Hardware and Sound

Tutorials and how-to guides about managing hardware and sound devices in Windows 7 and Windows 8

How to Disable the System Beep Sound in Windows 7 & Windows 8

As most of you have noticed, when you press the wrong key, when an error dialog pops up or when you use volume control, you hear a beep. After doing this a couple of times, that beep can get quite annoying. Therefore, in this tutorial, I will show you how to disable it in Windows 7, to make sure it remains silent and it doesn't bother you anymore. As you will see, there are two ways you can do this, both methods being relatively simple.

How to Record Audio with Sound Recorder in Windows 7 & Windows 8

Windows 7 and Windows 8 include a great little application you can use to record sounds - Sound Recorder. All you need is a sound card and a microphone plugged in, or a webcam with a microphone built in. Your recordings are saved as Windows Media Audio files and can be played by any media player. To learn how to use this program, don’t hesitate to read this tutorial.

How to Print to a Shared Mac OS X Printer from Windows 7 & Windows 8

There are a number of indirect ways that you can trick Windows 7 and Windows 8 into printing from a shared printer attached to a Mac, but the best way to do it is through Bonjour. That’s because with every version change - either between Windows or OS X - the process gets muddled and a new solution has to be devised. But Bonjour has been fairly reliable even as both operating systems have evolved. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to set up OS X so that its shared printers are available to Windows computers and devices.

Windows 8 Apps Crash Without Error Messages On AMD/ATI Video Cards

Recently I have encountered weird problems with some modern Windows 8 apps. A few of them (not all) were malfunctioning. When I was launching these apps they never started and, after a second or two, I was back to the Start screen. I did a bit of research with the help of the Event Viewer. It was saying that those apps crashed with the 0xc0000005 exception code and that the atidxx64.dll file installed by my AMD/ATI video card driver was the cause of the problem. What was going on? How to solve this problem?

How to Share a Printer with the Network in Windows 7 or Windows 8

If you have a network where multiple devices and operating systems are used, you might not be able to use the Homegroup for easy network sharing. In such scenarios, you need to share your folders and devices using different procedures. For example, sharing a printer with the network involves a different and lengthier set of steps. Here's how it works, both in Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Set Windows to Play Alarm Sounds When Reaching Low or Critical Battery

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.

How To Customize the Sound Scheme Used on Your Windows Computer

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.

How to Install Windows Phone 8 Apps from the SD Card to Save Space

The simple and common way to install apps in Windows Phone is to use the Store. However, this is not the only way. If you have a phone with an SD card slot and a micro SD memory card inside, you can install apps from the micro SD memory card. But why would you do this? Well, if you have a cheap Windows Phone 8 device, with little storage space, this can help you save some space. Here’s how everything works.

Fix HD Monitors and AMD/ATI Cards Not Displaying a Full Screen Image

I recently encountered weird issues with my 27" Asus LCD display. When I plugged it in, the image displayed did not fill the whole screen, everything was blurry and it looked like there was something wrong with the monitor. If you have similar issues and you are using an AMD/ATI video card, don’t hesitate to read this guide. As it turns out, this problem can be fixed relatively quickly and you don’t need any special skills to do it.

Test a Partition for Errors with Check Disk in Windows 7 & Windows 8

Windows 7 and Windows 8 include a disk error checking utility named Check Disk. It allows you to scan your partitions and see if they have issues with lost sectors, bad sectors or file corruption. Let’s see how to run Check Disk, identify and fix issues with the data stored on your computer’s hard discs.

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