called Bing Translator. I explored some of its features.

Get the classic Open With dialog on Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 using OpenWith Enhanced

In Windows, when you double click a file, it opens in the default program which is registered to handle it. But you can right click that file and choose Open With to choose another program to open it with. Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 made some changes to the Open With dialog and turned it into a floating Metro style window. Let us see how we can get the Windows 7 style classic Open With dialog back.

How to tell if Windows 8.1 runs in UEFI mode or in the Legacy BIOS mode

Many modern PCs run the installed OS in UEFI mode. But almost all of them have a fallback mode which allows the hardware to be configured in the legacy mode called 'BIOS' mode. Here is how you can tell which mode exactly is used on your Windows 8.1 PC.

Always on Top tool for Windows (Alternative to PowerMenu)

Windows has always had the ability to make any window the topmost one ever since Windows 3.0. Once you make a window the topmost one, other overlapping windows will always show below that window in the Z-order. It is possible to make a window the topmost one programmatically but Microsoft felt that if this control was given to end users, then application developers would misuse it to make their programs always on top. Still, third party tools can easily use the Windows API function to change this. Let's look at two ways to make a window on top.

How to clear the Windows Event Log from the command line

Often when you want to troubleshoot issues or keep a general check on your system health, you have to use Event Viewer. Event Viewer shows you all the Windows events that get logged such as Information, Errors, Warnings, Critical and Verbose. But there are so many events here including completely normal activities that get logged that it becomes harder to spot events related to things that aren't working as expected or are causing errors. So from time to time you may need to clear the Event Log. In this article, we will see how you can clear the Event log automatically or from the command line.

How to find any file or folder instantly on your computer with Everything

Even though computers have evolved tremendously in the past several years, the amount of data stored on your disk drive has also exponentially increased. Often this data is unorganized and that is why users need desktop search to find it instantly. If this vast amount of data is properly indexed on your PC, then searching is only a matter of querying the index database. Unfortunately, the process of indexing the data and its contents by crawling the file systems of all disk drives takes considerable time. What if there was a way to instantly index the file names of all files on your drive? That would make finding anything much faster. That is what the app called Everything does.

How to hide the Show Desktop button on the new Windows Taskbar

Readers frequently ask this question - how to hide the Show Desktop/Aero Peek button on the new Windows taskbar present in Windows 7 and Windows 8. While hiding or disabling this button is not recommended, there is definitely a way to do this without patching files on disk.