Table of contents for May 2017 in Windows Help & Advice

No matter how careful you are about installing Windows updates or adding apps to your PC, over time your speed machine will slow down and even exhibit strange behaviours. That’s why we suggest reinstalling Windows ever year or two to give it a fresh start – you’ll be surprised by the huge difference it makes! Starting on page 14 we’ll walk you through the entire process – and also show you a great way to speed up reinstalling any version of Windows in future. On page 32 you’ll discover how to partition your hard drive and separate your personal files and data from your Windows install. While on page 54 you’ll also learn how to make your PC run faster by streamlining the apps and processes that Windows runs. On page…

You can use your phone to seek out caches and see the clues you need As hobbies go, you could do much worse than Geocaching. A combination of orienteering, puzzle solving and treasure hunting, Geocaching is a rapidly evolving activity – since its formal inception in May 2000, millions of individual caches have been hidden across the world. They’re in idyllic countryside locations, they’re tucked away in the urban sprawl. There’s even on – there’s a good chance there’s one in easy walking distance from you right now. And, of course, there are plenty to find in world-famous locations – and even on the Moon! To find out where all these caches are you’ll need to sign up at geocaching.com, which is the central hub of the hobby. If you…

1 What’s the name of Microsoft’s precursor to Windows? A MS-DOSB MS-DOGC MS-BOB 2 Which app opens when you press [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Esc]? A Control PanelB PaintC Task Manager 3 What is the name of the most recent Windows 10 update? A Curator’s UpdateB Creator’s UpdateC Crater Update 4 What are Nashville, Cairo and Neptune? A Microsoft office locations B Names of cancelled Windows prototypes C Surnames of former Microsoft executives 5 What was Windows originally going to be called? A DoorsB HomescreenC Interface Manager 6 Which of these rival operating systems was co-developed by Microsoft in the 1980s? A BeOSB OS/2C macOS…

1 Choose your apps Download and install CloneApp (www.mirinsoft.com) and you’ll see a list of supported apps. Go through the list ticking the boxes of any whose settings you wish to preserve. To see what’s being backed up, select the item and click ‘What is being backed up?’. Click Installed to see what’s currently installed on your PC. 2 Customise settings If your app isn’t included in the CloneApp list, but you know where its settings are stored (typically under C:\ User\<username>\AppData, or in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE Registry key), select Custom on the left, then use the tools to manually add the required folders, files and keys. 3 Tweak, then backup Choose Options, then verify where you want to save your app settings backup (by default this is inside the same…

Once the main install process finishes, you’ll find yourself at a ‘Get Going Fast’ screen. Microsoft would like you to click ‘Use Express Settings’, but unless you’re happy to take liberties with your privacy, we suggest you choose Customise instead. The first screen is littered with switches that determine what kind of personal data you send to Microsoft. Switch them all off and click Next for maximum privacy. On the next screen, switch off the first two settings – related to open hotspots. Click Next. Under ‘Browser, protection and update’ leave only the first switch on – switch off both ‘page prediction’ and ‘get updates’ (the latter will stop your internet connection being used to distribute Windows Updates). Click Next. If you connect to the internet via Wi-Fi, you’ll be…

In this month’s Explore section we’re going to show you how you to get more done on your PC – whether you’re at work, rest or play. On page 28 we’ll explain how to create a stylish newsletter using desktop publishing app, Scribus; while on page 38 we’ll show you how to get started with LibreOffice – the amazing free productivity suite. We also explain how you can make the most of your photos using the built-in app in Windows 10 (page 44); and how to make any PC run slicker and quicker by trimming non-essential features – see page 54.…

Your guide Nick Peers says… “Protect yourself from data loss by separating your personal files from Windows and your apps” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 WIZARDS The step-by-step wizards in Partition Assistant make even complex partition schemes easy for you to achieve. SAFELY PARTITION Click here and you’ll be taken to a web page containing a handy tutorial that shows you how to partition correctly. PARTITION OPERATIONS Right-click a drive letter to perform different partition operations upon it. Use with caution. CHANGE THE DRIVE LETTER Select any existing drive D and click to assign it a different letter and free D for your data partition. DRIVE VISUALISATIONS Partitions are also displayed as bar charts,…

Your guide Matt Hanson says… “Make your Windows 10 PC boot up even faster with these effective and easy to follow tips and tricks” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 Windows 10 is probably the fastest version of Windows ever made, and the days of waiting for minutes on end as pages of DOS text flashed on screen are thankfully long gone. However, even though Windows 10 is very fast to load, there are still a few things you can do to cut the startup time even further. You may also find that after a while of using Windows 10, and installing all manner of apps, programs and games, the time it takes Windows 10…

Your guide Cat Ellis says… “Everyone should be able to enjoy their PC to the full, and Windows 10’s built-in accessibility tools are here to help” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 With its combination of familiar features and intuitive new additions, Windows 10 is Microsoft’s most user-friendly operating system to date. Its accessibility doesn’t end with the new Start menu and straightforward Cortana search functions, though – Windows 10 also packs an impressive suite of extra tools to make using your PC as easy as possible. In Windows 7, certain features (including the magnifier) were only available as part of the Aero display scheme, which put heavy demands on low-powered PCs. Other features, including…

1 Name new album Phototheca’s Smart Albums automatically update whenever images are added to your library that match their criteria. Start by selecting File > New Smart Album. Give your album a suitable name, then choose what’s selected by setting up one or more rules – each made up of three elements – that determine what content is included within it. 2 Anatomy of a rule First, click the Album drop-down menu to choose what type of content is selected for the rule, such as text, filename, event or keyword. The second element determines whether your content matches (is), doesn’t match (is not), contains, doesn’t contain, starts or ends with the third element. Options vary based on your chosen content type. 3 Finish, test, update The final element requires you…

Just starting your Windows journey? Confused by the changes Microsoft has made to the Creators Update? Maybe you just want to learn something new about Windows 10. Well, this is the section for you! There’s not enough space to tell you absolutely everything you need to know here, but Windows Help & Advice always has your back. In this month’s Basics section, we’ll show you how to: master the desktop and make it work for you; customise the Start menu and quickly access favourite items using tiles; and how to get the best from Windows 10’s virtual personal assistant, Cortana.…

You can trust our reviews Our reviewers are 100 per cent independent, with years of experience in the world of computing. Our rigorous testing procedures mean that only genuine, high-quality products are awarded high star ratings. If you see an item of hardware bearing a high score, you can be confident that it is an excellent product. We choose the best products Thousands of new PC products are released every year and choosing between them can be an impossible task. Our experts select only the best hardware and software to feature in this magazine. Even better, our star rating system makes it simple to find the best products, giving you a fast, trustworthy guide. How we review Our expert reviewers guarantee to test every piece of hardware rigorously and thoroughly,…

What is it? Orbi is Netgear’s new kind of router – it uses a system called mesh networking to send Wi-Fi all over your home, blanketing it with signal and eliminating any potential dark spots caused by thick walls, floors, or tiles. It’s also rather attractively designed, much more aesthetically pleasing than the usual spiky black router. How does it work? Mesh routing abandons the idea of a single Wi-Fi point, breaking your network seamlessly up between a central hub and several extension modules known as satellites, the smallest of which just sits in a wall socket. You don’t need to worry about the precise makeup of the hardware, though: you only see a single network, and all precious bars of Wi-Fi signal all over your home. Can I install…

If you were around in the early days of the PC, it’s likely you’ll remember the rise of point-and-click adventures, particularly those which came from LucasArts. Those days are back: funded using Kickstarter in 2014, the newly-finished Thimbleweed Park (£14.99) is an adventure in the classic style, headed up by ex-LucasArts veterans Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick – the designers behind The Secret of Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion. It shares plenty of similarities with its ancestors, from its fourth-wall defying sense of humour to its winding, fiendish puzzles, but it’s the graphical style – Maniac Mansion given a fresh coat of pixel paint, essentially – that will appeal to those put off by the 3D adventures of today. And how does it play? Kotaku UK call it “all you…

“There are several different ways to trigger a reinstall” You’re backed up, with everything you need to hand. It’s now time to reinstall Windows. Just to recap: this process is a full, destructive install. Everything on your C drive will be lost, but that’s not a problem because you have it all backed up, and you’ve moved your data to another drive or partition. There are several different ways to trigger a reinstall. Traditionally, if you bought your PC with Windows pre-installed, we’d have advised that you restart your PC and press the key required to access your manufacturer’s boot or recovery options, which would have included an option to restore your PC to its factory settings. These days, you can trigger the same process from within Windows itself –…

Packed with informative tutorials Every issue, we guarantee to pack the magazine with great tutorials teaching you all the best things you can do with your PC. Each article features step-by-step instructions to make learning new skills fast and enjoyable. Customise Windows to work your way We all know how to do the basics but getting the most from Windows isn’t always easy. Our dedication to the operating system means you get the very best tips and tricks for all versions of Windows. Get more from your favourite websites We all have our list of favourite sites but often we miss out on great features because they’re difficult to use or hidden from sight. We’ll show you how to do more online, for a more satisfying web life. Discover new…

Your guide Cat Ellis says… “Tired of hunting through File Explorer? With some clever colour-coding, you’ll be able to find the files and folders you need in seconds” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 Finding your way around File Explorer can be a tricky business. Folders give you a tiny preview of the files within, but a small sliver of a document is rarely enough to tell you whether you’ve found the one you need. Keeping your files arranged in a logical system of folders will help, as will using a consistent method for naming them, but you could easily spend hours arranging them and end up with a vast, unwieldy system that takes forever…

Your guide Ian Evenden says… “A great way to organise your photos into albums, and share them with your friends” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 ALBUMS Click here for albums you’ve created. If you’ve yet to make any, you’ll be shown albums of images, sorted by date. FOLDERS If you know the image you want is in a specific folder, click here to display all folders you’ve told Photos to look in. COLLECTION Displays all the images, sorted by date, that Photos can find, depending on the folders you set in Preferences. YOUR PHOTOS All your pictures are displayed here. The way they will be presented depends upon which viewing mode you select. SLIDESHOW…

Your guide Alex Cox says… “With just a little effort, you can make Windows 10 slicker, faster and easier to use” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 Not all computers fare particularly well in their transition to Windows 10. The promised quick, clean environment and super-fast boot time might not have materialised. Or there might be as much clutter as there was before, if not more. And for the majority who have had a pleasant Windows 10 experience, you could make it even better still. Here we’ll speed up your system and clean it up at the same time. We’ll disable some of Windows 10’s less-essential features, clear away unwanted clutter, and make sure you’re…

1 Select mailbox We recommend installing MailStore Home as a portable application, so you can house it on your backup drive. Once done, launch the application. Click the Archive E-mail button to create your first profile. Select your mail client, browse for a file containing your messages or click Advanced under the webmail address to choose an online provider. 2 Set archive options Once you’ve connected your account, client or mailbox, click Next to access the Advanced Settings screen. Here you can choose specific folders, plus filter the archiving by date or range (the latter option allows you to add mail to the archive after a certain time has passed). Some mailboxes allow you to delete archived mail from the original inbox too. 3 Retrieve mail Once done, click Run…

The Start menu is better than ever in Windows 10 – and in our tutorial on page 78 , you’ll discover how you can customise it so it works for you. Here, though, we’re going to show you a simple tip to move and resize any tiles you already have in place – so they reflect the way you want to work on your PC and make the things you need to access most often more prominent, so they’re always easy to find……

Electronic books – or ebooks – are a great way to enjoy literature. They’re cheaper than print books due to the lack of paper and distribution costs (and completely free if the work is in the public domain), and you can start reading one mere seconds after buying one. You don’t need a specialist hardware device such as a Kindle either, thanks to free ebook readers that are available for Windows PCs. These are particularly good for students who want to reference texts in their coursework, add annotations, or quickly refer to online resources. So what makes a good ebook reader? For general use, a clear layout and the ability to sync your bookshelf across devices are essential; for students, note-taking and bookmarks are; and for anyone who struggles with…

Samsung’s new handset, the flagship Galaxy S8, is its first major phone release since the worldwide scandal of the highly-flammable Galaxy Note 7, and it’s a big one. Or, to be more accurate, a tall one: the 5.8” screen ditches the standard 16:9 phone screen ratio for an extended 18.5:9 variety. It’s definitely not cheap – to buy the handset outright costs a staggering £689 – so let’s hope the Korean company has now sorted out its battery issues once and for all.…

1 Select folder Head to the Taskbar and open File Explorer, then click ‘This PC’ to reveal six of your user folders (or browse to C:\ Users\<Username> to reveal more folders, including both Searches and Favourites). Start by right-clicking the Documents folder and choosing Properties. 2 Move folders Switch to the Location tab and click the Move… button. Head to the named folder you created in Step 1, select the Documents folder and click Select Folder followed by Apply. You’ll be prompted to move data from the current folder to the new one – click Yes, then OK. 3 Rinse, repeat Now simply repeat the same process for all the other user folders you wish to transfer across – if necessary, create additional folders on your data drive inside your…

Your guide Gary Marshall says… “Scribus gives you the power of a professional desktop publishing app – completely free. It’s great!” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 RULERS Need pixel-perfect accuracy in your document? Rulers can help you place each page element with precision. MENU BAR AND MAIN TOOLBAR Where the magic happens. The icons aren’t the best, but you soon get used to what they do. PROPERTIES PANEL There are lots of panels in Scribus, but this one is the one you’ll use most often to edit text and images. YOUR DOCUMENT Don’t worry about the coloured lines: they show you the boundaries of things, and won’t appear in print. NAVIGATION This enables you…

Your guide Nate Drake says… “Create Microsoft-compatible presentations, spreadsheets and documents with this office suite” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 CALC SPREADSHEET Click to create a new, blank spreadsheet. Spreadsheets can be saved in Excel (.xlsx) format for sharing with other users. OPEN FILE Click here to open File Explorer. LibreOffice can open Microsoft Office documents as well as its own ODF files. RECENT FILES LibreOffice keeps a record of files that you have recently worked on in the app. Click here to display a list of them. TEMPLATES Click the black arrow to display templates for individual apps such as Writer. These will appear inside the main window. IMPRESS PRESENTATION Click here to…

Your guide Nick Odantzis says… “Your photos are precious. Store them safely in the cloud and access them wherever you are” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 SEARCH If you need to find a photo, or group of photos, that have been tagged type in here and hit [Enter] to locate it. PHOTOS Your photo library displays the most recent photos first. You can also see any tags that OneDrive has created here. ALBUMS Click here to see all the albums in your OneDrive photo library – and create new ones if you need them. PLACES Click here to see all the locations where your photos were taken. This info is contained in an image’s…

Whether you’re into works of literature or the latest bestsellers, reading is one of the great pleasures of life. Thanks to ebooks you can now have an entire library at your disposal and you don’t need dedicated e-reader hardware either. In this issue we’re going to look how you can enjoy your favourite books on your PC for free using the four best ebook apps for Windows. We also take a look at Dell’s XPS 27 all-in-one desktop PC; enjoy the super-sounds of the Denon Heos 5 HS2 and get our game on with Lenovo’s Y27g gaming monitor.…