Set up a PC the right way
All expecting parents have read What to Expect When You're Expecting, because when that little bundle of joy drops out of mommy, you'd better be ready with lots of paper towels and a whole lot of specialized knowledge about what to do from that moment forward. Though it's not quite as messy (or scary), setting up a new PC requires a similar sort of informed approach if you want to raise it properly from the moment it squirts out of the Fed Ex truck and into your life. You'll be tempted to pick it up and coo, "Who's a widdle PC?," and then immediately benchmark the shinola out of it. We understand the impulse, and the excitement, but hold your horses, cowboy. You've got to take it slow with a new rig, and get it set up correctly the first time, or else all your future efforts will be for naught. That's where we come in. We'll show you how to set up a PC the right way!
In this handy guide, we'll show you what to do with your new PC in those first crucial out-of-the-box moments, and will hold your hand all the way from the first boot until the PC is ready to run its first benchmark. With our help, your bundle of bits will quickly grow from a fragile, schizophrenic rig to a fully up-to-date, crap-free machine that's secure, tweaked for maximum performance, and ready to make daddy or mommy proud. Sniff—they boot up so fast!
Kick the Tires
You just unboxed your new desktop, all-in-one, or laptop, but do you really know what's inside of it? After all, like doctors, lawyers, and journalists, system builders make mistakes, too. It's a good time to grab the spec sheet that came with your PC and do a quick system inventory to make sure that if you paid for a machine with a $230 CPU, you actually got that CPU. You can poke and prod through the specs using tools such as CPU-Z (www.cpuid.com) and GPU-Z (www.techpowerup.com) and check the Device Manager and BIOS/UEFI for hardware IDs, or just run a system audit using Belarc Advisor (free from Belarc.com). Belarc Advisor will query the hardware and software in your PC and present you with a tidy list of everything that's installed. Pay particular attention to what CPU is in your box, the SSD and HDD models and capacity, as well how much RAM and how many DIMMs are installed.
The inventory isn't enough, though. You should also verify some key parameters to make sure your box is running at speed. Run CPU-Z while also running the Prime95 (www.mersenne.org) stress test in order to record the clock speed the chip is running at. With various turbo techs being pushed, you might also want to see how your chip performs under light loads. We generally run the Sunspider browser benchmark (www.webkit.org) to try to coax turbo speeds out of our CPUs. While you have CPU-Z running, click the Memory tab and verify that your box is running the correct memory channels.
Those of you running an SSD on an Intel system should verify that the drive is hooked up to a SATA 6Gb/s port and that Trim is enabled. Just download Crystal Disk Info (http://bit.ly/UKzt0) to see what state your SSD's run state.
Inventory your PC's hardware with Belarc to make sure you got what you paid for.
We like to verify that a new SATA 6Gb/s SSD is actually running at that speed.
Restoration Software
Old-timers, aka geezers, will remember when every new PC would ship with a set of restore discs. Well, buddy, those days are over for most large PC manufacturers. And don't you kid yourself; even though Windows 8 has the capability to factory reset itself before your lunch break is over. Windows 8's reset feature won't do squat if your HDD or SSD decides to go south on you, or if some OS fault or infection is so bad you need to nuke it from orbit.
It's not that Microsoft is preventing PC vendors from providing restore media, either—it's just that most PC OEMs don't want to pay for it anymore. Why bother if they can make you burn it instead? To be fair, the vast majority of folks never have issues and skip this step. We, however, like to hope for the best but plan for the worst, so burning the disc before your drive blows a motivator is the proper course of action.
Every major OEM seems to handle restore discs differently, so hunt around on your system for the utility and look for the "factory restore disc" feature. When we set up a new box for Aunt Peg recently, the first thing we did was burn a set of restore discs and then taped them to the back of the machine.
If your new notebook doesn't have an optical drive, consider creating a recovery USB key, which most factory utilities support as an alternative to creating discs. Just make sure it's big enough. A Windows 8 Pro installation asked for a minimum of 23GB for our factory image.
Take the time to create factory recovery discs, since few systems ship with them.
Interestingly, miserly HP allows you to create only one set of recovery discs.
The Nuclear Option
Rather than trying to remove the megabytes of trialware your OEM has preloaded on a new machine, some enthusiasts prefer to forgo the hour spent uninstalling unwanted crap and reach right for the nuclear launch codes instead. Yup, that's right, they take a perfectly good, brand-new PC and immediately nuke-and-pave over the OS with a full, clean install. In the days of Windows XP, such an option probably made a lot of sense, but factory preinstalls of the OS from large OEMs are quite complicated and messy. What's more, the factory-restore will quite likely contain all the same trialware. While nuking the OS from orbit was perfectly acceptable to many of us years ago, these days we think it's just easier to declutter the box by hand first (continue reading below).
Still, there are times when the nuclear option is preferable. Some OEMs prefer to ship with a 32-bit version of the OS installed for compatibility reasons, but make both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions available. In this case, nuking the OS and reinstalling the 64-bit version is required if you want to upgrade.
Windows Update It!
With your new PC connected to the Internet, the absolute first thing you should do is manually run Windows Update. Once it's done, run it again. Why? It's not because Windows 7 and Windows 8 are particularly soft targets, but as the world's dominant operating systems (well, Win7 anyway), they're basically the biggest targets around. With the dangers of infected Flash ads, JavaScript exploits, and an untold number of threats poised to attack unpatched machines, wading into the Internet with an unpatched box is about as wise as running buck naked and blindfolded into a cactus patch.
So before you step one foot onto the Internet, run Windows Update at least twice—some updates require the presence of a preceding update in order to be installed. Then you can run out to procure the other much-needed utilities and tools for your new PC. On Windows 8 machines, go to the Modern UI and start to type update. On Windows 7, go to Start and search for update.
Once your networking is up, run Windows Update immediately.
If It's Broken, Fix It
Former Maximum PC columnist Alex "The Saint" St. John said it best: "Drivers, she is always a-broken." OK, we added the Mario Brothers' sentence structure and accent for style, but he was right on. Drivers are usually a work in progress and they are often the cause of system wonkiness, even on brand-spanking-new machines. In fact, new machines are often the ones most in need of updated drivers, given their state-of-the-art hardware. Case in point, we unboxed a brand-spanking-new Windows 8 notebook for some testing and immediately had to update no fewer than four drivers.
This is where the big-boy "tier 1" OEMs often have the edge over the smaller companies. Most pack their own driver update applications that will hunt down the latest drivers for their machines. On an HP Win8 laptop, for example, rather than having to chase down individual drivers, the HP update app did the work for us. This can work against you on occasion, though, as big companies often don't want headaches, so once a driver reaches a certain level of stability, they don't push new updates unless absolutely needed, even if the new driver may add improved features or performance. Then, a manual search will produce more satisfying results.
If you don't want to hunt for every single device driver by hand, there are alternatives, such as Slimware's SlimDrivers Free (www.slimwareutilities.com). This utility uses "crowdsourcing" to do what the large OEMs do with their driver updaters. Running SlimDrivers Free on another big OEM laptop, for example, yielded 14 updated drivers, while the OEM's update tool said nothing new was available.
Which drivers do we typically recommend that you update on a new box? The most obvious are GPU drivers. Next up would be chipset drivers. We will add that results of driver updates will vary depending on your OS. Windows 7 is quite mature and drivers at this point are unlikely to add much beyond bug fixes. Windows 8, though, is constantly changing, so GPU, chipset, audio, USB, network—basically everything—should be checked for new drivers and generally installed.
Take advantage of integrated driver-update tools on your PC.
Slimware's SlimDriver Free hunts down new drivers for you.
Beware the BIOS
We used to believe the conventional wisdom that if it ain't broke, don't break it by touching it, but not anymore when it comes to the BIOS. We've experienced so many fits of weirdness that were fixed by updating the BIOS in the last couple of years that we now recommend updating the BIOS/UEFI as a top priority on a new PC. We've seen Wi-Fi that wouldn't install properly get fixed with a BIOS update, and overclocking-gone-whacky similarly remedied, so we say just do it. Even on notebooks, which many people believe don't need a BIOS update, an updated BIOS can correct serious performance issues. Case in point: The BIOS often has direct control over acoustics on a laptop. Updating the BIOS could add new fan profiles that either make the laptop quieter or enable higher turbo clock speeds because the fan will spin up higher. You simply don't know. Even more interesting, newer machines, especially new laptops, often benefit the most from BIOS updates, as the engineers tweak them in response to the feedback they're getting as the products actually reach consumers' hands. Since BIOS updates are often handled differently for each PC, we can't walk you through it step-by-step, but we recommend that you visit your vendor's website to check the BIOS versions and/or run any built-in update utility to check for a new BIOS.
Lighten the Load
Do you know how you got your PC at such a fantastic price? Well, it's partly the result of the preinstalled and subsidized trial software. So while you gnash your teeth at the 12 trial apps clogging your hard drive, remember those same software vendors helped pay for your new rig.
So please mouth a quiet thank you and then download PC Decrapifier (www.pcdecrapifier.com) stat. This handy utility will let you quickly and easily uninstall most of the preinstalled software in one single swipe. And after you're done blowing out the hundreds of megabytes of trial software with as much effort as it takes you to eat a delicious Big Kahuna burger, also thank your PC for even letting you uninstall the trialware, unlike your blasted smartphone, which has precious, precious space being wasted by trial apps you never, ever use, either. Freedom!
We love how easily PC Decrapifier makes it for us to bid adieu to unwelcome preinstalled software!
Clutter It Up
You just spent an hour decluttering your new PC of trial applications (if you didn't use PC Decrapifier), now it's time to clutter it up—your way. Rather than download each app one-at-a-time, point your browser at Ninite.com. Once there, you're presented with a page of popular applications that just about everyone installs on a new machine—Chrome, Dropbox, Foxit Reader, 7-Zip, Steam, TeraCopy, Revo, Digsby, VLC, etc. Simply scroll through the list looking for an app, utility, or runtime that appeals to you and check the box. Once you've picked from the menu of software, click the Get Installer button and you'll get a small executable to download. Once you've downloaded the executable, run it, and Ninite will automatically download and install the software you selected. Just drive on down to the In-N-Out Burger near Radford, grab your lunch, come back, and voilà , it's done. The only improvement we wish Ninite had is an enthusiast utility selection that includes CPU-Z, GPU-Z, and other handy-dandy tools we all use.
While we're on the subject of installing software, if you're planning to install free antivirus software, you can do that as well with Ninite, which gives you the choice of Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast, and AVG for real-time scanners; and Malwarebytes, Ad-Aware, and Spybot as secondary, on-demand scanners. SuperAntiSpyware is also an option but the app has real-time protection, which may be an issue for any AV app you run. More on this later, but if you're going the cheap route with AVG, MSE, or Avast, now is the time to do it, or install a paid solution. For your info, Windows 8 boxes come out of the, um, box with Microsoft's creaky-old Security Essentials installed and running.
Ninite.com automagically installs all your popular apps and utilities in one swoop.
Secure It
Your work is just getting started after you've installed an AV product. The old-school scan-your-drive-for-an-infected-file model has long been worthless. These days, malware often is installed in a nanosecond, using zero-day infections via broken browser plugins and scripting exploits. As much work as Microsoft has done to enhance security in Windows 15 (7 + 8), that doesn't help if you have an unpatched version of QuickTime, VLC, or Adobe Reader.
First, may we recommend that you consider paying for a good AV product such as F-Secure, Kaspersky, Norton, or BitDefender, among others? These products are highly rated for their ability to intercept zero-day attacks, and with rebates you can get enough keys to cover all your devices for a few dollars a year. If you're too cheap, consider using AVG Free, which is better at stopping zero-day attacks than Microsoft's Security Essentials product. MSE is the least bothersome, but it's lost a lot of luster of late.
With a proper AV app in place, you now need to be wary of your browser plugins. We recommend weekly checks of your browser using Qualys BrowserCheck. This free web tool will check your browser's plugins to see if they're the latest available. The intermediate and advanced options offer checks of all browsers as well as Windows Updates, too. Keeping your applications updated is also a key to avoiding infections. For that, we turn to Secunia PSI or the web-based OSI (www.secunia.com). Secunia's tools will check your installed apps and inform you if there are any risks, and either automatically download them or offer you a download link.
Running two AV apps is not recommended, but keeping one around for a second opinion isn't a bad idea. We often keep Malwarebytes installed just in case we need it. You should also consider installing VirusTotal Uploader (www.virustotal.com). This lets you right-mouse-click a file to have it sent to VirusTotal where it will be analyzed by more than 40 virus engines. Even more trick, if you suspect a process is mal, you can use the VirusTotal Uploader to send the executable that is running the process to be analyzed.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. Just remember security guru Bruce Schneier's words: "Security is not a product; it's a process."
Staying on top of the state of your browser plugins is key to a good security regimen.
Have a Backup Plan or Two
The system-restore discs you created earlier will get you back in business should you experience a total meltdown, but you should also strongly consider setting up a backup plan now, not a day after your drive has died and you've lost all your data. For those times, we've found Window 7's Backup and Restore to work amazingly well. You'll need a second drive on the machine for the backups; we highly recommend that its capacity is equal to or larger than that of your primary drive. Remember to heed the warning that one is none and two is one.
With a USB optical drive plugged in or a second HDD in place, use Backup and Restore to create a system image, and then burn a boot disc that you will need should your drive fail. Now, also set up a file backup from your primary drive to your secondary drive and set it for a schedule that you're comfortable with. In the event of a primary drive failure, just replace the drive, boot to the restore disc you created, and point it at your backup images and files. When completed, you should be back in action with access to the files you had just before the failure.
Windows 8 users can set up the same file and image backup system from Windows 7, but it's called Windows 7 File Recovery. Just pull up search and start typing file recovery and look under Settings to access the same utility. Win8 actually has different options: File History will create backups on a file every hour, whereas Windows 7 File Recovery will run only once a day. What's better? Since our time and data is invaluable, we do both. File History is the Omega 13 of backup that lets you, say, go back to a file version from three hours before. Refresh is a great feature that "resets" the OS but it won't help if the drive has died. In that case, having a disc image and Windows 7 File Recovery backup set lets you drop in a new drive and be back up and running in a couple of hours, rather than the usual 12 hours of manually installing apps and recovering settings.
Click the next page for pro tips on how to transfer your data
Transfer Your Data
Best practices for moving files from your old PC to a new one
Once your system is set up how you like it, it's time to fill your fresh drive(s) with all your documents, music, and games. Follow these instructions for getting those various files situated in their new digs.
How to Transfer… Documents!
So, you have your new Windows 8 PC all ready to go. The problem? All of your important documents are stuck on your older system.
Assuming that you've been making ample use of Windows' My Documents folder to store just that, then transferring your files over is as easy as copying your entire C:\Users\[your name]\My Documents folder to a flash drive (or USB-based hard drive, depending on how much you'll be transferring). Connect the key or drive to your new system and copy the files over—it couldn't be easier.
If you're a bit messier, however, and have documents strewn all around your hard drive, then you'll probably want to make use of Windows' built-in search tool to find your documents. Assuming you're on Windows Vista or later, you just have to pull up Windows Explorer, highlight your Computer in the left-hand sidebar, and type *.doc* in the upper-right-hand search box—assuming, of course, that we're talking about .doc or .docx files. Sort the search results by Type to ensure you're looking at just your documents, and then highlight and copy them over to your external storage in the same way you'd transfer any file.
Lesson learned: Keeping all of your documents in one place makes it much easier to transfer them over to a new desktop or laptop at some point in the future.
You also might want to investigate the free app TeraCopy if you're likely to be copying a ton of small files over to your external storage for transfer. While the third-party file-transfer app has proven to be a bit slower than Windows' built-in transfer tool for big files, it's a star for smaller files. Additionally, it also gives you the ability to pause your transfers (similar to Windows 8's file-copy tool), skip transfers that you've queued up, and have your computer automatically shut down once the transfer has finished.
How to Transfer… iTunes!
We'll pause for a moment while your fellow Maximum PC readers look at you with suspicion, you iTunes fan you. Now that that's over with, we'll show you how to move your iTunes library to your new Windows 8 PC.
First off, you'll want to find your iTunes Library. To note: We're assuming you're using iTunes itself to organize your music, as any tunes you drag into iTunes' interface are automatically copied and placed into a specific location by the program. If not, you're on your own to hunt down where on your computer you've stashed your MP3 files. (Try using the same process we just described for Documents to get all of your MP3s onto a single piece of external storage.)
Pull up iTunes' Preferences windows and click its Advanced icon. iTunes will tell you exactly where it's keeping its Media folder. Navigate to this location within Windows Explorer and copy all the directories representing your music to some kind of external storage device.
iTunes' ability to automatically organize your music library folder is an invaluable tool when it comes to moving your music around. In other words: Don't just copy your music in File Explorer!
Before you go dumping these tunes onto your new Windows 8 PC, download and install iTunes, and then head back to the same Preferences > Advanced window we just mentioned. Make sure the location you want iTunes to use for your new Media folder is set, and check the following two options: "Keep iTunes Media folder organized," and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library." From there, all you have to do is drag-and-drop the folders full of music on your external drive directly into your new, empty iTunes folder on your Windows 8 PC—the app will take care of the rest.
How to Transfer… Steam!
Do your poor router a favor—don't just re-download all of your games onto your new PC. You don't have to, thanks to Valve's built-in backup feature within Steam.
Click the Steam menu in the upper-left corner of the app and select "Backup and Restore Games." Since you'll be moving all of your downloaded games from your old PC to your new one, make sure that "Backup currently installed programs" is selected in the window that appears and click Next. After that, select your games and click Next.
You can directly create this backup on your external media, but it might go a little faster to just find a temporary location on your hard drive (assuming you have the space) for now, and then copy over the Steam backup to external media after the fact. Click Next and you'll be given the option to assign your backup a name and file size—in other words, the size of the (possibly many) archives that Steam will create, if you're going to try to burn these to discs instead of just copying them en masse to removable storage. Click Next and go find your favorite movie to watch—this might take a while.
In the olden days, there was no way to just transfer stream games via the app itself you had to re-download everything you wanted to play (after walking miles in the snow to do so).
Once Steam's Backup and Restore program finishes, you can copy these files to an external drive and use the same process—but selecting Restore this time—to transfer these games over to your new system.
How to Transfer… Games!
There's really only one tool that we trust when it comes to scanning our systems for our games' many different save files: the freeware app Gamesave Manager (www.gamesave-manager.com). Using this one is simple—heck, you don't even have to install it. Download the app and fire it up, and make sure you've updated its database to the most recent version (this is how the app figures out where your save files are).
From there, click the "Make a backup" link on the app's main screen. Select the games whose saves you want to back up, and then click the icon in the upper-right corner that looks like a file "wooshing" to the right (it's next to the big "X" icon). Pick a location for your backup file and let 'er rip—we recommend placing the saves on some external storage device.
Once you've finished reinstalling (or Steam transferring) your games to your new system, use Gamesave Manager to restore your saves by clicking the Open Archive(s) option on the app's main screen. Hunt down the files you previously created with Gamesave Manager (on the external storage device, we hope), and use that same oddly shaped file icon to restore your precious game progress.
Connection Speeds Compared
What's the best way to transfer your files from one PC to another? Easy: drag-and-drop. OK, there's a bit more to it than that.
Researching all the theoretical maximum speeds of various connection types is easy. Trying to gauge just how they'll perform in a real-world environment is a bit trickier, given the multitude of factors that go into getting your files from Point A to Point B. And by factors, we really mean "bottlenecks."
It's time you accepted the honest truth: Your file transfer speeds will never be as fast as your research suggests. Your USB 3.0 connections aren't going to blaze by at 640MB/s (or soon, 1,280MB/s, once the connection standard is bumped up to 10Gb/s), nor will your Gigabit network cough up 125MB/s each and every time you go to copy a file over to your network storage device.
So just how do some of the more popular connections for file transferring stack up in a typical, real-world scenario? Spoiler: Not exactly as you might think.
A SATA 3 (6Gb/s) connection won big on our read and write tests of a single 6.01GB file (copied between a Samsung 830 Series SSD, our system's boot drive, and an OCZ Agility 3 SSD). In second place, however, was the Gigabit Ethernet transfer of that same file between our desktop PC and an Iomega StorCenter PX2-300d-2 NAS box (onto its RAID 0 array of two 2TB Hitachi Ultrastar drives).
Why didn't our USB 3.0 file transfer between our desktop's SSD and a USB 3.0–friendly Corsair Flash Voyager drive—with a theoretical connection speed much faster than that of Gigabit networking—win out by a landslide? A few thoughts on that: Our Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3's USB 3.0 controller or associated driver might not be up to snuff, but it's more likely that our flash drive itself is the performance bottleneck. Based on reports of other users' experience with this flash drive, the approximately 40MB/s transfer speed that we were topping out at seems reasonable.
And, to note, it took quite a bit longer to write our test file to our flash key via USB 3.0 than it did to read off it. A similar discrepancy appeared when copying the file between our two SSDs, a clear example of the differences between read and write performance across your file transfers. In other words, you can't necessarily freak out because files heading in one direction appear to be going slower than you might expect; try it the other way, too.
Our test transfer across USB 2.0 was the tortoise in our transfer race, and we look forward to the day when this legacy connection standard is finally put out to pasture.
So, what's there to learn from our crude look at file transfer performance? It's not the connection you have to be as concerned about as it is the devices involved in the transfer. The storage— flash or mechanical—that you're using on both sides of the transfer plays a big role in the performance you'll experience when you go to copy files. SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 are plenty speedy, but only when both sides of the transfer play along.
INTERFACE COMPARISON | SATA 6Gb/s | SATA 6.0 Gb/s | USB 2.0 | USB 2.0 | USB 3.0 | USB 3.0 | Gigabit |
Samsung 830
Series SSD to
OCZ Agility 3 SSD | OCZ Agility
3 SSD to
Samsung 830
Series SSD | Samsung 830
Series SSD to
Corsair Flash
Voyager | Corsair Flash
Voyager to
Samsung 830
Series SSD | Samsung 830
Series SSD to
Corsair Flash
Voyager | Corsair Flash Voyager to Samsung 830 Series SSD | Samsung 830 Series SSD to Iomega StorCenter PX2-300d-2 NAS box |
| 27 seconds | 29 seconds | 207 seconds | 182 seconds | 156 seconds | 77 seconds | 94 seconds |
Chart shows time it took to transfer a 6,154.24MB file between the respective two devices.
Click the next page to learn how to make Windows 8 more workable.
Make Windows 8 Workable
A little bit of tweaking goes a long way
All right, all right—we get it. We're not going to take potshots at Windows 8. That's too easy. The fact is, most any new PC you buy is going to come with Windows 8 installed, so the task now falls to us to show you how to make the most of it. And the fact is, there's a lot to like about the new OS, once you get it tweaked and optimized. Here's how.
Bypass the Windows 8 Lock Screen
Little is more frustrating than having to click or keyboard-press yourself out of Windows 8's lock screen just to pull up your password prompt. Sure, it just takes a key to do so, but you'll be amazed at how annoyed you get with this additional step between you and your official login screen—especially if you're rocking Microsoft's new operating system on a non-touchscreen-friendly device.
To ditch the lock screen once and for all, you'll need to change a small setting in Windows 8's Group Policy Editor. Type gpedit.msc on your Start Screen (the Modern UI interface, in other words) and pull up Group Policy Editor by clicking the related icon. Surf on over to this section: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization. Once there, you'll want to find the policy labeled, "Do not display the lock screen."
There are plenty of options worth playing with in the Group Policy Editor—a powerful tool for bending Windows 8 to your iron will!
Double-click it and set the radio button in the upper-left corner of the window to Enabled. Voilà —no more lock screen, and you're one step closer to logging into your desktop or laptop PC.
Bypass Logging in Entirely
Either you're the sole user on your PC or you trust your roommates a great deal. Regardless, you live your life on the edge and can't bear the thought of wasting time typing in your Microsoft account password or Windows 8 PIN—or drawing lines all over your Windows 8 picture password—every time you boot your system.
One caveat: If you have multiple accounts on your system, Windows 8 isn't going to wait for you to pick one to log into (sans password) when you boot your system.
We understand. To rid yourself of having to enter any kind of password to access your operating system, which allows Windows 8 to boot straight into the Start Screen without any input from you beyond hitting the power button on your system, you'll want to adjust a setting within Windows 8's User Accounts window.
To jump to the exact place we're going to highlight, head over to your Windows 8 Start Screen and type in netplwiz. Click the icon to pull up your User Accounts window and deselect the checked box that says, "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer."
Bypass the Start Screen
There's nothing wrong with Windows 8's Start Screen, per se—it's a lovely search tool as far as we're concerned. It just fails to live up to expectations in a typical desktop or laptop PC environment as compared to the trusty ol' Start Menu of yesteryear.
So, let's fix that. Go download and install a free app called Classic Shell (www.classicshell.net). Once you've installed it, you'll notice that your computer will have bypassed the traditional Start Screen the next time you boot into Windows 8. As an added bonus, a brand-new start button— complete with traditional start menu functionality—will appear in the lower-left corner of Windows 8's Desktop Mode.
You can use Classic Shell to completely disable Windows 8's "Active Corners" feature, if you want absolutely nothing appearing when you move your mouse around your screen.
You can right-click this new start button for a quick shortcut to Windows Explorer. More important, however, is Classic Shell's Settings menu, which you can use to customize all sorts of items related to the new start menu that you've created for yourself. Get into the nitty-gritty of the available options if you want. Otherwise, you can simply select a style—Windows Classic, Windows XP, or Windows Vista/Windows 7—that you'd like your start menu to emulate.
And if, for whatever reason, you want to enable Windows 8's Start Screen (traitor), you can turn that back on within Classic Shell's "Windows 8 Settings" tab. Don't say we didn't warn you.
Ditch the Defaults
There's absolutely nothing good to be had from Windows 8's default apps for multimedia—here's looking at you, Videos, Music, and Photos. We dislike you immensely, mainly because you're really just a front for Microsoft to sell content versus actually provide tangible playback or browsing features that aren't more annoying than they are useful -- Yes, we went there.
Go grab yourself an awesome multimedia app like Media Player Classic or VLC and install it. Once you've done so, head on over to your Windows 8 Start Screen, type default programs, and click the corresponding icon. Click the option named "Set your default programs." In the window that appears, scroll down to find your multimedia player of choice—either Media Player Classic, VLC, or good ol' Windows Media Player—and select it. From there, click the option to, "Set this program as default." It's as easy as that.
While you're there, be sure to hit up Windows Photo Viewer and set that app to open all of your pictures by default, as well. You'll be glad you did.
Learn Your Gestures
We hope you were paying attention the first time you booted your system into Windows 8, because Microsoft's cursory overview of gestures—if you can really call it that—is the best you're going to get out of the box. But it's not really fair for you (and your touchscreen device or monitor) to jump into the wide world of Windows 8 without a life preserver for your fingers.
If you want to get a better sense of the gestures Windows 8 supports, Microsoft provides a fairly thorough list within the Developer Center for its Windows Store apps. Hit up the "Gestures, manipulations, and interactions" page (http://bit.ly/VYqXEb) to see exactly what your Windows 8 system will recognize.
If you'd rather print out a detailed list of the differences between a desktop tap, finger-pinch, and greasy-hand-smear, then HP has you covered. Head over to its generic "Windows 8 Touch Gestures and Keystrokes" page(http://bit.ly/WTlUQM) to see which gestures map to which actions within the Windows 8 environment. And to look at things a different way, David Pogue of The New York Times breaks down the Windows 8 basics by action(http://nyti.ms/VJvRpf)—telling you which finger-driven actions, mouse manipulations, or keyboard hotkeys accomplish which tasks, like opening up the Charms panel or splitting the Start Screen into two apps.
Store Your Space
One of Windows 8's fancy new features is called Storage Spaces, a kind-of software RAID you can use to create heaping pools of storage out of, well, any kind of storage you have attached to your system, be it a physical hard drive, an external eSATA drive, a flash drive, etc. What you lose in speed over a hardware RAID, you gain in convenience—to an extent—through your ability to add and remove storage from the "pool" at will.
Setting up a Storage Space couldn't be any easier. Hit up your Windows 8 Start Screen, type in storage spaces, and then click the Settings button on the right-hand toolbar to bring up the official Storage Spaces icon. Click it. Select the option to "Create a new pool and storage space." Windows 8 will ask you which of your attached disks you'd like to use to populate your pool—note that you can change this configuration at any point afterward, if you desire, but any disks you select that have data on them will be wiped. Click the Create Pool button and get ready to set some options.
On the next screen, Windows 8 will ask you for a name and drive letter for your new Storage Space. Easy enough. It'll also ask you which resiliency type you want to employ. You get one of three options on this one: two-way mirroring (requires at least two disks), three-way mirroring (requires five disks), and "parity" mode (requires three disks; more usable space, but worse performance).
On the next screen, Windows 8 will ask you for a name and drive letter for your new Storage Space. Easy enough. It'll also ask you which resiliency type you want to employ. You get one of three options on this one: two-way mirroring (requires at least two disks), three-way mirroring (requires five disks), and "parity" mode (requires three disks; more usable space, but worse performance).
Once you've finished your configuration, hit the Create Storage Space button to do just that—your new storage area will appear within File Explorer as if it was a conventional volume.
Organize Your Tiles
One of the banes of Windows 8 is that installing any new application—that's "desktop application," not "Windows 8 app,"—is likely going to dump a whole ton of tiles onto your Start Screen. The second you touch a web app like Ninite, it's going to look like a tile explosion went off within your Windows 8 installation.
To quickly remove tiles from your Windows 8 Start Screen, simply hold down Control and start clicking them. Once you've highlighted the icons you want to remove, just select the "Unpin from start" option that appears on the bar at the bottom of your Start Screen. Simple, right?
Windows 8 also lets you organize your tiles under named groups, if you want to be sure that you're lumping all of your "Games" in the right place, for example. On your Start Screen, move your mouse cursor to the very bottom-right of the screen and click the square that looks like it has a minus sign within it. This will zoom out your tiles and allow you to better see the various icon groups that you're currently using. Right-click any of these groups and select the Name Group option to do just that.
Now if only Windows 8 were smart enough to help you automatically sort new icons into your preset groups…
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