How to Use the Mouse to Get Around in Windows 8

Windows 8 was clearly designed with touch screens in mind. Using Windows 8 with a mouse can be disorienting at first — many of the tried-and-true Windows interface conventions have changed.
You can still get around Windows 8 and use all its features with your mouse, although it feels a bit awkward at times. If you’re using Windows 8 on a PC instead of a tablet — like most users — you’ll need to get acquainted with its interface.

Lock Screen

Windows 8′s focus on touch input is obvious from the lock screen. There’s no unlock button to click on the screen.

If you were using a touch-screen device, you’d just swipe the lock screen away with your finger. With a mouse, you can drag it away. You can also press a single button on your keyboard or use the scroll wheel, but there’s no indication that this is possible.

Enter your password to unlock your computer after dragging the lock screen away.

The New Start Button

“Hot corners” are one of Windows 8′s most important new navigation features. Whether you’re using the desktop or Metro apps, hot corners are your new best friend.
At the bottom-left corner of the screen, a hot corner has replaced the Start button. Move your mouse to the corner and click to enter the Start screen.

If you’re already at the Start screen, the bottom-left corner functions as a back button that takes you back to the last app you were using.

Switching Between Apps

The top-left corner lets you switch between apps. Click once to switch to the last app that you used. If you look carefully, you can see the outline of other apps at the left side of the screen.

Move your mouse cursor down and you’ll see other recently used apps. Click one to go back to it.

Note that the entire traditional desktop appears as a single thumbnail in this task switcher. To switch between desktop applications, use Alt-Tab or the desktop taskbar.

Charms

Move your mouse cursor to either the top-right or bottom-right corners and you’ll see the “charms” fade into view.

Move the cursor up or down and the charms will become fully visible.

The Start charm accesses the Start screen, while the Search, Share, Devices, and Settings charms access other common functions. For example, from the desktop, you can click the Settings charm to access desktop settings.

Charms are context-sensitive. If you click the Settings charm in the Metro version of Internet Explorer, you’ll get Internet Explorer’s settings.

Other PC settings always appear on the Settings menu, including the power, network, and volume buttons.

App Bars

Metro-style apps use the majority of the screen real estate for their content. For example, in the Metro version of Internet Explorer, the current Web page takes up the entire screen. There are no toolbars or other interface elements visible.

Right-click to view the “app bar” for the current app. For example, in the Metro version of Internet Explorer, you’ll see tab thumbnails at the top of the screen and browser navigation tools at the bottom of the screen.

Split-Screen Apps

You can have two Metro-style apps on screen at the the same time. The smaller app will have a slimmed-down interface — you can’t have two full apps on screen at the same time. Your screen resolution must be at least 1366 pixels wide to run apps in split-screen mode.
Drag and drop a thumbnail from the task switcher to the right or left side of the screen to get started. You can also grab the top of an app and drag it to either side of the screen.

Drag the handle to change how much screen space is allocated to each app. You can allocate all screen space back to a single app by dragging the handle to the left or right side of the screen.

You can even use this method to display a Metro-style app and the traditional desktop at the same time.

Closing Metro Apps

Metro-style apps are different from traditional Windows applications. They’re designed to suspend when you stop using them, so they won’t use up system resources. Because of this, you don’t have to close them. If you want to close one, you can grab its title bar and drag it down. It’ll turn into a thumbnail image of itself.

Drag the application to the bottom of the screen and it will shrink, vanish, and close when you drop it.

You can also close an app from the task switcher at the left side of the screen. Right-click its thumbnail and select “Close” to close it.

Scrolling and Zooming

Metro and the Start screen are clearly designed for left-to-right swiping on a touch screen. If you only have a mouse, you can use the scroll bars, like the one you’ll find at the bottom of the screen. A better way is to scroll with your mouse wheel. The mouse wheel should work anywhere there’s a scroll bar.

As you’d expect, you can right-click on tiles to perform actions on them or drag them around to rearrange them on the Start screen.
On a touch screen, you can pinch to zoom and zoom out of the Start screen. To do this with a mouse, click the small button at the bottom-right corner of the Start screen.

From the zoomed-out screen, you can drag and drop groups of apps around to re-order your Start screen.

Build a USB Password Key to Automatically Login to Your Computer

 

This DIY electronics hack turns an old flash drive into a combination USB password generator and USB password key–simply plug it in to unlock your computer.
Joonas Pihlajamaa’s employer requires him to change his password on a regular interval. He wanted to use a strong password but he didn’t want to be bothered remembering a really strong and random password every time he changed it. His solution? Gut a USB flash drive to conceal a random password generator and HID device that types in the new password automatically when plugged in. He can use his combination generator/key to both create strong new passwords and then, once he has changed his login credentials with the new password, simply plug the USB drive, like a key, into his work computer to login.
The USB drive itself looks exactly like a standard thumb drive and, if he were to lose it and someone were to plug it in, it would simply type gibberish (the random password string) with no identifiable information. Hit up the link below to see his build guide including the parts and code you need to create your own generator/key.

How to Get the Classic Start Menu Back in Windows 8

 

Both the Start button and classic Start menu are gone in Windows 8. If you don’t like the full-screen, Metro-style “Start screen,” there are a few ways to get a classic-style Start menu back.
In the Developer Preview of Windows 8, you could remove Metro by deleting the shsxs.dll file, but you can’t do this in the Consumer Preview. Metro is now baked into Explorer.exe itself.

Create a Start Menu Toolbar

It’s not a well-known feature, but Windows can create toolbars that show the contents of a folder on its taskbar. This means that you can create a pseudo-Start menu without installing any other software on Windows 8. Just create a new toolbar that points at the Start menu’s Programs folder.
From the desktop, right-click the taskbar, point to Toolbars and select “New toolbar.”

Type or copy and paste the following path into the Choose a folder window:

%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Click the “Select Folder” button and you’ll get a Programs menu on your taskbar.

Right-click the taskbar and uncheck “Lock the taskbar” if you want to move the new Programs menu around.

Drag and drop the grip at the left side of the toolbar to place it somewhere else on the taskbar, like at its left side — the Start menu’s traditional location.

Right-click the “Programs” text if you want to change or hide its name. After you’re finished, right-click the taskbar again and select “Lock the taskbar.”
There’s one catch with this method — it won’t actually show all your programs. The Start menu actually grabs shortcuts from two different places. In addition to the system-wide ProgramData location, there’s a per-user Programs folder at the following location:

%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

As you can see from the screenshots, the Windows Defender shortcut — and other shortcuts — don’t appear in our toolbar menu.
You could create a second toolbar to list programs from this folder, or perhaps move shortcuts from the %AppData% location to the %ProgramData% location.
Another option is creating a custom folder full of program shortcuts and using a toolbar that points at that folder instead.

Install ViStart, a Third-Party Start Button

ViStart is making the rounds as a third-party Start button replacement. It was originally designed to add a Windows 7-style Start button to Windows XP, so it’s basically a re-implementation of the Windows 7 Start button. And it works on Windows 8.
ViStart wants to install other software when you install it – click the Decline button.

After it’s installed, you’ll see the Windows 7-style Start orb back at the left side of your taskbar.

Click it and you’ll see the familiar Start menu. Almost everything works as you’d expect, although I couldn’t find a way to pin apps to the Start menu. It still shows your most frequently used apps.

Right-click the ViStart system tray icon and select Options if you want to configure it.

You’ll find options for changing the default Web browser, email client and other program settings.

One bonus is that ViStart takes over your Windows key. Pressing the Windows key opens the ViStart Start menu, not the Metro-style Start screen.

Get to Know the New Shortcut Keys in Windows 8

 

You’ve probably already been using hotkeys in Windows 7 and previous versions, so now that Windows 8 is out, all you need to learn are the new shortcut keys. Here are the important new keys in a short list that you can easily learn.

New Windows 8 Shortcut Keys

There might be a couple of new keys that aren’t included in this list, but as far as we know, these are the most important ones.

• Windows key – brings up the Metro start screen. You can start typing to search for an app, just like the Win7 start menu.
• Win + D – brings up the old Windows desktop.
• Win + C – brings up the Charms menu, where you can search, share, and change settings.
• Win + I – opens the Settings panel, where you can change settings for the current app, change volume, wireless networks, shut down, or adjust the brightness.
• Win + Z – opens the App Bar for the current Metro application.
• Win + H – opens the Metro Share panel.
• Win + Q – brings up the Metro App Search screen.
• Win + W – brings up the Metro Settings search screen.
• Win + F – brings up the Metro File search screen.
• Win + K – opens the Devices panel (for connecting to a projector or some other device)
• Win + , (comma) – Aero Peek at the desktop.
• Win + . (period) – Snaps the current Metro application to one side of the screen. (Right side)
• Win + Shift + . (period) – Snaps the current Metro application to the other side of the screen. (Left side)
• Win + J – switches focus between snapped Metro applications.
• Win + Page Up / Down – moves the current app to the other monitor.
• Win + Tab – opens the Metro application switcher menu, switches between applications.

You might notice that we didn’t show screenshots of how all these shortcut keys work, and there’s a reason for that: you need to test them out for yourself to really learn how they work.

BitLocker To Go Encrypts Portable Flash Drives in Windows 7

The BitLocker feature was introduced in Windows Vista and allowed you to encrypt the content of your hard drive.  Now in Windows 7 they offer BitLocker To Go which allows you to encrypt portable USB flash drives.

First open up My Computer and Right-click on the flash drive you want to encrypt and select Turn on BitLocker.

After BitLocker initialized the flash drive you will need to enter in a password to unlock the drive.  You can also set up a Smartcard which are usually used in a work environment so talk to you IT staff.

Next you will be prompted to store the recovery key which is used in the event you lose your password or smartcard.  If you store it as a file make sure that it is not on the same drive that you’re encrypting.  

After the key has been saved as a file or printed you will see a confirmation message.

Finally you will be ready to start encrypting the drive so just click the Start Encrypting button.

While it is encrypting there will be a progress screen displayed.

A successful encryption of the USB flash drive. notice that the drive icon will change to show its encrypted with BitLocker.

 

Notice that the drive icon will change to show its encrypted with BitLocker where the gold lock indicates it is locked up and the gray lock is displayed after you have unlocked it.

 

Right-click on that icon to bring up options to manage BitLocker encryption.

The next time you plug in the drive to a Windows 7 machine you will be prompted to enter the password to gain access to the drive.  You can also always have it unlocked on specific machines in the future.

 

You can also use the encrypted drive in Vista and XP.  Here we will look at how it looks in XP, when you plug it in you will be prompted for the password to launch BitLocker To Go Reader (the utility is installed automatically on the drive by Windows 7).

BitLocker To Go Reader is a Windows Explorer type navigation utility for showing the content of the drive.

With a BitLocker encrypted drive you will only be able to read and copy files.  If you need to add files or change them you will need to use a Windows 7 machine.

This is a great way to easily make sure sensitive data on your USB flash drive is safe.  Right now anyone who has Windows 7 RC1 Ultimate can use this feature.

What is rundll32.exe And Why Is It Running?

You are no doubt reading this article because you’ve looked in task manager and wondered what on earth all those rundll32.exe processes are, and why they are running… So what are they?

Explanation

If you’ve been around Windows for any amount of time, you’ve seen the zillions of *.dll (Dynamic Link Library) files in every application folder, which are used to store common pieces of application logic that can be accessed from multiple applications.

Since there’s no way to directly launch a DLL file, the rundll32.exe application is simply used to launch functionality stored in shared .dll files. This executable is a valid part of Windows, and normally shouldn’t be a threat.

Note: the valid process is normally located at \Windows\System32\rundll32.exe, but sometimes spyware uses the same filename and runs from a different directory in order to disguise itself. If you think you have a problem, you should always run a scan to be sure, but we can verify exactly what is going on… so keep reading.

Using Windows Vista’s Task Manager

One of the great features in Windows Vista’s Task Manager is the ability to see the full command line for any running application. For instance, you’ll see that I have two rundll32.exe processes in my list here:

If you go to View \ Select Columns, you’ll see the option for “Command Line” in the list, which you’ll want to check.

Now you can see the full path for the file in the list, which you’ll notice is the valid path for rundll32.exe in the System32 directory, and the argument is another DLL that is actually what is being run.

If you browse down to locate that file, which in this example is nvmctray.dll, you’ll usually see what it actually is when you hover your mouse over the filename:

Otherwise, you can open up the Properties and take a look at the Details to see the file description, which usually will tell you the purpose for that file.

Once we know what it is, we can figure out if we want to disable it or not, which we’ll cover below. If there isn’t any information at all, you should either Google it, or ask somebody on a helpful forum.

Using Process Explorer on Vista or XP

Instead of using Task Manager, we can use the freeware Process Explorer utility from Microsoft to figure out what is going on, which has the benefit of also working in Windows XP.

Simply launch Process Explorer, and if you are using Vista you’ll want to choose File \ Show Details for All Processes.

Now when you hover over the rundll32.exe in the list, you’ll see a tooltip with the details of what it actually is:

Or you can right-click, choose Properties, and then take a look at the Image tab to see the full pathname that is being launched, and you can even see the Parent process, which in this case is the Windows shell (explorer.exe), indicating that it was likely launched from a shortcut or startup item.

You can browse down and view the details of the file just like we did in the task manager section above. In my instance, it’s a part of the NVIDIA control panel, and so I’m not going to do anything about it.

Disabling the Process

Depending on what the process is, you won’t want to necessarily disable it, but if you would like to, you can type msconfig.exe into the start menu search or run box and you should be able to find it by the Command column, which should be the same as the “Command line” field we saw in Process Explorer. Simply uncheck the box to prevent it from starting automatically.

Sometimes the process doesn’t actually have a startup item, in which case you’ll likely have to do some research to figure out where it was started from. For instance, if you open up Display Properties on XP you’ll see another rundll32.exe in the list, because Windows internally uses rundll32 to run that dialog.

What is svchost.exe And Why Is It Running?

You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why on earth there are nearly a dozen processes running with the name svchost.exe. You can’t kill them, and you don’t remember starting them… so what are they?

This article is part of our series explaining various processes found in Task Manager, including: jusched.exe, dwm.exe, ctfmon.exe, wmpnetwk.exe, wmpnscfg.exe,mDNSResponder.exe, conhost.exe, rundll32.exe, Dpupdchk.exe, and Adobe_Updater.exe.

Do you know what those services are? Better start reading!

So What Is It?

According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in english please?

Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that you can’t launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.

Why Are There So Many svchost.exes Running?

If you’ve ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows… so they are separated out.

Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.

So What Can I Do About It?

You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don’t absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.

The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instance… we’ll cover that below.

If you are curious what we’re talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the “Show processes from all users” box:

Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP Pro)

If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt in order to see the list of services.

tasklist /SVC

The problem with using the command line method is that you don’t necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to.

Checking in Task Manager in Vista

You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the “Go to Service” option.

This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected:

The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don’t want it running.

Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP

You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process.

Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services:

Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.

Disabling Services

Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or typeservices.msc into the start menu search or run box.

Find the service in the list that you’d like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties.

Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.

 

You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command “trkwks” is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you’ll notice you can find it there as well.

sc config trkwks start= disabled