Windows articles

We recently experienced an installation of Windows 10 with system files that were totally corrupt. After attempting typical repair options, we used a Windows 10 ISO to perform an in-place upgrade, reinstalling Windows 10 while preserving even the software you have installed.

#ThrowBackThursday We've compiled a list of things that you can do in the Windows Command Prompt, including some commands everyone should know for general usage, more advanced ones for tweaking or troubleshooting your PC, as well as lesser known Command Prompt features.

For a long time Windows PCs (OEMs) came with a product key sticker with your license info, but now manufacturers are storing this license within the machine's UEFI/BIOS, so the information is retrieved and applied automatically. Furthermore, your Windows license can now be tied to your Microsoft account. Let us explain...

Did you know that a full copy of Windows can be installed and run from a USB drive? Microsoft introduced "Windows To Go" with Windows 8 Enterprise and has continued supporting the feature in Windows 10, which can be kept on a pen drive in your pocket as a portable operating system.

Finding drivers online for old hardware can range from difficult to impossible. But we discovered that you can export drivers for third-party devices from one copy of Windows to another -- great news if you have a previous instance of Windows where your old device is installed and functional.

Although the Start menu is supposed to be the fastest way to find local files, software and settings, Windows 10's search indexing service is far from the best. It is not uncommon that a simple query won't return any valid results, no matter how simple or precise your query is. Here's how you can turn things around.

Wallpaper Week 2nd Edition A great background can start your day off on a good mood, today's theme is about tech & geek brands. Whether you are into beautiful landscapes, minimalism, abstract illustrations, or eye-catching designs and patterns, with the kind of hours we spend looking at our computer and smartphone screens, why not make them a little prettier?

Microsoft has made Windows 10's login screen more visually pleasing than ever by displaying high-resolution images in the background. The pictures are of a good enough quality to be used as the wallpaper on your desktop background and if you've seen one recently that's worth adding to your collection, there's a chance the image is still stored locally.

It's only a matter of time before you'll want to change your Windows wallpaper, however applying your own customizations to a copy of Windows 10 that hasn't been activated may not be so straightforward since Microsoft blocks access to the software's personalization settings without a valid product license.

While tabs have been a core part of web browsers for more than a decade, Microsoft is finally in the process of introducing a tabbed interface to the File Explorer and other applications. But if you don't want to wait any longer, there are a few third-party tools that offer the feature by one means or another.

Tweaking Windows settings that are not available in standard menus will commonly require modifications to be made from the registry or Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc). We regularly reference these throughout our tips, so we thought those of you on Windows Home will appreciate being able to use Gpedit like everyone else.

Microsoft slowly started to sneak advertisements into the Windows platform with Windows 8, and they've only crept up further in Windows 10. Thankfully it's easy to shut down most of these annoyances if you know where to look.

#ThrowBackThursday The tech industry is known for its predictive pronouncements and verbal sparring as for its actual innovation. Many have felt compelled to follow Intel co-founder Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame) in bringing their judgements and observations into the public eye… with varying degrees of success.

As a TechSpot reader you've surely opened software as an admin on Windows before -- maybe as recently as today -- so the function probably isn't foreign to you. However, we were curious to know more about what happens under the hood of Windows when you tell the operating system to run a program as an administrator, and why this process is necessary in the first place.

Gigabytes are cheaper than ever but they can also be the sort of thing where the more you have, the more you tend to consume, and it doesn't take long for the terabytes to fly by if you spend a lot of time on your computer. If you're wanting to clean up your drive, this guide will serve you regardless of your current storage solution.

Windows 10's April 2018 Update (version 1803) brought various new features and removed some others, but also introduced a bug to many systems that caused an extra drive to be listed under "This PC." Most annoying of all, the bug causes Windows to display an error prompt about the drive being nearly full.

Most recently Windows 10 introduced a default "3D Objects" File Explorer shortcut which takes up space if unused. In this article we'll cover how to remove that somewhat annoying shortcut on Windows 10, and along the way see how to remove other such shortcuts (Music, Videos, others), so you can tweak and personalize as you want.