Windows 8 Tips

Precisely this article is about Windows 8.1, the title uses Windows 8 due to the fact that Windows 8.1 is mainly an enhanced version of Windows 8 and therefore categorised in the Windows 8 family.

Sections marked (*) are proper for beginners, (**) for advanced users.

Disclaimer: This article should be used only as advice. The author doesn't provide the guarantee of the validity of the information and doesn't take the responsibility for any consequences of its usage.

1. Desktop

1.1 Screenshots (*)

Taking a screen shot should be same as in old Windows versions on most laptops.

However it's different on Surface tablets (at least Surface Pro 3), which should be fn+space (hold fn key and press space bar with fn key pressed) instead of the 'print screen' button.

1.2 Hidden Task Bar (*)

If the task bar status is set to Auto-hide, it will hide itself out of the screen when it's not used. You can easily bring it out by moving your mouse cursor to the edge of the screen where it was on. However if you don't want to or can't use a mouse or touchpad, such as when you are holding a Windows tablet, you may have difficulty bring it up by finger touch. This is known to be an issue on such devices Surface Pro 3 and Samsung Ativ 9 series. But it seems fine on Surface RT (1st generation). However the workaround is to download a desktop app called Task Bar Manager with which you can activate or change the behaviour of the task bar at least by a few touch by finger.

2. Installation and Maintenance

2.1 Installation Media (**)

Windows 8.1 uses so called Installation Media for system refreshing. So when a serious system error occurs, such as corruption of critical files etc, a system refreshing may be requested. For instance if some system files are damaged during updating or something,  the PC settings panel will fail to start up, and it may pop up a message like below,

"The app cannot open

There's a problem with PC settings. Refreshing your PC might help fix it."

An installation media creator can be downloaded from the following website,

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media

The website contains instructions of how to use the creator to generate installation media

Once the creator is downloaded and launched, it will require a stable internet to download gigabytes of installation data and either create a ISO file to burn onto a DVD or write to a USB drive with no less than 4GB of space to boot and recover the system.

If you have to choose download ISO option for a copy to keep locally and you want to use it on USB drive, here is an article about how to do it:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/a/install-windows-8-usb.htm

2.2 Troubleshoot problems with an app (*)

Download the following tool to diagnose some recoverable issues with Windows Store apps.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/what-troubleshoot-problems-app

A useful command to reset Windows Store cache to resolve some common Windows Store or Windows Store app related issues without changing account settings or deleting installed app: wsreset.exe

2.3 Finding Product Key (**)

For preinstalled Windows 8.1, this article may be useful when the user wants to reinstall and worries about the product key required during the reinstallation. It's been verified by the author that the first app suggested there (Belarc Advisor) works pretty well.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/where-do-i-find-the-windows-8-product-key-when-it/d4c5c0c1-825d-47f2-9bed-d9625c7e68ff

2.4 User Management (**)

Actually for the PC settings problem mentioned as an example in 2.1, there could be ways other than refreshing PC. The first thing to try would be creating a new administrator account and see if the issue persists also in that newly created account. However, due to inaccessibility of the PC setting panel and the fact that even user management in the control panel is referencing PC settings, the easiest trick to play is creating an account in command line using 'net user' command, see this article for detail.

We can also hide some of the users from the UI to make the initial logon screen uncluttered. The proceedings are
- go to the key in regestry (regedit.exe) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList or create it if it doesn't exist;
- add a DWORD (32 bit) value in it and name it the exact same name as the account and sets its value to 0 to hide it or 1 to show it.

Here's the link.

(To be cont'd)

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