Tutorials

• 5 excellent uses of Windows 8 Hyper-V

  Windows 8's bare-metal virtualization layer is a great way to create an app sandbox, run a test machine, launch a VHD appliance, and more

• Prepare your PC for future data disasters

  Reformatting and restoring a PC is not fun--in the way spending 2 hours in the dentist's chair is not fun. You have to back up all your data (and pray that you haven't forgotten anything), reformat the hard drive, install Windows, track down missing drivers, find and reload all your software, restore your data, and pull out clumps of hair over the things you inevitably neglected to save. (Firefox plug-ins, anyone?)

• Switching to desktop Linux? 6 ways to ease the migration

  With all the many compelling reasons for a company to switch to Linux on the desktop, it's no wonder that businesses large and small are increasingly relying on the free and open source operating system.

• Windows 7: 10 Cool Keyboard Shortcuts

  Keyboard shortcuts are wonderful time-savers but many of us are either too accustomed to the mouse or too lazy to get beyond Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.

• How to keep Windows XP SP2 safer after Microsoft stops patching

  Maybe you didn't get the memo: Tomorrow marks the end of patches for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2).

• Move data to a safer, separate partition in Windows 7

  Cedric Crawley wants to keep Windows 7 and his applications in one partition, and his data in another.

• The data with the music

  When you pop an audio CD into your PC's drive, your media player software (iTunes, Windows Media Player, or whatever) downloads this information from an online database.

• How to: Reletter a drive

  Windows turned drive F: into drive G:, so the PC's owner asked the Answer Line forum how to change it back.

• Turning off disk defragmenter may solve a sluggish PC

  For the last couple months I've been troubleshooting a vexing problem on my new quad-core HP desktop: Roughly once per week, the machine would start running as slow as molasses.

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  Turning off disk defragmenter may solve a sluggish PC (Part 2)

  When we last left our intrepid blogger (way back on Friday), he'd pointed the finger at Vista's Disk Defragmenter and cried, "J'accuse!"