If your Windows 10 computer has a UEFI motherboard, it is possible to choose a different device to boot to, from inside Windows. You no longer need to remember some special keystroke which varied from the motherboard to motherboard and press it just at the right time while your PC is booting. warning: This feature will not be available if you are booting in legacy BIOS mode, even if your board supports UEFI.
On Windows 10 PCs you can access UEFI Firmware Settings through the operating system. In UEFI it is possible for the OS to call back into the firmware in a standards-compliant way. Windows takes advantage of this functionality. You no longer need to remember some special keystroke which varied from motherboard to motherboard and press it just at the right time while your PC is booting in order to access the firmware settings.
Safe mode starts Windows with a limited set of drivers and essential windows processes. When Windows starts in normal mode, many third-party applications start along with it. This does not happen when you are starting in safe mode. Which of the Windows files gets loaded depend on the type of safe mode you choose; the two main types are Safe Mode and Safe Mode with Networking. Safe Mode with Networking, as the name implies, adds networking support to the basic Safe Mode.
The Boot Options Menu is meant to be a single location for all the boot related options available in Windows. It has been available since Windows 8. The new Boot Options Menu gives you access to features like System Restore, System Image Recovery, Startup Repair, etc. If you are using UEFI, you also get access to many features which were previously available only through a boot manager or by sending interrupts to BIOS.
In Windows, it is quite easy to change the drive letters assigned to partitions. You can change the drive letter of external drives as well; Windows would remember the new drive letter the next time you plug in the same drive. warning: You must not change the drive letter of your primary partition. Open Disk Management using Quick Access Menu Open quick access menu by pressing WIN+X and choose disk management.
Caching in chrome can be disabled temporarily using chrome developer tools. Open developer tools by pressing CONTROL+SHIFT+I in Windows or COMMAND+OPTION+I on a Mac. This shortcut opens whichever developer tools panel was last open. In the network panel, enable the Disable cache option. If you want to clear resources which have already been cached, do the following. With developer tools still open, right-click the reload button or click and hold down the left mouse button on the reload button.
Windows can be configured to log in to a specific user account automatically. This feature is very useful when performing some operation which requires you to restart your computer multiple times; like installing your motherboard’s drivers. Auto-login can also be used for making Windows startup more convenient. But you must use it only if you are certain that no one else has physical access to your computer. Windows user credentials on its own do not exactly provide foolproof security in the absence of full disk encryption.
Anti-Twin is a Windows application which is one of the best tools for identifying and removing duplicate files. It is free for personal use. The duplicate removal step is very tedious in most duplicate file finders but this is not the case in Anti-Twin. The features available in Anti-Twin are not exactly unique but the user interface makes it really easy to use. One caveat is that Anti-Twin has not been updated in many years.
It has become a lot easier to add and edit the PATH variable in Windows 10 since the first-anniversary update. Earlier I used to use a small program called RapidEE for this. warning: The steps shown below work somewhat differently in older versions of Windows and in the pre-anniversary update Windows 10. Go to the start menu and open Advanced System Settings This opens the System Properties window. The advanced tab should be active by default, if not, click on it to activate it.
Regjump is a small command line tool from Sysinternals which lets you jump directly to a registry key when supplied with a registry path. info: Sysinternals is currently owned by Microsoft and their tools are reliable. Regjump works with normal paths and paths which include abbreviations like HKLM, HKCU, etc. This is a very useful tool when you need to go to a registry key specified on some Windows help article.