What Are Windows Services, What They Do & How To Manage Them
I’m sure you wondered at least once: what makes Windows run and offer so many features to so many different applications? An important portion of the answer is Windows services. With the use of services, Windows is able to manage your network connections, plays sound in your speakers, remember your passwords and credentials, display colors on your screen and so on. This article will try to shed some light on what Windows services are and the basics of working with them. To learn more don’t hesitate to read on.
By Codrut Neagu on 02/25/2013
The Internet is not only home to viruses and spyware, it can also house other threats in the form of child predators or objectionable material that could potentially lead your children to harm. Until your children are old enough to understand the risks of Internet usage, you’ll want to make sure they aren’t doing anything unsafe. Windows 8’s Family Safety features give you the tools you need to monitor their usage, block them from harmful material and even limit how long they spend in front of the computer. In this first article I will share what’s required for enabling Family Safety, how to activate it on the Windows 8 computer used by your child and how to deactivate it when it is no longer useful.
Snap is a great productivity feature of Windows 7 and Windows 8, which we covered only briefly here at 7 Tutorials. On a computer with a single monitor, you can use it both with the mouse and the keyboard but on a multi display setup, it doesn’t seem to work the same way. At least not to snap windows side by side. How do you snap windows if you have two or more displays? This tutorial will show how.
There are times when you need to free up some space on your system or you just want to learn how much space each installed application is using. If you are in need of such information, there are no obvious ways to find it. You might be tempted to search for programs that help with this task. You don’t need to do this though. Both Windows 7 and Windows 8 offer this information. It’s just a bit hidden and you need a bit of guidance to find it. We found three ways to learn how much space your installed applications are using.
If you installed Windows 8 on a computer and you then changed its hardware configuration (e.g. upgraded the processor, memory or other important components), it can happen that Windows 8 no longer accepts the product key bundled with your original installation disc. This happens also when you buy a new computer and you install the Windows 8 edition you purchased and stop using the old computer. What can you do in these scenarios? Let’s find out.
One of this weekend’s top stories on InfoWorld was an article where they invited 14 best selling authors of Windows 8 books to share their honest opinion about this operating system. The list of authors includes yours truly alongside famous people like David Pogue, Ed Bott, Andy Rathbone or Woody Leonhard. Learn what we all had to say about Windows 8 and don’t hesitate add to the conversation by sharing your view.
Microsoft has taken great steps in improving startup times in Windows 8. While you’ll certainly notice the snappy get-up-and-go time in the beginning, you’ll still find that, over time, performance will degrade. The primary reason that a computer slows at startup is the lengthening of the list of startup applications and services. As you install more and more programs, they sneak themselves or their agents onto the startup list. Windows is forced to load more and more before it can take input from you. To help you keep things manageable, Microsoft has added in Windows 8 a new tab to the Task Manager. It enables you to monitor startup apps, their impact on the time it takes to load everything and keep them under control. Here’s how it works.
Have you ever heard about environment variables? Maybe some IT admin or geek was mentioning them or some program started malfunctioning and returning errors mentioning such variables? Whatever the reason you want to learn more about them, you arrived at the right place. This article will share everything you need to know about what they are, how they work and why they are important.
Depending on the smartphone you are using, creating custom ringtones for it might not be that easy. Unfortunately, on systems like Windows Phone or iOS, the process involved is a bit more complicated, as ringtones need to meet specific requirements in terms of format, length, etc. But what about creating ringtones, for free, for any smartphone platform? We did some research and we found a great application named Ringtone Maker. It is small, free, very easy to use and it is compatible with all major smartphone platforms, including Windows Phone. Let’s see how it works and how to create custom ringtones for just about any smartphone.
Even though System Information is a tool that shows all there is to know about your system’s components (hardware and software), I don’t like the way it displays the information. Personally, I prefer a much simpler tool, named Device Manager. Why? Because, with very few clicks, it allows you to see and manage the devices installed on your system, view devices for which you did not install their drivers, view and manage "hidden" devices, etc. If I made you curious to learn more, read this tutorial, as it shows all you need to know about using the Device Manager in Windows 7 and Windows 8.