Dave Bloodgood's List: WINDOWs TIPs

The Windows Device Manager is an important troubleshooting tool. It displays all your installed hardware devices and allows you to view which ones have problems, manage their drivers, and even disable specific pieces of hardware.

You should only need to use the Device Manager when troubleshooting your computer’s hardware and managing its drivers, but it’s an important system tool that you should know how to use.

Opening the Device Manager

The easiest way to open the Device Manager on any version of Windows is by pressing Windows Key + R, typing devmgmt.msc, and pressing Enter.

On Windows 8, you can also right-click in the bottom-left corner of your screen and select Device Manager. On Windows 7, you can open the Control Panel, click Hardware and Sound, and click Device Manager under Hardware and Printers.

Viewing Your Installed Hardware

By default, the Device Manager displays a list of your installed hardware, sorted by category. You can expand these categories to view which hardware you have installed in your computer. If you ever forget the exact model number of your video card or even your hard drive or DVD drive, you can quickly find that information in the device manager.

Note that some hardware devices don’t appear in this list by default. You can view them by clicking View and selecting Show hidden devices. This will display a variety of “non-plug and play drivers,” including low-level system drivers included with Windows and drivers installed by third-party software.

Windows does not display certain types of hidden devices, even when you enable the Show hidden devices option. “Ghosted” devices, such as USB devices that aren’t connected to your computer, will not appear in the list. To view them on Windows 7, Vista, or XP, you’ll have to launch the Device Manager in a special way.

First, open a Command Prompt window. Run the following commands in it:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

start devmgmt.msc

The Device Manager will open and will now show all hidden devices when you select Show hidden devices from the View menu. You can use this trick to remove drivers associated with your old, disconnected hardware. This hidden feature was removed in Windows 8, so viewing such “ghosted” devices is no longer possible.

Identify Devices That Aren’t Working Properly

To identify devices that aren’t working properly — possibly because of problems with their drivers — look for the yellow triangle containing an exclamation point over a device’s icon.

Right-click the device and select Properties to view more information about the problem. The problem could be a driver issue, a system resource conflict, or something else. If it’s a driver problem, you can generally install a new driver for it from the Driver tab in the Properties dialog.

Disable a Device

Let’s say you want to disable a device completely. Perhaps your laptop’s touchpad is malfunctioning and sending phantom events, moving your mouse cursor when you don’t want it to. Perhaps you never use your laptop’s webcam and you want to disable it at the system-level to be sure no malware can use your webcam to spy on you. Whatever your reason, you can individual hardware devices from the Device Manager.

As an example, let’s say we don’t like the annoying system beeps that come from our computer. These beeps come from the speaker on your computer’s motherboard.

To disable them, click the View menu and select Show hidden devices. Expand the Non-Plug and Play Drivers section, right-click the Beep driver, and select Properties.

Click the Driver tab and set the Startup Type to Disabled. You won’t hear beeps from within Windows anymore. (Note that, for most types of hardware devices, you can generally right-click them and select Disable to quickly disable them.)

This setting just affects Windows, so you may hear a beep while booting up. This is a troubleshooting feature that allows your motherboard to beep at you if problems occur.

Manage a Device’s Drivers

A device’s properties window contains information and settings that may be specific to that type of hardware. However, you shouldn’t need to look at most of the information or options here.

The settings that matter most for troubleshooting are the Driver settings. After right-clicking a device and selecting Properties, click the Driver tab. You’ll find information about the currently installed driver and buttons for controlling it.

• Driver Details: View details about the exact location of the driver files being used by the device on your system. You shouldn’t need this option.
• Update Driver: Install an updated driver. Windows allows you to search online for an updated driver or manually choose a driver that’s been downloaded to your system, just as you can when installing devices normally. Searching for an updated driver may help if the driver is old and outdated. If you want to manually choose a custom, downloaded driver for a device, you’ll do it from here.
• Roll Back Driver: Revert to the driver the device was previously using. If you’ve updated the driver to a new version and the hardware isn’t working quite right, you should downgrade the driver. You could hunt down the old driver and manually install it, but this button provides a quick way to downgrade your driver. If this button is grayed out, the driver hasn’t been updated, so there’s no previous driver to roll back to.
• Disable: Disable the device, preventing it from working in Windows until you re-enable it.
• Uninstall: Uninstall the drivers associated with the device from your system. Note that this may not remove all driver files, so uninstalling the drivers from your Control Panel is a better idea, if this is possible. You may have to reboot your computer after doing this. This should only be necessary if you want to purge certain drivers from your system and try setting up the device and its drivers from scratch.

The Device Manager also warns you about resource conflicts, but you should see resource conflicts very rarely on modern systems. The above information should cover just about everything you’d want to do with the Windows Device Manager.

When it comes to hidden gems in Windows, nothing beats the Reliability monitor tool, hidden behind a link inside of another tool that you don’t use either. Why Microsoft doesn’t shine more light on this really useful troubleshooting tool, we’ll never know.

Reliability Monitor tracks the history of your computer — any time an application crashes, hangs, or Windows gives you a blue screen of death. It also tracks other important events, like when software is installed, or Windows Updates loads a new patch.

It’s an extremely useful tool. And yes, it’s in Windows 7 and 8… and even 8.1. It might be in Vista, but who uses that anymore?

So How Does This Work?

Imagine your computer has started flaking out and locking up for the last week, and you aren’t quite sure why. All you have to do is open up Reliability Monitor and check what happened to start the crashes in the first place. You can click on each day that has a crash, and then go back in the list to before all the crashes started, and figure out what was installed to make things break… and remove it from y0ur PC.

So how do you open this tool, you ask? Well, Microsoft buried it behind a lot of clicks, so we’re not even going to give you all those steps. If you open up the Action Center, you can use the “View reliability history” link to get there, but we’d recommend opening the start menu or start screen and searching for “reliability”, which is probably faster.

The top part of the view is arranged into either days or weeks, depending on what you select. You can see each day (or week) that had a crash or other event, and you can click on any of them to understand what happened during that time period. It’s an extremely useful way to do some analysis when you’re asked to fix somebody else’s computer.

That squiggly line is Microsoft’s assessment of how stable your system is on a scale from 1 to 10 — you want that line to be a solid 10 across the board. It’s a useful metric to use when you sit down to troubleshoot a computer, so you can see whether the perception of system stability matches what Windows thinks internally.

Once you select a time period, you’ll see the events in the bottom part of the screen. You can use the “Check for a solution”, which every now and then will have an actual solution (don’t hold your breath though). You can also view the details for each of the updates, which will help you figure out  what exactly that update did.

Of course, the easiest thing to do is click that “Check for solutions to all problems” link at the bottom of the window, and hope that Microsoft already knows about a fix for one of the solutions, which would likely be a driver update. Nope? Well that’s fine, maybe you’ll win the BSOD lottery next time.

So the next time somebody tells you that their computer has been crashing lately, you should open up the Reliability Monitor and figure out what really caused all that crashing — because there’s no way that person is going to remember the super toolbar awesome game they downloaded last week

Whether you’re using Windows 7, Windows 8, or an older version of Windows, Windows contains a variety of system utilities that are well-hidden. Some are buried deep in the Start menu, while others can only be accessed via a command.

Most of these tools can be easily launched if you know their names — just open your Start menu or Start screen, search for the name of the program, and press Enter. On Windows 8, you may have to select the Settings category on the search screen first.

Windows Memory Diagnostic

Windows includes a Memory Diagnostic tool that can restart your computer and test your memory for defects, like the popular MemTest86 application. If you want to check your computer’s memory for errors, you don’t need a third-party tool — just open the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool.

Resource Monitor

The Resource Monitor application offers a detailed look at your computer’s resource usage. You can view computer-wide CPU, disk, network, and memory graphics, or drill down and view per-process statistics for each type of resource.

This means that you can see which processes are using your disk or network heavily, view which processes are communicating with which Internet addresses, and more. The Resource Monitor provides much more detailed resource statistics than the Task Manager does.

You can launch the Resource Monitor by opening the Task Manager, clicking the Performance tab, and selecting Resource Monitor. It can also be accessed by searching for Resource Monitor at the Start menu or Start screen.

Performance Monitor

The Performance Monitor application allows you to collect performance reports and view them. It can be used to log performance data over time, including determining how system changes affect performance, or to monitor the performance of a remote computer in real-time.

Computer Management and Administrative Tools

The Performance Monitor is actually one of many Microsoft Management Console (MMC) tools. Many of these can be found in the Administrative Tools folder, but they can be opened in a single window by opening the Computer Management application. Among other things, this window contains the following tools:

• Task Scheduler: A tool that allows you to view and customize the scheduled tasks on your computer, in addition to creating your own custom scheduled tasks.
• Event Viewer: A log viewer that allows you to view and filter system events — everything from software installation to application crashes and blue screens of death.
• Shared Folders: An interface that displays the folders shared over the network on your computer, useful for viewing what folders are being shared at a glance.
• Device Manager: The classic Windows Device Manager that allows you to view the devices connected to your computer, disable them, and configure their drivers.
• Disk Management: A built-in partition manager you can use without downloading any third-party tools.
• Services: An interface that allows you to view and control the background services running in Windows.

The Administrative Tools folder also contains other useful utilities, such as the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security application that allows you to create advanced firewall rules.

Advanced User Accounts Tool

Windows contains a hidden User Accounts utility that provides some options not present in the standard interface. To open it, press WinKey+R to open the Run dialog, type eithernetplwiz or control userpasswords2, and press Enter.

This window also contains a shortcut to launch the Local Users and Groups tool, which offers more user management tasks, but can’t be used on Home or standard versions of Windows.

Disk Cleanup

Windows’ Disk Cleanup utility isn’t quite as hidden as some of the other utilities here, but not enough people know about it. It will scan your computer for files that can be deleted, from temporary files and memory dumps to old system restore points and leftover files from Windows upgrades. It does the same job a PC cleaning utility does, but it’s free and doesn’t try to extract any money from you. Advanced users may prefer CCleaner, but Disk Cleanup does a decent job.

Access it by searching for Disk Cleanup at your Start screen or Start menu.

Group Policy Editor

The Group Policy Editor is only available on Professional or Ultimate editions of Windows, not the standard or Home editions. It provides a wide variety of settings that are designed for use by system administrators to customize and lock down PCs on their networks, but the local group policy editor also contains some settings that average users might be interested in. For example, on Windows 8, the group policy editor can be used to disable the lock screen and skip directly to the log-in screen.

To open it, type gpedit.msc at the Start menu or Start screen and press Enter.

Registry Editor

Sure, everyone knows about the registry editor — but it’s still hidden, with Microsoft not even providing a Start menu shortcut to it. It must be launched by typing regedit into the Start menu or Start screen and pressing Enter.

Many tweaks that can be made in the Group Policy Editor have equivalent tweaks that can be made in the registry editor. For example, on Windows 8, users with the standard edition of Windows 8 can’t disable the lock screen via the Group Policy Editor — but they can disable the lock screen with a registry hack.

MSConfig

The System Configuration window is another classic tool that many people know about. Prior to Windows 8, which features a startup-program manager built into its Task Manager, this tool was the only included way of controlling startup programs on Windows. It also allows you to customize your boot loader, which is particularly useful if you have multiple versions of Windows installed.

Launch it by typing msconfig into the Start menu or Start screen and pressing Enter.

System Information

The System Information utility allows you to view information about the current computer — everything from the model number of its CD-ROM drive to its attached peripherals, configured environment variables, and startup programs. It doesn’t provide the slickest interface, nor does it provide all the information a third-party system information tool like Speccy does, but it will display a lot of system information without forcing you to install another program.

Open it by searching for System Information at your Start menu or Start screen.

Once you know these utilities exist, you can do more with the tools built into Windows. These tools are available on any Windows computer, so you can always use them without downloading and installing software.

Image Credit: Ginny on Flickr

Have you ever wondered how those third party tweaking programs allow you to add custom shortcuts to the Computer dialog? It’s actually really easy.

Note: this should work in at least Windows 7 and Windows 8, but it might work in Vista. Maybe.

How to Add Shortcuts to the Computer Dialog in Windows

Press the Win + R keyboard combination to bring up and run box, then type the following.

%appdata%\microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts

Then hit enter.

That should have opened the location where Microsoft looks for any additional shortcuts to display in the Computer dialog. So all we need to do is create a new shortcut to whatever we want to be displayed, this can be a file, folder or even a program.

When the Create Shortcut wizard opens, simply type in the location of the item you wish to create a shortcut to and click next.

Then give your shortcut a suitable name and click finish.

Voila, that is really all there is to it.

Programs that automatically start with Windows can slow down your computer’s boot time, making you wait to get a useful desktop while icon after icon loads into your system tray. Fortunately, it’s possible to prevent these programs from automatically starting.

Some of these programs perform a useful function, but many autostart programs are unnecessary and do little more than slow down your boot time — particularly programs that may have been preinstalled by your computer’s manufacturer.

Why You Should Disable Startup Programs

When your computer starts — or, more accurately, when you log into your computer — Windows loads your desktop and all the system processes it requires. Windows also loads programs that are configured to automatically start with Windows. These could be chat programs, file-downloading applications, security tools, hardware utilities, or many other types of programs. On a typical Windows computer, you’ll likely find quite a few programs automatically starting with Windows. Windows hides most of these programs in the system tray beneath an arrow by default. This helps unclutter your taskbar, but it doesn’t help speed up your boot times.

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Every startup program your computer loads increases the time you must wait for a usable Windows desktop. Small programs may load very quickly, but heavier programs generally take longer to load. Multiply this by the many different programs set to automatically start with Windows on a typical PC and you’ll see significant increases in boot time. Several years ago, studies found that startup programs installed by a Windows computer’s manufacturer could increase a typical Windows computer’s boot time by as much as two minutes.

Startup programs also occupy memory and use other system resources, although their presence will typically be felt mostly through longer boot times. Worse yet, these programs are often not important, so you’re getting a longer boot time for no real advantages.

Why Programs Automatically Start

Most Windows computers include quite a few programs set to automatically start out-of-the-box. Other programs you install afterwards may also set themselves to automatically start. Most of these programs will appear in your system tray, but some may not and may run hidden in the background. Programs automatically start for a variety of reasons:

• To stay connected: Programs like Skype and other instant messaging solutions automatically start up by default, keeping you signed in so you can be contacted by other users.
• To download and upload: Steam automatically starts to download the latest updates for your PC games in the background, while uTorrent and other file-downloading programs automatically start so they can continue your active downloads.
• To stay running: Programs like Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive start up with Windows so they’re always running, downloading and uploading your files. Other programs, like your antivirus program, automatically start for the same reason — so they’ll always be running in the background.
• To control your hardware: Hardware utilities often automatically start to monitor your hardware and provide quick access to settings.

Some programs may just automatically start to preload themselves so they’ll open more quickly when you need them. Other programs may place themselves in the system tray exclusively to give you quick access to certain settings. In many cases, you may not want these programs to automatically start with Windows

How to Disable Startup Programs

You can often prevent a program from automatically starting in its preferences window. For example, common programs like uTorrent, Skype, and Steam allow you to disable the autostart feature in their options windows.

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However, many programs don’t allow you to easily prevent them from automatically starting with Windows. How you should disable such startup programs depends on the version of Windows you’re using. If you use Windows 7 or earlier, you can use built-in MSConfig tool to disable startup programs, but we recommend you download the free CCleaner and use its built-in Startup Manager — you’ll find it under the Tools section in CCleaner.

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If you’re using Windows 8, you’ll find a new startup manager in the Windows Task Manager. This tool also informs you how long each program takes to start when you log in, showing you which programs are really slowing down your boot time.

Which Startup Programs Should You Disable?

With the nuts and bolts out of the way, all that’s left is deciding which programs are important and which you’ll want to disable.

First, use a bit of common sense to understand what each program may be doing. For example, uTorrent is clearly starting so it can continue downloading files, while Skype is starting so it can keep you logged in in the background. if you don’t care about continuing to download files or automatically logging into Skype, you can disable these programs and load them normally when you want to use them.

This only goes so far, however. Some autostart programs may have names you don’t recognize — they may have been included with your computer or a hardware driver and not be related to software programs you use. For more information, you can perform a web search for the name of the program and see what other people are saying. This will give you more information about the program, letting you know whether or not it’s useful.

With Windows 8′s task manager, you can right-click an autostart entry and select Search online to quickly perform a web search for it.

What About System Services?

Some Windows software — both software included with Windows and some software added by programs you install — run as low-level system services. For example, Adobe Flash installs an updater service that will automatically check for updates in the background.

[services]http://www.howtogeek.com/139028/which-windows-services-can-you-safely-disable/[/services]

These services can be managed from the Services configuration tool in Windows. However, we don’t recommend messing with these — most programs won’t install services and the ones that do generally need the services for their operation. You won’t see much improvement in boot times or memory use from messing with your computer’s services, although you could cause problems if you disable the wrong services. We recommend leaving system services alone.

Some programs also install useless browser toolbars, add-ons, and other junk. These won’t make your computer take longer to startup, but they automatically start with your browser and can make your browser take longer to start up.

Such junk software can be removed from within your browser’s options window or by uninstalling them from the Windows Control Panel. CCleaner also allows you to disable such software using its Startup tool.

Windows is complicated and needs many different system utilities and security tools to run well — or does it? We recently covered the many types of system tools you don’t need. Here are the few utilities you actually do need.

Rather than making your life complicated by piling questionable system tool on top of questionable system tool, focus on what’s really important. These are the tools that will actually do something for your PC.

Antivirus

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Yes, you do need an antivirus on Windows. Even if you never download a single desktop program and you’re extremely careful, you could still be compromised by a zero-day vulnerability in a browser plug-in like Adobe Flash or your web browser itself.

No antivirus program is perfect, so you’ll still need to exercise some common sense, like not downloading and running programs you don’t trust. But an antivirus can give you some measure of additional protection and stop you if you’re about to make a mistake, which is particularly useful for less experienced users.

When it comes to choosing an antivirus program, you don’t need a paid security suite with a huge set of additional built-in tools. Just get yourself a solid antivirus — you can do this for free. We like to recommend Microsoft Security Essentials for being free, lightweight, and not trying to upsell you to a paid security solution. On Windows 8, Microsoft Security Essentials is named “Windows Defender” and is included by default.

Microsoft Security Essentials hasn’t been getting the best ratings in comparative antivirus tests. If you’re worried about that, you should try the highly-recommended avast! free antivirus instead. Paid antiviruses would work, too — they just aren’t essential when good antivirus protection can be had for free.

Backup Software

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Regular backups are crucial. Many people don’t perform backups until they lose their important files in a hard drive crash and are unable to recover them. Don’t be one of these people — get yourself a solid backup solution and make regular backups.

There are many ways to back up your files. You could use the built-in Windows backup features and back up to an external hard drive, or you could use a cloud-based backup solution like CrashPlan. You could also just dump your files into Dropbox or another cloud storage service, encrypting them to ensure their privacy if they’re particularly sensitive.

How you back up your files is up to you — just be sure you have backup copies of your important files so you’re protected from disaster. Consider setting up backups to run automatically on a schedule so you won’t have to worry about them.

Temporary File Cleaner

You don’t need to constantly clean your computer’s temporary files, but they do build up over time. Such temporary files take up additional space on your hard drive, wasting space that you could be putting to use — this is especially true on computers with small solid-state drives.

If you haven’t wiped out your computer’s temporary files in a few years, you may notice a speed increase after you wipe them out. Microsoft even says that having useless temporary files on your hard drive can slow Windows down.

We recommend using CCleaner for this. It’s the best utility of its type, and it’s completely free. You could also just use the Disk Cleanup tool included with Windows. You don’t have to run these programs constantly — even once a week would be more than enough. Most people would even be fine using them once per month or less often. But every Windows user would benefit from occasionally wiping out temporary files, if only to free up space on their hard drives.

Don’t buy scammy, paid PC cleaning apps — use the Disk Cleanup tool included with Windows or get CCleaner. That’s all you need.

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Windows Update and Built-In Updaters

The software we use every day — our web browsers, plug-ins like Flash and Java, and even Windows itself — is full of security holes. These security holes are found regularly, and security updates are constantly being released for them. To stay secure, it’s important to be up-to-date with the latest security patches. That’s why it’s essential to keep Windows, your web browser, and especially your browser plug-ins updated.

You can have Windows and most other applications automatically install updates in the background, so you don’t have to worry about them. We include this here because some users may disable automatic updates — it’s important to regularly perform updates, even if you set Windows and other programs to alert you instead of automatically installing updates. Regularly updating your programs will give you a much bigger security benefit than using a third-party outbound firewall will.

There’s no need for third-party software update checkers — if a program needs security updates, it should automatically update itself or prompt you.

If you have Java installed, uninstall it if you can. Java is a security disaster — most web users have an outdated, vulnerable version of Java installed. This is bad because most people don’t even need Java installed. Worse yet, Java tries to install obnoxious software like the terrible Ask toolbar when you install Java security updates.

What About Everything Else?

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Windows has come a long way. Many system tools that were once necessary have been integrated and aren’t essential. For example, here are some tools you no longer need:

• Disk Defragmenter: Windows automatically defragments your hard drives in the background. You don’t need to worry about this. If you’re using a modern solid-state drive, defragmentation isn’t even necessary.
• Firewall: Windows includes a built-in firewall that blocks incoming connections. You shouldn’t need a firewall that lets you manage outgoing connections — if you don’t trust a program enough to let it contact the Internet, you probably shouldn’t be running it in the first place.
• Phishing Filter: Whether you’re using Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera, your browser has an integrated phishing and malware filter that helps protect you from bad websites. There’s no need to install a third-party one.

Other system tools aren’t useful at all. For example, registry cleaners, driver cleaners, memory optimizers, game boosters, third-party uninstallers — these tools aren’t useful or important.

Of course, many other system tools have situational benefits. For example, you may want to use a startup manager like the one built into Windows 8 or CCleaner to manage your startup programs. The above programs are the main ones average users need to worry about — if you’re a typical user, you don’t need PC cleaners, registry cleaners, or many of the other system utilities being pushed all over the web.

There are some things you can only do from the command line, even on Windows. Some of these tools don’t have graphical equivalents, while others are just plain faster to use than their graphical interfaces.

We can’t possibly cover all the useful commands you can use in the Command Prompt or PowerShell here. We’ll be focusing on commands that should be useful even if you’re not a command-line person.

ipconfig – Quickly Find Your IP Address

You can find your IP address from the Control Panel, but this takes quite a few clicks. The ipconfig command is a fast way of determining your computer’s IP address and other information, such as the address of its default gateway — useful if you want to know the IP address of your router’s web interface.

To use the command, just type ipconfig into a Command Prompt window. You’ll see a list of all the network connections your computer is using. Look under Wireless LAN adapter if you’re connected to Wi-Fi or Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection if you’re connected to a wired network.

ipconfig /flushdns – Flush Your DNS Resolver Cache

If you change your DNS server, the effects won’t necessarily take place immediately. Windows uses a cache that remembers DNS responses it’s received, saving time when you access the same addresses again in the future.

To ensure Windows is getting addresses from the new DNS servers instead of using old, cached entries, run the ipconfig /flushdns command after changing your DNS server.

ping, tracert – Troubleshoot Network Connection Issues

If you’re experiencing issues connecting to a website or other network connection issues, Windows and other operating systems have some standard tools you can use to identify problems.

First, there’s the ping command. Type ping google.com and Windows will send packets to Google.com. Google will respond and let you know it’s received them. You’ll be able to see if any packets didn’t make it to Google.com — perhaps you’re experiencing packet loss — and how long it took you to hear back — perhaps the network is saturated and packets are taking a while to reach their destinations.

There’s also the tracert command, which traces the route it takes for a packet to reach a destination. For example, run tracert google.com and you’ll see the path your packet takes to reach Google. If you’re having issues connecting to a website, tracert can show you where the problem is occurring.

For more information about using these commands, read our introduction to troubleshooting Internet connection problems.

shutdown – Create Shutdown Shortcuts on Windows 8

The shutdown command is particularly useful on Windows 8. You can use it to create your own shortcuts and place them on your Start screen or desktop, allowing you to more easily shut down Windows without digging through the charms bar or logging out first.

This command can also be used to restart your computer. On Windows 8, you can even use a special switch to restart your computer into the advanced startup options menu.

• Shut Down: shutdown /s /t 0
• Restart: shutdown /r /t 0
• Restart Into Startup Options: shutdown /r /o

recimg – Create Custom Recovery Images

The Refresh Your PC feature on Windows 8 allows you to restore your computer’s system state to its original state — either from a clean Windows install or as the computer came from its manufacturer. You can create your own custom recovery images, but this feature is hidden — you have to do it with the recimg command from a command line. This allows you to remove manufacturer-installed bloatware or add your favorite desktop programs to your recovery image.

For more information about using recimg, read our overview of everything you need to know about creating and using custom recovery images on Windows 8.

wbadmin start backup – Create System Recovery Images

Windows 8.1 removes the Windows 7 backup interface, which allowed you to create system backup images. These system images contain a complete snapshot of every single file on the system, so they’re different from Windows 8′s recovery images.

While the graphical interface has been removed, system administrators and geeks can still create system image backups by running the wbadmin start backup cmdlet in a PowerShell window. Unlike all the other commands here, this command-line tool must be run from within PowerShell, not the Command Prompt.

sfc /scannow – Scan System Files for Problems

Windows includes a system file checker tool that scans its system files and looks for problems. If system files are missing or corrupted, the system file checker will repair them. This may fix problems with some Windows systems.

To use this tool, open a Command Prompt window as Administrator and run the sfc /scannow command.

telnet – Connect to Telnet Servers

The telnet client isn’t installed by default. You’ll have to install it from the Control Panel. Once installed, you can use the telnet command to connect to telnet servers without installing any third-party software.

You should avoid using telnet if you can help it, but if you’re connected directly to a device and it requires that you use telnet to set something up — well, that’s what you have to do.

cipher – Permanently Delete and Overwrite a Directory

The cipher command is mostly used for managing encryption, but it also has an option that will write garbage data to a drive, clearing its free space and ensuring no deleted file can be recovered. Deleted files normally stick around on disk unless you’re using a solid state drive. The cipher command effectively allows you to “wipe” a drive without installing any third-party tools.

To use the command, specify the drive you want to wipe like so:

ciper /w:C:\

netstat -an – List Network Connections and Ports

The netstat command is particularly useful, displaying all sorts of network statistics when used with its various options. One of the most interesting variants of netstat is netstat -an, which will display a list of all open network connections on their computer, along with the port they’re using and the foreign IP address they’re connected to.

This isn’t a comprehensive list of all the commands you might find useful, but we hope it’s given you some idea of the many powerful tools lurking under the surface. Linux isn’t the only operating system where users can benefit from learning some commands.

The Windows Task Manager is an important tool for every Windows user. It can show you why your computer is slow and help you deal with misbehaving and resource-hungry programs, whether they’re draining CPU, RAM, disk, or network resources.

Windows 8 has the best built-in Task Manager yet, but even Windows 7′s Task Manager is a powerful tool that every Windows user should familiarize themselves with. Many of these tasks are easier on Windows 8.

Opening the Task Manager

Windows lets you get to the Task Manger in a variety of ways:

• Keyboard Shortcut: Press Ctrl+Shift+Escape anywhere in Windows.
• Mouse Shortcut: Right-click the Windows taskbar and select Start Task Manager.
• Traditional Method: Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and select Start Task Manager.

View CPU and RAM Hogs

On Windows 7, the Task Manger opens to the Applications tab, which lists open applications and allows you to quickly close them with the End Task button. This works even if they have frozen and aren’t responding.

This tab doesn’t allow you to view resource usage. It also doesn’t show every program running on your computer — programs running in the background without visible windows aren’t listed here.

Click over to the Processes tab to view the processes running on your computer, both processes with open windows and background processes that may be invisible or hidden in your system tray.

Click the CPU or Memory heading to sort the processes by their CPU or memory usage. This will show you which programs are using the most CPU time and amount of RAM.

To view all the processes running on your computer, click the Show processes from all users button. By default, the list just displays processes running as your user account. The button shows system processes and processes running under other user accounts.

You may also want to click the View menu, click Select Columns, and enable the CPU Time column. Click the CPU Time column to sort the list by CPU Time. This will show you how much CPU resources each process has used, so you can identify programs that may currently be using a low amount of CPU but have used a higher amount of CPU when you weren’t looking.

On Windows 8, the main Processes tab shows processes’ CPU, memory, disk, and network usage all in one place. You can find this information on Windows 7, too, but it’s scattered in several places.

Kill Background Programs

If an process is misbehaving — for example, you may have closed a PC game and it continued running in the background, possibly using 99% of your CPU — sorting by CPU and memory usage will show you the misbehaving process consuming too many resources at the top of the list. Right-click the process and select End Process to close it if you can’t close it normally.

Check Total CPU and RAM Usage

Click over to the Performance tab to view your computer’s total CPU and physical memory (RAM) usage. The CPU usage history graph shows total CPU usage as well as separate graphs for each CPU’s usage over time, while the Memory graph shows you total memory usage and how your memory usage has changed over time.

If the CPU usage or Memory bars are completely full and your computer is running slowly, you should close some CPU or memory-hungry programs — check the processes list to see which those are — and free up resources. If your Memory and CPU usage are always high, you may want to upgrade your RAM or get a computer with a faster CPU to speed things up.

View System Network Activity

If you’re having problems with your Internet connection — maybe web pages are loading slowly or your voice is dropping out while you’re talking to someone on Skype or a similar VoIP program — you may want to check your computer’s total network usage. You can do this from the Networking tab in the Task Manager.

You’ll see a separate graph for each of your computer’s network adapters, which will inform you how much of your network’s resources the programs on your computer are consuming. This allows you to see whether there are any programs running in the background and saturating your network connection.

On Windows 8, you’ll find this information on the Performance tab, too.

Check Per-Process Network Activity

If you can see that your network connection is being used, you may want to know which applications are using the network. To see a list of processes accessing the network and how much network resources they’re each using, click over to the Performance tab and click the Resource Monitor button.

On the Resource Monitor’s network tab, you can view the list of processes with network activity and see what’s sucking up resources. Note that this counts all network activity — even processes just communicating with other devices on the local network and not connecting to the Internet.

On Windows 8, you can view per-process network activity on the Processes tab.

Check Per-Process Disk Activity

With the Resource Monitor opened from the Performance tab in the Task Manager, you can also click the Disk tab and see which programs are reading and writing to your disk the most. If your hard drive is grinding away, this tool will show you which programs are taking up all your disk resources.

On Windows 8, this information is available on the Task Manager’s Processes tab.

Manage Startup Programs

On Windows 8, you can use the Startup tab in the Task Manager to control which programs automatically start with your computer.

On Windows 7, you’ll need to use another tool, like the startup manager built into CCleaner.

If you want a more advanced Task Manager replacement, download the free Process Explorer utility. This tool is developed by Microsoft and offers a variety of features you won’t find in the standard task manager, even on Windows 8, including the ability to view which files and folders a program has “locked” and unlock them so they can be modified.