There is a small battery integrated into your computer’s motherboard to keep the PC clock running even when the computer is turned off. When the battery runs out, you will start seeing error messages such as “System CMOS checksum bad – Default configuration used” when starting up the computer and the date and time getting reset back to the default BIOS manufacturer date. You can still start up the computer by pressing a button to resume the boot process and Windows will load as normal.

The problems start when you begin using the computer. Created, modified and accessed time on files and folders will get messed up, emails are marked with the wrong date, secure HTTPS websites won’t load in your web browser, evaluation periods of trial software may instantly expire, and etc. Windows has an automatic time synchronization feature to keep your computer’s clock accurate, but unfortunately, it is scheduled to only run once a week on some systems.

Changing the integrated battery on the motherboard will solve the problem and it’s quite easy to accomplish on desktop computers but can be much harder to do on laptops. If you don’t want to or can’t take things apart, here are a few ways to automatically synchronize your PC clock on Windows startup. This way you don’t have to manually change the time settings each time you power up your computer.
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It doesn’t really matter what version of Windows you have, the best way to get your system working at its full speed and as issue free as possible is with a clean install of the operating system. Simply using Windows over time will eventually degrade its performance. It’s also a good idea to clean install Windows 10 after upgrading so you are not transferring problems from your old Windows install.

It’s easy to get hold of a Windows 10 ISO image, burn it to DVD or write to USB and do a clean install. However, it’s more difficult to source official install media for older operating systems like Windows 7. Of course, there are many unofficial sources but the files have often been cracked, tampered with or altered in some way. Using a trusted source for the download is the preferable option.

The best way to guarantee you are getting a clean and untouched Windows ISO image is by going directly to Microsoft themselves. It used to be easy to download Windows 7 ISO images until they were all removed from Digital River after sales of Windows 7 were discontinued in 2014. Microsoft prefers consumers to download a Windows 10 ISO from the Media Creation Tool instead of a direct download.
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A boot disc is very useful because it can be used to perform troubleshooting tasks on an unbootable computer. Most of the time software that belongs in the category of data recovery, antivirus and hard drive backup/restore provides the option to create a boot disc which is sometimes known as rescue disc. Although these software can run from Windows, they are actually most efficient when run offline from a bootable disc.

An example scenario is you’ve accidentally deleted an important file. You can of course install a free data recovery software such as Recuva and attempt to recover the deleted file. However installing it on the computer will face a potential risk of the installed program overwriting the deleted file. To increase the chance of recovering the file, immediately shut down the computer, boot it up with a bootable WinPE disc and run Recuva from the Windows PE environment.

A boot disc is normally based on either Linux or Windows PE. Linux is commonly being used because the operating system and most third party tools are free, the generated boot disc is more compact in size and can run on slower computers. As for Windows PE, it has the best hardware support and most users would be familiar with it such as the hard drive naming convention (C:\) in Windows compared to Linux (/dev/sda). However, Windows PE may have a higher system requirement because the latest Windows PE 5.1 already need at least 512MB just for the base and adding more drivers, packages, or apps will obviously require more memory.

Here we have a list of free boot discs based on Windows PE that come with a collection of useful tools which we think that every computer technician or even a normal user should have to hand.
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Windows 10 has been out since 2015 and is now the most used Windows operating system. Windows 7 was the most used for several years but is no longer supported due to its decade long support cycle ending. That means there are no more security updates unless you are a business willing to pay a fee. Many Windows 7 users simply do not want to upgrade because the operating system is stable and does everything they want.

Despite its popularity, the last Windows 7 Service Pack 1 install DVD was released way back in 2011. If you install Windows from one of those discs, there are dozens of patches and hotfixes found when you check for updates. Rather belatedly, Microsoft tried to reduce this problem by releasing the Convenience Rollup update in April 2016 which includes 123 patches. But even that is not enough and it still leaves the system requiring dozens more patches to get fully up to date.

Instead of getting everything through Windows update, a quicker way is installing patches from an offline source such as a USB flash drive or hard drive. This is faster but still takes time. A better option is to integrate all the updates into the Windows media so they are installed as part of the original operating system. Windows XP has a popular tool called nLite to do this, Vista has its own version called vLite which doesn’t work too well with Windows 7 Service Pack 1.
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In a Windows operating system, it is a safe practice to always use the “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media” to eject a plugged in USB flash drive instead of directly pulling it out to prevent any opened files from being corrupted. Doing this will also trigger Windows to enable the dirty bit on the flash drive where Windows will automatically prompt to scan the drive for error the next time you plug it in. If Windows found corrupted files during check disk, it will simple convert them into .CHK files that can only be recovered via third party tools.

Although Windows provides a safe and convenient way to safely eject your USB flash drive, there are no options to easily remount or reconnect the ejected drive. It seems like the only way is to unplug the drive and reinsert it into the USB port for Windows to re-detect and re-mount the USB flash drive. This can be very troublesome if the device is connected to the USB port located at the rear of the computer.

Fortunately there are a few workarounds to remount an ejected USB device without unplugging and reinserting into the USB port, and here are 5 ways to do it.
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It is common for people especially who are in the tech industry to have more than 1 computer at home with one laptop that they can bring in to their office and the other desktop for their family to use. Setting up a local area network with the computers connected to each other is really easy with a router. When the computers are connected, not only they can share the Internet connection and files, but they can also be managed remotely from one computer as there are many free third party networking tools that comes with remote features.

Some examples are ProduKey and USBDeview by Nir Sofer, USB History Viewer, USB Remote Drive Disabler and Enable Remote Desktop by IntelliAdmin and the excellent PsExec by Windows Sysinternals. Even the built-in Registry Editor (regedit) in Windows has the functionality of connecting to a network registry. As useful as the remote features are in the networking tools, the biggest problem is they don’t seem to work even if you entered the correct username and password. It is common to receive an error message that says “Access is denied” like the image below.

The access denied problem is actually caused by Windows default hardened security settings preventing the tools to work. If you would like to use the networking tools on remote computers, here are the configuration that must be made on the remote computer before you can connect to them.
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Windows 10 has been out for a while now and it was offered as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8 users for the first year. Even after that Windows 7 is still by far the most widely used Windows operating system. Windows 7 is available in both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) editions and has Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise versions. Only the Starter edition of Windows 7 does not have a 64-bit version.

Both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the 5 available consumer Windows 7 versions all easily fit on a single layer DVD. Instead of doing that Microsoft released each version as a separate disk and each of those has a separate 32-bit and 64-bit DVD. That’s 9 different DVDs if you want all Windows 7 versions to hand. They are actually all on each DVD but hidden from view by the \Sources\ei.cfg file, delete that and everything with the same architecture becomes available, except Enterprise.

Windows 64-bit is the preferred option because it natively utilizes more than 4GB of memory and can help increase application performance with 64-bit specific versions, such as 64-bit web browsers. Although 32-bit versions of Windows are fading out these days, they are still very useful to install on low memory systems, lower end or old hardware and run perfectly fine as long as you don’t use memory intensive software.

Unlike Windows 10 which has a dual option x86 and x64 install disk available via the Media Creation Tool, Windows 7 has never officially had both 32-bit and 64-bit editions on the same disk. It’s quite possible to create one yourself and have all 9 consumer versions on the same DVD or USB flash drive. All you need is 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 ISO files and the software to do it. Here’s three ways to create your own all in one x86 and x64 Windows 7 install media.
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Your computer is always opening different types of files, whether they are images, music, text files, archives, documents, or executables. Each type of file in Windows needs to be told what it is so the appropriate action can be taken and the file can be opened or launched. The file extension, which is whatever text comes after the last period (.) in a filename tells the system what it is and what should be done with the file.

By default, Windows has dozens of types of file extension associated with specific actions so they can be recognized on double click. For instance, EXE launches the file as an executable whereas TXT opens the file in Notepad or REG tells Windows the file is a Registry Editor file. As you add more and more software to your system more file type extensions are added to handle the files required by the software.

It’s quite easy to associate a file not recognized by Windows to a specific file format. All you have to do is right click, select Open with and choose the program you want to open it.  However, it’s more difficult to do the opposite and remove a known association from a file so it doesn’t launch or open in any program when double-clicked.
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The other day I decided to upgrade and rebuild my test PC. This is simply a machine I can use for installing and trying out software as well as trying slightly more adventurous things out I wouldn’t, or couldn’t do on my normal machine. Sometimes a virtual machine might do the job, but often there’s no substitute for getting the required tasks done on real hardware for the most accurate results. Some of you will probably have an old second PC or laptop and use it in a similar way.

One thing you do want when using a system that you know is going to have issues, is a complete backup of the operation system. The System Restore option or snapshot software like Comodo Time Machine might get things back running, but there’s nothing like restoring the Windows installation to a known completely clean and stable state.

Bearing that in mind, I made a bootable USB stick and created some backups using EaseUs Todo Backup Workstation. Unfortunately, I put the recovery files on a slow stick and it took forever to boot into the backup software. It was then I remembered that there exists the ability to take an ISO image and get it to boot from hard drive using the Windows Vista and 7 Boot Manager. This would make booting into the recovery environment far quicker and also removes the need to use a CD or plug in a USB stick every time.
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As Windows evolves over time, how parts of the operating look changes over time as well. One area that has gone through some small changes in recent years has been the taskbar and the tray notification area. From Windows 7 onwards, Microsoft started to make the tray area rather boring looking by turning a number of tray system icons from the colorful versions of Windows XP into monochrome. Another thing Microsoft also did was stop animating the network indicator tray icon.

In Windows XP the network icon for a specific adapter would have two small indicators which flashed to represent incoming and outgoing traffic. Although the icon changed visually in Windows Vista you can still turn on the activity animation. From Windows 7 the icon has become a static white icon (middle image below) and it’s still the same in Windows 10 (far right). The activity indicator is quite useful for you to see if there is any network activity without taking your eyes off the screen.

The indicator is also quite handy for wireless enabled computers because you probably cannot see the activity lights on the router you are connected to. If you are running an operating system newer than Vista you will have to find a third party solution. Luckily there are some tools around that can put an icon back in your tray to actively show network activity, here are five to look at.
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There are many things that can go wrong while you are using your computer. One of the hardware components could develop a fault or alternatively there could be crashing, instability and other problems with Windows itself. With Windows there are many different methods to try and fix problems including running file checks or applying registry fixes, but there are times when this won’t fix it and something else is the cause.

One of the common issues of instability, errors or Windows not even booting at all is when the file system becomes corrupted which can lead to files becoming unreadable or inaccessible. For a long time, Windows has had a tool built in which is able to scan a flash drive, hard disk or SSD drive for filesystem or hard errors, and attempt to fix them.

Check Disk is the tool in question and often Windows will automatically run a scan using Check Disk on Windows startup if it thinks one is needed. If you want to manually run Check Disk to fix suspected errors, there are a few ways you can do it. Here we show a variety of different methods to get Check Disk running.
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When your Windows operating system develops some issues, you’re either going to want to try to troubleshoot and fix the problems yourself or hand the computer to someone else. To help troubleshooting, Windows has an integrated logging system that enables many operations on the computer to be monitored and the results recorded. These are called event logs and you can view everything that’s been recorded in the logs with the built in Event Viewer.

Through Event Viewer the logs can show all sorts of interesting information. This includes what happens during security, program and system events, software or driver installs and uninstalls, Windows Service start and stop results, and hardware or Windows component events.

Although it’s a highly useful resource for tracing and fixing a range of different issues, the Event Viewer itself can be tricky to read and interpret because of the amount of data being shown. Thankfully there are other tools around that can view the event logs and make them easier to read. Here are five free alternative event viewers to look at.
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A virtual operating system, of course, needs a virtual hard disk to store its files. Software companies each have their own implementations of a virtual hard disk. Oracle VirtualBox uses Virtual Disk Image (VDI), VMWare uses Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) and Microsoft products like Virtual PC or Hyper-V use Virtual Hard Disks (VHD or VHDX). Virtual disk formats are sometimes interchangeable between products. For instance, VirtualBox supports VDI, VHD, VMDK and a few more.

Sometimes it might be useful to read data or copy files from a virtual hard disk to your computer without booting into the virtual operating system. In that situation being able to open the virtual hard disk and read the contents is important. Also, you might want to delete, move or add files to the virtual operating system in the same way, perhaps to perform repairs to a non booting system or run offline Windows updates.

Here we show you ways to open virtual disk images with both read and write access for major virtual disk file formats VDI, VHD, VHDX, and VMDK. They are separated into read only and read/write methods. Make sure your virtual machine software is not running before trying to open the disk image, it also works more reliably when there are no snapshots attached to the virtual disk.
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Most of us don’t really need to create dial-up connections on Windows operating system anymore, thanks to routers which is very commonly being used today. Once the router is configured, it will automatically connect to the Internet when it is turned on and the computer that is connected to the router can instantly use the Internet connection.

However, I still have a DSL modem that I have to manually connect through dial-up which is very useful to troubleshoot Internet connectivity problems to determine if it is the router or ISP’s fault. Other than that, VPN connections that uses PPTP and L2TP also needs to be configured from the same area where you create dial-up connections that is in the Network and Sharing Center.

If you have previously setup a lot of VPN connections by saving the username, password and the VPN address in Windows, you may want to look for an automated way to export the VPN settings and then import it to another computer so that you don’t need to manually recreate the connections again. Here is how you can backup and restore the connection settings in Windows.
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Almost everything is wireless these days and you no longer have all those cables cluttering your workspace. If you want to use a wireless computer keyboard, one that supports Bluetooth is a good option because it doesn’t require an additional receiver that uses an extra USB port. Of course, your computer has to be Bluetooth enabled in the first place or you will have to use a WiFi keyboard or a Bluetooth USB reciever.

One big issue with a Bluetooth keyboard over a WiFi keyboard is it doesn’t automatically work out of the box and has to be paired with your computer first. A WiFi keyboard will likely work as soon as the wireless receiver is plugged in and its driver is automatically installed. Here we show you various ways to connect your Bluetooth keyboard to your computer in Windows 10, 11, and 7.

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