How to Use the New Task Manager in Windows 8?

The Task Manager in Windows 8 has been completely overhauled. It’s easier-to-use, slicker, and more feature-packed than ever. Windows 8 may be all about Metro, but the Task Manager and Windows Explorer are better than ever.

The Task Manager now manages startup programs, shows your IP address, and displays slick resource usage graphs. The new color-coding highlights the processes using the most system resources, so you can see them at a glance.

Launching the Task Manager:

 

The Task Manager can still be launched in the traditional ways. Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete from anywhere and you’ll see a link to launch the Task Manager.

 


You can also right-click the taskbar and select “Task Manager.”

Managing Processes:

 

The Task Manager’s default interface lets you easily view and end active applications, without any clutter getting in the way. It shows  desktop apps.

Click the “More details” button and you’ll see much more information. Resource-usage statistics are color-coded – the darker the color, the more resources used.

You can expand an app to see its windows, if the app has multiple windows.

The list of processes is divided into three sections – apps, background processes and Windows system processes.

If you’re not sure what a processes is, you can right-click it and select “Search online” to search for it in your default search engine.

System Statistics:

 

The Performance tab shows slick graphs of your system information. You can select either of the options at the right to see more information. The new interface shows much more information than the old Task Manager showed.

You can actually see your system’s IP address without digging through the Control Panel. This used to require a lot of clicks.

You can still open the Resource Monitor application in one click. It hasn’t been updated in Windows 8, but it shows even more information than the Task Manager does.

App History:

 

The Processes tab only shows each process’s current resource usage. The “App history” tab shows how much CPU time and network bandwidth each Metro app has used, so you can identify the resource hogs.

Start up Programs:

 

The Startup tab shows the applications that automatically start with your computer. Windows finally has a way to easily disable startup programs. Windows also measures just how long each application is delaying your startup, so you can make informed decisions.

Users:

 

The Users tab breaks down your system’s resource usage by user account. You can expand a user’s name to view that user’s processes.

Advanced Process Details & Services:

 

The Details tab is the evolution of the old Processes tab on previous versions of Windows. It doesn’t have a pretty interface – although application icons have been added. It exposes exposes advanced options not found on other tabs, including process priority and CPU affinity. (CPU affinity determines which CPU a process runs on, if your system has multiple CPUs or a CPU with multiple cores.)

The Services tab has been prettied up and now includes an option to quickly restart services.

You can click the Open Services link to use the Services application, which contains the advanced options you won’t find in the Task Manager.

ENJOY!!!

Keep chatting with your Messenger contacts and enjoy 1 month of free calling1 to phones and more

As you may have heard, starting April 8th, 2013 we are bringing the great features of Messenger and Skype together, including your IM and contact list. (April 8th is the first day that you may be required to upgrade to Skype). We know saying goodbye can be hard, but don't worry. Not only will all your Messenger contacts appear in Skype when you upgrade and sign-in, but you can also redeem a free welcome gift. Follow the instructions below to enjoy calls to landlines and mobiles around the world, group video calling, group screen sharing (and more) absolutely free for a month. We want to thank you for being a Messenger customer and even more, are excited to welcome you to Skype! Upgrade now

Redeeming your gift is easy:

1.       Get the latest version of Skype. 2.       Sign into Skype with your Microsoft account- use the email address and password you use to sign into Messenger, Hotmail, Xbox or Outlook.com. 3.       Come back to this mail and click here to redeem your gift..

Enjoy more ways to keep in touch

Call phones:

Free unlimited worldwide calling is a great way to keep in touch with people anywhere. Say 'hello' to anyone with a landline in over 40 countries or call mobile phones in 7 countries, including the US, Canada and Hong Kong. Call them all and talk as long as you want.

Make group video calls:

Get together with up to 10 people with group video calling. That means everyone can catch up at once.

Share your screen:

Group screen sharing makes it easy to share pictures and videos with everyone at the same time.

Redeem your gift

Offer available while supplies last. To qualify for the offer you must provide valid payment details. We'll automatically set up a recurring payment of $9.99 USD per month after the trial has ended. You will be charged the recurring amount in the currency you have selected to maintain your account. To cancel your subscription please visit your Skype account and cancel within the first 27 days of your trial and you won't be charged a thing. Skype reserves the right to withdraw this offer at any time.

Calls to landlines in these countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg only), Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom and Venezuela.

Calls to landlines and mobiles in these countries: Canada, China, Guam, Hong Kong S.A.R China, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Thailand and United States.

Group video calls can be between three or more people (up to a maximum of 10), and at least one person on the call needs to have a Premium account. For the best quality, we recommend calls with up to five people. A fair usage policy applies to group video calling. Click here for more details.

Did You Forget your Windows Password?

How to Reset Your Forgotten Windows Password the Easy Way.....

 

Forgetting your password is never any fun, but luckily there’s a really easy way to reset the password. All you need is a copy of the Windows installation disk and one simple command line trick.

Resetting Your Forgotten Windows Password

 

Boot off the Windows disk and select the “Repair your computer” option from the lower left-hand corner.

Follow through until you get to the option to open the Command Prompt, which you’ll want to select

.

First you’ll want to type in the following command to backup the original sticky keys file:

copy c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe c:\

Then you’ll copy the command prompt executable (cmd.exe) over top of the sticky keys executable:

copy c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe

Now you can reboot the PC.

Resetting the Password

 

Once you get to the login screen, hit the Shift key 5 times, and you’ll see an administrator mode command prompt.

Now to reset the password—just type the following command, replacing the username and password with the combination you want:

net user nani MyNewPassword

That’s all Now you can login.

 Enjoy!!!

Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview with Product key for free

Microsoft has now released Windows 8 Consumer preview edition and is available to everyone for download now.

Unlike Developer Preview edition, this consumer preview edition needs a Product key for activation. The product key is provided by Microsoft on the Downloads page of Windows 8.

This is a consumer preview edition or Beta, which means that its almost stable and can be tested by normal public users instead of just developers.

Download Details

 

You can download the ISO images of 64-bit (x64) and 32-bit (x86)  Windows 8 Consumer preview edition directly from the Microsoft servers. Check out the Link below to Download.

English:

64-bit (x64):  Download (3.3 GB)
Sha 1 hash — 1288519C5035BCAC83CBFA23A33038CCF5522749

32-bit (x86): Download (2.5 GB)
Sha 1 hash — E91ED665B01A46F4344C36D9D88C8BF78E9A1B39

Product Key:   

 DNJXJ-7XBW8-2378T-X22TX-BKG7J
Download links and Product keys for other languages can be found here.

System Requirements:

Windows 8 Consumer Preview works great on the same hardware that powers Windows 7:

• Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster.
• RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit).
• Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit).
• Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device or higher.

How to Activate or Rearm Windows 7 for 120 days

Windows 7 rearm is just like using Windows 7 trial for 30 days.  This rearm can be done  four times maximum. Today we will show how to do that.

 

 

There is a legal way to activate it for 120 days . It is not a hack, it is a system put in place by Microsoft to give you more time to evaluate it.

Step1:  Open the Start Menu.

 Step2: In the Start Menu search box, type Regedit and press Enter.

Step3:  In the registryEditor, go to:

Hkey Local_machine ==> Software ==> Microsoft==> Windows NT==> Current Version==> Software Protection Platform . 

In the right pane, see if SkipRearm is set to 0 (number 0)

Step5: If it is not set to 0 – Right click on SkipRearm and click on Modify. Type 0 and click on OK. (See screenshot below).If it is set to 0 – Skip this and go to step 6.



Step6: Open an elevated command prompt (it will be elevated if you are Admin, or if not just run it as Admin)

Step7: In the elevated command prompt, type slmgr -rearm and press Enter. (See screenshots below)



  

 
Step8: If successful you will get the below screenshot. Click on OK.

 You can rearm Windows 7 for a maximum for 3 times that means a total of 120 days.

Gmail is Down, Giving 500 Server error

Looks like Gmail, the popular webmail service from Google is facing some serious outage problems. Gmail seems to be down and many users including me are getting a 500 Server error. The error page tells that its just a Temporary Error (500) and will get fixed on its own in few minutes.

Checkout the screenshot below for  the error that Gmail is giving:

This issue is affecting less than 2% of the Google Mail user base. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail.