The Windows Task Manager is one of the very useful tools included in all versions of Windows, like Regedit and Command Prompt. When an application crashes or freezes and you can’t even close it, you can use the Task Manager to end the process. It’s also used extensively by users to monitor and diagnose when programs are consuming too much memory or degrading the computer’s performance by eating CPU cycles.

Task Manager can also help tell you if there are suspicious programs running in the background that shouldn’t be there. Modern malware will sometimes try to disable Task Manager from running because it’s such an effective and easy way of killing the malicious process. Windows Task Manager is an effective tool but it sometimes doesn’t provide you with enough information or power to monitor and kill tasks effectively.

The useful thing about the Windows Task Manager is the convenience in launching it because there are several different methods you can use to open it up:

1. Right click the taskbar and select Task Manager (Windows 11 users click on Start).
2. Simultaneously press CTRL + SHIFT + ESC
3. Simultaneously press CTRL + ALT + DEL to bring up Windows Security and click Task Manager
4. Simply go to Run or Start and type taskmgr

Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to use the above methods to launch a third party Task Manager instead of the default Windows tool? Well, it is possible and a lot easier than you probably thought. Many third party tools have the ability to replace the Windows Task Manager and all the ways you open it. Here are eight third party task managers that you can use to replace the default Windows Task Manager.

Most tools here have a built in function to replace Windows Task Manager either from a menu or options window. Those that don’t can still be used as a default by following the guide at the end of the article.
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There are times when you have a few Internet capable devices such as your laptop and smartphone that needs to connect to the Internet. However some places such as hotels only provides wired Internet connection via Ethernet and only your laptop can get connected but not your smartphone. Unless you have a Wi-Fi base station such as the AirPort Express by Apple which can convert the wired Internet connection to wireless access point, one way to share the Internet connection for free is through the unused wireless adapter found on your laptop. Do take note that a virtual Wireless Access Point is much easier to create and configure compared to creating a public hotspot where you are normally greeted with a webpage on your default web browser either to sign up or agree to the terms to use the hotspot service.

Basically your laptop gets the Internet connection from the wired Ethernet adapter and then the wireless adapter will be configured to act like a wireless router to share the Internet connection. Although it may sound difficult, the setup process is actually quite simple that only involves a few mouse clicks by using any of the 10 free programs listed below. Each program has its own advantages and limitations, so choose the one that is suitable for you.
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One of my friends came up to me a little while back and asked me if I was interested in buying some USB flash drives from him. He had about 200 pieces, they are all new and are about 60% below the current market price. It’s a very good deal when you can buy a $20 new USB flash drive for only $8. He couldn’t reveal how or where he got it from and that alone got me a little worried about the quality of the USB flash drives. He also told me that there won’t be any warranty if the USB flash drive fails. So I thought that the possibilities are they could be either stolen or are rejected stock from the factory.

The only thing I am afraid of is using a stick for a few times and it couldn’t read the files or can’t detect the drive anymore. I have also heard several stories of people buying USB flash drives from places like eBay and their true capacity being only a fraction of what was advertised. With all this in mind, I told him that I’d like to test the USB flash drives first before buying and he agreed. Windows comes with scandisk or chkdsk which I can use to scan for bad sectors but it lacks any soft of burn-in test or a test to check the true capacity.

So here are 5 tools you can use to test the current condition and performance of a USB flash drive.
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A splash screen is a popup window with a logo or image that normally appears at the center of the screen when you run a program. Not all software has splash screens as they only show up if the developer of the software decides to add it in.

Most of the time splash screens are implemented just to add some eye candy to the software to attract the user but very few really require it. Heavy software such as Adobe Photoshop or AutoCAD that takes quite a while to load might find having a splash screen useful to show the current status of the startup for troubleshooting purposes.

As for other splash screens, they are there without a purpose and users are normally annoyed by them because the splash screen stays always on-top causing the user unable to see or access anything behind the splash popup window. Some users also feel that the program loads slower if a splash screen is shown.

If you are one those that find splash screens unnecessary or useless, here we’ll guide you on how to disable the splash screen for some of the most popular applications.
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One of the most important hardware components inside your computer is obviously the drive that holds the operating system. If you have Windows installed on a slow hard drive, it doesn’t matter how powerful the other components like CPU and memory are, the system will boot slower, load programs more slowly, and lag quite badly while multitasking.

This is a reason why high performance hard drives and especially SSD’s are so popular these days. It’s because upgrading just that one part can breath new life into a computer and make it feel a lot more snappy to use. The actual hard disk or SSD performance under Windows is determined by several factors so how do you know if your drive is performing well, needs tweaking or is even holding the system back?

Thankfully, the internet is full of websites to show you how well nearly every drive around can perform. Also, loads of programs are available that can give your hardware a performance test to see how well it’s doing. There are many paid suites around like PCMark or Passmark that can test the whole system, but here we list for you 10 free tools that are specifically designed for testing the performance of hard drives and SSD drives.

All tools were tested on Windows 10 64-bit and are also compatible with Windows 7 and 8.
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A reasonably fast internet connection is essential to stop the many programs that require bandwidth from slowing your internet speed to a crawl. Doing a few things at once like downloading a torrent, downloading through your web browser and gaming online would probably cause the game to have high pings and be almost unplayable.

A way to get around this problem is setting limits for the programs or traffic you consider less important. That leaves more bandwidth and faster speeds for what you consider more important. A lot of software like downloaders, torrent clients, and game portal software such as Steam have a setting where you can set the maximum download limit so as not to flood the connection and let other applications access more bandwidth.

Some routers can prioritize internet traffic if they have a QoS feature built in, but not all routers can do that. Another way is using traffic shaping software so you can limit or prioritize which programs can have the most bandwidth. The amount of free software around that can shape or limit traffic is sadly very small, here we show you three we have found. All tools and methods were tested in Windows 7 and 10.
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When you install Windows or purchase a new computer with Windows preinstalled, it’s rarely going to be setup the way you like it. As an advanced user or geek, you’d probably make a number of simple yet important changes to the way Windows looks and behaves just to get more detailed information and to have better control. This can take a while making your way through tons of different windows and settings.

For example, if you want to show all file extensions or hidden and system files by default, you have to open a couple of Windows to do it. If you want to change the Windows eye candy settings or control how Microsoft updates are installed, they are separate areas again you have to go and configure. Here’s a selection of programs that enable advanced users to more quickly get these settings applied to your computer.
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Quite often you might come across a piece of software that you don’t necessarily want sitting in the system tray or showing itself on the taskbar when minimized. It can be set to autorun whenever Windows is booted up, but there is no way to hide it from appearing on the taskbar or tray, not every program that sits in your tray needs to have an icon there. There will probably be no useful option in the program settings, so you’re pretty much stuck with it. If you’re someone who likes to keep their desktop clean and free from clutter, it’s a little frustrating.

One of the most common ways to close open application windows but keep the program running is by using something known as “boss key” software which was obviously originally designed to hide what’s open on your desktop if your boss is walking past your computer. This can be used to hide games or any programs that are not allowed in the office by simply pressing a configured hot key. Some anti boss key software has other extra features such as being able to hide a program whenever it’s being launched and also the ability to even hide itself.

Here we list a number of free tools which can help you hide running programs from the system tray and the taskbar. Some will even allow themselves to be hidden from the average user and optionally supply a password to stop tampering.
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Bonjour, also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. Bonjour uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically discover each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers.

If you’ve installed software by Apple such as iTunes, software by Adobe such as Photoshop Creative Suite, Trillian, Pidgin, etc, chances are there’s already a Bonjour folder in your Program Files. This service starts automatically and runs a process named mDNSResponder.exe which you can usually end quickly in Windows Task Manager, although sometimes you will not be allowed to end the process. If you do not want Bonjour to be present on your computer and want to uninstall it, sometimes you can’t find any uninstaller for it and this is when third party uninstaller software comes into play! Even if you go to Control Panel’s Add or Remove Programs or Programs and Features, you might not be able to find the uninstaller there as well.
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ZIP is the most commonly used archive format today even though there are so many other better formats out there that offers faster compress/extract speed with smaller file size. Windows is probably one of the main contributing factor since the operating system itself is able to extract and compress ZIP files without relying on a third party software. Compressing multiple files into one will most of the time produce a smaller file size which can save web/hard drive space, time, bandwidth and it is also easier to send or download.

As useful as it is, sometimes it can get a bit annoying especially when you only need a few small files from a huge ZIP archive. This would mean you will have to fully download the ZIP file first, then only get to extract the files you want on your computer. An easier way to get around this is to preview the ZIP file and then selectively pick the files you want to download from the archive. Here are 5 ways to do it.
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One of the problems these days when you’re looking for subtitles to play with an AVI or DivX video file, is there are so many different releases around and they all have different lengths, different frame rates or encoding/decoding methods which can slightly speed up or slow down the video. When you find a subtitle that appears to be the correct one, it doesn’t quite look right with the text lines not appearing when they should, and coming in too early, too late, or drifting out of sync gradually throughout the video.

Free tools are available like SubDownloader, SubiT and Sublite which are great programs to search for subtitle files that will work correctly and sync with your movie file. However, these tools rely on other people to upload and add the records first, then only it will you be shown the search results. Otherwise it’ll say that it cannot find the correct subtitle for the movie.

There are times we are not able to find the correct subtitle file that syncs with a movie file from subtitle websites or even using software. When this happens, there are two options. First one is to wait for a few days and hope that the correct subtitle will be uploaded. Another option is to download the subtitle that’s out of sync and synchronize the subtitles with your movie yourself. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds, and we have 6 tools here to easily adjust the SRT or SUB subtitle file to synchronize better with the movie file.
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Recently there was a discussion in our forum about data recovery and we were quite surprised to discover that many people don’t think that data recovery software works. In our experience, it does work more often than not and it’s saved me many times after accidentally deleting important files, or after formatting a hard drive and forgetting to backup some files. There was only once, I wrongly formatted my external hard drive and somehow I wasn’t able to get back all my files. I have several external hard drives, all with the same casing and no label. I guess the reason I wasn’t able to get back my files is because I might have copied some files to another hard drive.

The data recovery market is quite competitive and there are loads of products out there, but mostly it’s paid commercial software. Some may have a free version or trial but usually you only get to view the files that can be recovered or you’re able to recover a small amount of data such as 64KB. There are still some free and unrestricted products out there that can help you get your files back, and we have 10 useful data recovery programs here for you to have a look at.

When recovering data from deletion or corruption, there are some simple rules to follow for the best chance of recovery:
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With so many different types of files around these days, it’s important that every file you try to open or execute is correctly identified by Windows. This is usually achieved by looking at the file extension of .exe or .jpg for example, and when you double click on one of those files, the system knows what the file is and what to do with it.

It’s possibly happened to you before that you download or receive a file and it has no extension at all or something rather obscure that doesn’t look correct. In that case, the file could be an executable, an Office document or an MP3, or a zip archive. The possibilities are almost endless as to the extension you could give a file when you don’t know what it really is.

In fact, Windows even does this when running a CheckDisk because any corrupted files it recovers are simply named File****.CHK and you have to find the extension yourself to rename it back. Thankfully, we’ve previously covered this specific topic and you can read about recovering CHK Files created by CHKDSK and SCANDISK for more information.

If you’re looking for a more generic solution for identifying unrecognized file types, here are six options to help you find unknown files or files that have been given the wrong extension.
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Most of us have a television at home with limited free channels to watch unless you subscribe to satellite or cable TV that provides a wider ranger of channels. If you didn’t know, it is possible to get free access to thousands of TV channels online from your computer by just installing a software without a TV card or any other hardware other than your computer, web browser and an Internet connection. These software are not sophisticated as it only provides a working TV channel listings and also searching or filtering capabilities. You will however need media player software such as Windows Media Player or RealPlayer to stream the video to your computer.

If you search on the Internet, you can easily find a lot of software that claims to allow you to watch thousands of TV channels from your computer. After testing more than a dozen of such software, we end up getting non working channels on half of the software while the working ones are mostly shareware that requires a paid license. We’ve tested and compiled a working list of 5 software which you can watch TV from your computer for free.
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Computer users downloading television programs or movies from the internet will know that quite often the resulting files are divided into several parts. This can be quite problematic because you have to make sure all the files are available and also make sure they are 100% correct and not corrupted in any way. With the size of high definition TV shows and movie files today, having to download dozens of chunks to make up a complete video file is not unheard of when you’re after good quality.

The reason some video files are packaged this way is related to “scene rules” which lays out various regulations for groups to encode and upload various content to the internet. Files are distributed as a multi part RAR archive, are not compressed but simply stored and split into various sizes depending on their content. A problem with this is all files have to be extracted before you can play the file. This takes time and if your downloaded is high quality, it could require several Gigabytes of free space to unpack.

Thankfully there are ways to play video files directly from inside the multiple part RAR archives without the need to unpack anything.

Here we show you some ways to do it.
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