Group policy and Active Directory are very important in any organization with more than a few computers. When I loaded Windows 8 on my work PC one of the first tasks I had to do was install the Group Policy Management client (GPMC) and the AD tools such as Active Directory Users and Computers MMC. The two tools that I need to manage our domain based group policies and AD accounts. Installing the...
Read MoreHyper-v is a great free hypervisor that allows you to run virtual machines on Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012. I use Hyper-v to power virtual machines that I use for development and testing and recently ran into an issue with very slow network performance on my new system. The host system performed without any issues, but the virtual machines running on top experienced very slow network performance...
Read MoreThe Windows 8 taskbar has a clean appearance, displaying only the icons of pinned and opened applications group together neatly. From a design perspective, it is light-years ahead of the Windows XP taskbar. But when viewed from a usability perspective, some may find the missing labels a step backwards. Hidden in taskbar options, is a setting that can give you the best of both worlds by retaining the...
Read MoreJump lists are a major component of the taskbar in Windows 8. When you right-click on an application icon, you are presented with a number of options relevant to that app. Depending on the app, different items are displayed. Microsoft Word displays recently opened office documents, Internet Explorer and Chrome display recently visited web sites. The number of items that display in the list are easily...
Read MoreIt can be annoying if you are a frequent user of the number pad keys when you log into your PC as by default, NUM lock is turned off on the login screen. This is even more annoying now that Windows 10 is promoting logging in with a PIN when everyone goes through the initial setup.
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Would you like to display an information or legal message to your users before they can login to Windows? "Do not shut down this computer," or how about, "By logging into this computer you are accepting the use policy. Unauthorized use is prohibited. " All of these message can be displayed with the help of a simple security policy edit.
Read MoreMicrosoft built a great interface to customize the colors and lock screen image seen by users after they log in, but they never built an interface to customize the default lock image and color scheme. That is where the Tweaks.com Logon Changer was designed to help. I wrote this free utility to help users of all skills easily change the default logon screen image and customize the color scheme with...
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Every time you boot up your PC all computer accounts are normally displayed right on the logon screen. This can be a security risk as it provides useful information to a malicious user attempting to breach your computer. In addition, if Remote Desktop is enabled, an attacker can remotely identify the user currently logged in as it is listed on the logon screen. The attacker just needs to find your...
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One of the features on the lock screen in Windows 8 and Windows 10 is a list of all the user accounts on the computer. But what if you created an account for running a service or have a secret administrator account you don’t want to expose to everyone on the lock screen? With the help of a simple registry tweak, you can hide specific users from appearing on the lock screen.
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Windows 8 and Windows 10 include two special refresh/reset features that make it easy for anyone, even those without computer knowledge, to start over with a clean slate and restore their computer to brand-new, clean install condition. Called Refresh and Reset your PC, these features are designed to make manually reinstalling Windows a thing of the past.
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