Unravelling the secrets of Windows takes a sharp mind and a deft hand and... oh who are we kidding. Everyone has a handful of their own tips and tricks from experience
CHECK YOUR RELIABILITY
Windows 8 has an excellent tool to help you visualise the reliability of your PC and drill-down into the events which may be affecting stability, both of the OS and the programs you run. This one's under the Action Center from the Control Panel, after first clicking the Maintenance drop down. You'll see 'View reliability history', click to launch. You'll see a graph that you can view by days or weeks showcasing system warnings, failures and program crashes. Click on a day to view the events, and then click on an event to learn more about it. For some issues, you may also be able to search for solutions online.
UNDO EXPLORER
Ctrl-Z undo isn’t just for Word or Paint, it works in Explorer too — if you've just gone and deleted, or even moved, a bunch of files by accident then no worries — Ctrl-Z will restore it.
KEEP IT ORGANISED
As you install more and more programs, you may find your Start Screen becoming cluttered. No worries! Windows 8.1 will let you organise them into groups: just drag a program to an empty space to create a new group. Then, right-click somewhere in the same empty space and select 'Name groups' to give the new group a name.
HISTORY LESSON
It took Microsoft until Windows 8 to add a decent in-built backup tool, and it’s a cracker — if you're not using File History, you should be. From the Control Panel go to 'System and Security > File History'. Choose a backup location on a different hard drive (internal or external), or even a network share. Set desired disk usage under Advanced Settings, and you're done. It'll not only backup your personal files, it'll keep versions of them saved every hour.
X MARKS THE SPOT
Simple, fast, and easy — the ultimate key combination: Win-X, and up pops the Power User menu (also accessible by right-clicking in the very lower-left of your Windows 8 or 8.1 desktop).
SNEAKY START-UP
Inevitably you'll end up installing programs that force themselves upon you (lookin' at you Adobe, Apple, Samsung... oh bugger it, all of you tech giants). Disable unwanted start-ups first with Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Delete, then click the Startup tab) or, for the nuclear option (you'll see when you check it out), type 'autoruns' into Google, download the Sysinternals 'Autoruns' program, and go wild.
SMARTER SNAPS
You already know that pressing PrtScrn will take a snapshot of your desktop (you did know that) and put it in the copy/paste buffer so you can Ctrl-V it into Paint or another program to save. But who needs all that exercise of the extra step? Press Win-PrtScrn and Windows 8 will save it directly to your My Pictures folder as a .PNG. But wait, there's more! No, not the steak knives, but almost as good: why capture a whole desktop if you only want one window? Press Alt-PrtScrn to capture just the highlighted window. Unfortunately, you can't do Win-Alt-PrtScrn, so you'll still have to paste the window shot into Paint before saving (come on Microsoft! Get with the program!).
NOT NOW, FIDO
It's easy to miss but if you head to 'Change PC Settings' from the Charm bar Settings, then click on 'Search and apps’, and finally 'Notifications' you'll find the Quiet hours option — where you can tell Windows when it can and can’t bug you with notifications.
MINE, NOT YOURS
If you care about not sharing the intimate relationship between you and Windows with the world (oh OK, and probably your personal data) click on Privacy also found under PC Settings, and toggle off those sharing options accordingly.
SPACE SAVERS
Windows is still king of the bloat, and while there’s CCleaner and Disk Cleanup (right-click on a drive > Properties), these won’t get everything. Reclaim what is often gigabytes of space from Windows Update and Windows Service Pack backups by first opening an Administrator command prompt (search for 'cmd', right-click on Command Prompt, and select 'Run as Administrator’), then running: dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup. If you're using Windows 8.1, you can add /ResetBase to the end of that line, too. After that completes, replace /ResetBase with/SPSuperseded and run it again. Next, clean up old Shadow Copy (used for everything from backup driver installs to System Restore) data with: vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /On=C: /For=C: /MaxSize=10GB changing the MaxSize to be about 10% of your drive. In one Windows 7 test system, this freed up 30GB! Finally, search for 'restore' and create a new System Restore snapshot.
SECRET SEND-TO
No, not Secret Santa but secret Send-to — the aptly titled feature usually shows just a handful of options from zipping to mailing. But hold Shift before right-clicking, and then selecting 'Send to' and you'll be presented with considerably more choices.
MANAGING MAINTENANCE
Windows 8 and 8.1 does a better job than previous Windows versions at keeping your system humming smoothly. Part of this is the automated background maintenance (and includes virus scans, File History backup, TRIMing and more). But it may not always run at the best time for you — so here's how to change it: open the Action Center and then, under Maintenance, click on 'Change maintenance set tings' and choose a time to suit.
SHIFTING TO SAFE MODE
Any battle-scarred geek will have used (or needed) the F8 safe mode at one time or another. It’s still there in Windows 8, but to access it you need to hold down Shift+F8 just before Windows boots. Awww, look at the pretty blue...
DESKTOP 4EVA
Modern UI takes some getting used to, but Windows 8.1 makes it easier to simply ignore it and be a desktop junkie. Hit 'Win-D' to go to the Desktop, right-click on the task bar, select Properties, and slam your trigger finger on Navigation. Bask in desktop-friendly options Microsoft deigned to supply.
WIPE IT FREE
Windows 8 is particularly good at helping you recover from disaster, including its more modernised advanced startup menu (hold down Shift while clicking Restart from the Power Charm) and its 'Refresh your PC' option to keep personal data while re-installing Windows. But what about the opposite, say running a wipe before you pass your PC on to a better cause? From the same menu you can also opt for 'Remove everything and re-install Windows'. You'll need a Windows 8 or 8.1 install disk and, when prompted, you'll have two options: 'Just remove my files' for a quick solution if the PC is just going to a family member, or 'Fully clean drive': this performs both a delete and a full disk wipe with random data, which may take a several hours, before re-installing Windows fresh.