If you have lost your Windows 7 or Windows 8 license key, you can still recover it from the computer or device where it is installed. Many programs were developed for recovering Windows 7 product keys but not that many work on Windows 8. That’s why I decided to test a couple of programs, identify those that work also with Windows 8 and share them with you. You never know when you need to recover your lost license key.

Connecting all your Windows 8 devices together in a home network allows you to share data between them directly. If all of your devices are using Windows Vista or newer, you can use the Homegroup to connect them all seamlessly. If that isn't an option for you, or you would rather not use this feature, you can easily map shared network locations to a local drive letter using a process called drive mapping. While this procedure is very similar to drive mapping in Windows 7, there are a couple of changes to the File Explorer user interface that might throw off some users. Read on and I'll show you how to map network drives and FTP servers in Windows 8.

The third week of April brought some official announcements from Microsoft like a big upgrade of their Bing apps and an introduction of two-factor authentication to their accounts. In the rumor mill, hopes for the Start button and the Desktop boot in Windows Blue were strengthened by ZDNet sources. Also, images of Nokia's "Catwalk" were leaked onto a Chinese social network. And while debates are raging over the future of Windows, Microsoft has secured even more money by scoring Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn for their Android licensing program. Ars Technica also showed us that Excel can be exciting if put in the hands of the right accountant! For a look at Cary Walkins Excel RPG and the rest of the round-up, scroll down for the links!

When trying to download apps from the Windows Phone Store or when trying to restore your phone using a backup, you might encounter issues for some apps. Windows Phone 8 returns the error code 8000ffff and says that: "There is a problem completing your request. Try again later.". To make things worse, your apps list is populated by lots of invalid entries. What causes this problem and how do you fix it?

Windows 7 introduced a brand new Windows Explorer that is very different from the version found in Windows XP or Windows Vista. Windows 8 continues this trend and not only renames the product to File Explorer but also introduces a ribbon based interface. Even though these products have lots of new features, as with any piece of software, you can customize and improve their functioning, using the Folder Options window - the place where all the important settings are found, related to how Windows Explorer and File Explorer work. Let’s see which settings are worth improving and where to find them.

Avast! has some of the most popular security products in the world. This year they launched version 8 of their lineup and I was curious to learn what’s new and how effective their new products are in providing security to their users. That’s why I decided to install avast! Internet Security 8 and test it for a while. Read this review to learn what I have found out.

Some of our readers have asked how they can set Windows 7 or Windows 8 so that it plays an alarm sound when the battery or their laptop or tablet reaches a low or critically low level. Such alarms can be played automatically with the use of sound schemes. In this tutorial you will learn how this works.

Windows has a set of sounds applied to events and programs, such as "Close Program", "Default Beep", "Maximize", "Minimize", etc. The collection of all these sounds is called a sound scheme and is associated with a Windows theme. For example, the themes that come bundled with Windows 7 and Windows 8 use the Windows Default sound scheme. When you change your Windows theme, the sound scheme is also changed according to the new theme’s settings. If you are not happy with a certain sound scheme, you can easily customize it so that it uses the sounds you want to. You can even create your own sound schemes. Let’s see how it all works.

SSquared-Photography, the duo of Poland born Slavo Janowski and Italy born Stefano Canali, are a self-taught team of photographers currently based in Ireland. Their new home with its beautiful scenery and haunting shores not only brought them together as artists, but also provided fuel for their inspiration. They’ve developed a business from their passion for photography and are the proud honors of a small studio that offers prints, web design solutions as well as artistic and commercial photography. They love taking long exposure shots and want to bring unique and creative imagery to landscape photography. To find out how the duo came together and have a look at their beautiful work through a Windows theme, we recommend reading their interview below.

At some point in time everybody’s contact list gets too crowded, no matter how often you clean it up. To make things worse, integrating your social networking accounts can make the People app cluttered with too many names and too much information. Luckily, Windows Phone 8 has a feature named Groups, which enables you to organize the people that matter into groups of contacts that are easily accessible. Let’s see how it works and how to use the Groups feature to keep in touch with your friends and family.

When I was asked to update our 2010 article about connecting remotely to a PC from a Mac, I thought it would be a fairly simple task. However, since that article was written, Microsoft has dropped support for their Remote Desktop Connection software for Macs. While there are anecdotal reports of it working on OS X Lion, it definitely will not work on OS X Mountain Lion, the latest version of OS X. So I went in a quest of new, free options, and that also turned out not to be a simple task. Here are the best free tools for connecting remotely from your Mac to a Windows 7 or Windows 8 computer or device.

Windows 8’s Family Safety gives you an amazing amount of control over your children’s user accounts. It allows you to monitor their activities, restrict their usage times and prevent them from viewing and using things that aren’t meant for them. This tool is easy to use, but it also has enough going on that it might intimidate some users. We’ve compiled a list with the best features of Family Safety, to show you how it works and why it’s worth the trouble of using it.