Category: Windows 8

Like the older versions of Windows, you can also lock your Windows 8 PC by pressing the Win + L hotkey. But the lock screen has changed very much in Windows 8. Now it looks more like the lock screen of a mobile device, maybe because Windows 8 has been designed keeping the touchscreen tablets in mind. The Windows 8 lock screen shows a background picture that you have to drag up to unlock your PC. Windows 8 allows you to change the background picture of the lock screen.

When you power on your Windows 8 PC, you are taken to the start screen (previously called metro screen). This start screen has all the tiles with links to launch Windows 8 apps. For example, you can click on the Internet Explorer tile to launch the Windows 8 app for Internet Explorer and so on. By default, the start screen has a purple colored background image. But if you want, then you can change the start screen background image along with the background color.

Some of the malware use special ports to connect to the infected computers. For example, the ports 5400, 5401 and 5402 are used by the Blade Runner malware. You can use Windows Firewall to block access to such ports of your system. You can block a port in the Windows Firewall using the steps shown in this article.

If you plan to run your own web server like Apache HTTP server, then you may have to open a port for people who may want to connect to your server. If you are using the Windows Firewall, then this task is not so straightforward. You can open a port in the Windows 8 Firewall using the steps in this article.

When you install Windows 8, it does not ask you for a user account picture like the older versions of Windows. Moreover the options to change user account picture do not seem to be present in the Control Panel. But Windows 8 has a much easier way to set a user account picture for your account. Interestingly, Windows 8 also allows you to set a small video instead of the picture for your user account.

Microsoft Windows 8 comes with a built in firewall which is turned on by default. But the Windows firewall does not provide an easy way to access it, for example, from a system tray icon like many commercial firewall software do. But it can be used to block any program from accessing the internet. If you want to block a program in Windows firewall in Windows 8, then you can follow these steps.

Windows 8 has done away with the Start Menu along with all its features including the ability to shutdown, power off, restart or log off from the Start Menu. The classic shutdown screen available in Windows XP, Vista and 7 has been replaced with the power off options in the Charms bar. But this is difficult to use compared to the Start Menu shutdown options. If you want the older classic shutdown dialog back in Windows 8, then you can use our free tool Classic Shutdown.

The .HLP files are Windows help files which were once used extensively by all the Windows programs. Then starting with Windows Vista, Microsoft decided to drop the support for .HLP help files in favor of modern and newer CHM files. If you happen to have an older program that you cannot stop using and it comes with legacy .HLP help files, then you cannot view them. If you double-click on an .HLP file in Windows 8, then it shows the help window explaining why you cannot view the program.

Internet Explorer version 10 which comes pre-installed in Windows 8 has a new feature called Flip Ahead. This feature lets you flip a webpage to the next page on websites with Next links like on Google Search. It is very useful on touchscreen devices as you can just flip pages back and forth on a website just like an ebook. This Flip Ahead feature is not enabled in Internet Explorer by default.

If you install a third party web browser (like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox) in Windows 8 and make it your default web browser, then it disables the Internet Explorer 10 app on the start screen. Now if you click on the Internet Explorer tile on the start screen, it would launch the desktop version Internet Explorer window, and not the full screen Internet Explorer Metro app. There is a simple way to fix this problem, just make Internet Explorer your default web browser again.