Tutorials

How to Back Up and Restore Taskbar Toolbars in Windows 8 and 8.1 A toolbar is a row, column, or block of buttons or icons representing tasks you can do within a program. Some toolbars can appear on the taskbar. Such as folders as "New toolbars", and the default Address, Links, Touch Keyboard, and Desktop toolbars. This tutorial will show you how to back up and restore all of your taskbar toolbars automatically with one click in Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows 8.1, and Windows RT 8.1. This can be handy if you do not want to have to manually add or create your current toolbars on the taskbar again say after a clean install of Windows 8. By default, your user account's taskbar toolbars are saved in the registry location below. This is...

How to Reset and Clear All Pinned Apps on Taskbar in Windows 8 and 8.1 This tutorial will show you how to reset and remove all of your currently pinned apps (programs) on the taskbar in Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows 8.1, and Windows RT 8.1. This can be helpful if you are unable to "Unpin this program from taskbar", or just wish to quickly clear all pinned apps from the taskbar. This only includes resetting and removing all of your pinned apps on the taskbar. These will be desktop apps and not Store apps since Store apps cannot be pinned to the taskbar. The Windows 8.1 Update to be released on April 8th 2014 via Windows Update, adds the ability to pin modern apps to the taskbar. This tutorial will now clear pinned modern apps as...

How to Back Up and Restore Pinned Apps on Taskbar in Windows 8 and 8.1 This tutorial will show you how to back up and restore all pinned apps on your taskbar in Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows 8.1, and Windows RT 8.1. This can be handy if you do not want to have to manually pin and restore your currently pinned taskbar items say after a clean install of Windows 8. This only includes backing up and restoring your pinned apps on the taskbar and not the apps themselves. These will be desktop apps and not Store apps since Store apps cannot be pinned to the taskbar. The backup does not include taskbar toolbars, Quick Launch, or Jump Lists. The Windows 8.1 Update released on April 8th 2014 via Windows Update, adds the ability to pin modern...

How to Turn On or Off "Recent Items" and "Frequent Places" in Windows 8 and 8.1 Recent items and Frequent places is a list of your recently opened files, folders, websites, etc... in the Jump Lists of a program's icon on the taskbar, and in File Explorer (Windows Explorer). This will show you how to turn on or off storing and displaying of recent items in taskbar Jump Lists and frequent places in File Explorer, and set how many items to display for your user account in Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows 8.1, and Windows RT 8.1. All recent items and frequent places are stored in the hidden Recent Items folder below. C:\Users\(User-Name)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent Items EXAMPLE: Recent Items and Frequent Places in Windows...

How to Remove "Your PCs" from the Store "Your apps" in Windows 8 and 8.1 When you install an app on a PC from the Windows Store, the name of that PC (computer name) will be added to the Store whenever you are signed in to the Store with the same Microsoft account. You can install the apps you (your Microsoft account) get from the Store on up to 5 PCs simultaneously. For more about Windows Store, see also: Windows Store Terms of Use This tutorial will show you how to remove Your PCs from the Windows Store in Windows 8 to no longer be able to use any of the apps you (your Microsoft account) installed from the Windows Store on the removed PC to install on any other of your PCs. EXAMPLE: "Your PCs" Listed when Looking at "Your apps"...

How to Enable or Disable App Localization in the Store in Windows 8 and 8.1 When developers create apps for the Store in Windows 8, they will either localize their apps for country-specific and/or language-specific audience, or globalize their apps for a global audience. By default, localization is enabled in Windows 8 for apps in the Store. As a result, all apps will not be shown to you in the Store. Only the apps applicable to your country-specific and/or Language-specific locale will be shown. This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable localization in the Windows Store in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 to see all apps or only apps in your specific local language or country when you browse categories or view lists of apps in...

How to Add "Clear Clipboard" to the Context Menu in Windows The clipboard is a temporary storage area used by Vista and Windows 7. Information (such as text, files, graphics, sound, or video) can be copied to the clipboard from one program or location and pasted elsewhere. The clipboard can only hold one piece of information at a time. Whenever something is copied to the clipboard, it replaces whatever was there before automatically. This tutorial will show you how to add Clear Clipboard to the context menu of all files, folders, drives, and Windows Explorer for all users in Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. You must be signed in as an administrator to be able to do the steps in this tutorial to add or remove "Clear Clipboard". This...

How to Display Path of Current Active Recovery Image Used to Refresh Windows 8 and 8.1 A custom recovery image contains the desktop apps you've installed, and the Windows system files in their current state. Recovery images do not contain your documents, personal settings, user profiles, or apps from Windows Store, because that information is preserved at the time you refresh your PC. When you create a custom recovery image, recimg will store it in the specified directory, and set it as the active recovery image. If a custom recovery image is set as the active recovery image, Windows will use it when you refresh your PC. You can use the /setcurrent and /deregister options to select which recovery image Windows 8 will use. All recovery...

How to Deregister the Current Custom Recovery Image to Refresh Windows 8 and 8.1 A custom recovery image contains the desktop apps you've installed, and the Windows system files in their current state. Recovery images do not contain your documents, personal settings, user profiles, or apps from Windows Store, because that information is preserved at the time you refresh your PC. When you create a custom recovery image, recimg will store it in the specified directory, and set it as the active recovery image. If a custom recovery image is set as the active recovery image, Windows will use it when you refresh your PC. You can use the /setcurrent and /deregister options to select which recovery image Windows 8 will use. All recovery...

How to Add or Remove "Run as different user" on "Start" Application Bar in Windows 8 and 8.1 This will show you how to add or remove "Run as different user" command on the Start application bar for all or specific users in Windows 8. If added, you will see this on the application bar when you right click or press and hold on a single app to select the app on the Start screen. This would be for a pinned to Start "Metro" app or BAT, CMD, EXE, MSC, and MSI file. You must be signed in as an administrator to be able to do the steps in this tutorial. EXAMPLE: "Run as different user" Added to "Start" Application Bar NOTE: In this example, I had Internet Explorer selected, but you can select any single app you like though. To Add or...

How to Restore Files and Folders from a Backup in Windows 8 This tutorial will show you how to restore selected files and folders from a Windows Backup that you previously created in Windows 8. If you upgraded to Windows 8 from a previous version of Windows (ex: Vista or Windows 7) and had scheduled backups set up in Backup and Restore, Windows will continue to use your backup schedule. If you used Backup and Restore in a previous version of Windows, you can still restore files from those backups. New backups are saved in this format: drive letter:\computer name\Backup Set YYYY-MM-DD HHMMSS For example: If your computer name is Brink-PC, your backup location is on hard drive (network or local) D: , and you backed up on August...

How to View & Manage Space for Backups in Windows 8 Windows Backup provides you with the flexibility of managing the disk space that is used by your backups. After you set up Windows Backup, you can view how much disk space is being used by the backup and how much free space you have on the disk that your backups are being saved on. To control how much disk space is being used, you can choose how many file backups and how many system images Windows keeps. This tutorial will show you how to delete and manage space for file backups and system images in Windows 8. You must be signed in as an administrator to be able to do the steps in this tutorial. New full file backups are created in sets known as backup periods. To help maximize...