Perform a Complete Shutdown in Windows 8

In Windows 8, when you shutdown your computer, you actually are performing a hybrid shutdown by default. What’s a hybrid shutdown? As you probably have heard, Windows 8 boots up a lot faster than Windows 7 and previous versions of Windows.
This is because of the way it shuts down. Instead of performing a cold boot in which everything has to be loaded, i.e. the OS kernel, the apps, etc, Windows 8 performs a partial hibernation in which the Kernel session and device drivers are saved to disk. When you startup Windows 8, it loads up from that hibernation file, which makes boot time much faster.

In previous versions of Windows, the hibernation file was much larger because in addition to the kernel and device drivers, all application data was also stored in the file. Now that the file is smaller, the load times are better.
This featured is called Fast Startup in Windows 8 and it is enabled by default. You can check this by going to Power Options in Control Panel and clicking on Choose what the power button does in the left pane.


Scroll down and you should see a box checked that says Turn on fast startup (recommended). Note that if you do not have the Turn on fast startup checkbox listed at all, it is because hibernation is not enabled. To enable hibernation in Windows 8, open an elevated command prompt and type in the following line:

powercfg /hibernate on

Now when you go to Power Options, you should see the box is visible and checked. So how to perform a full complete shutdown in Windows 8? There are three ways.
1. You can either disable fast startup from Power Options or
2. You can simply perform a restart instead of a shutdown.
3. You can use the following command at the command prompt:

shutdown /s /full / t 0

As odd as it may seem, restarting Windows 8 will first perform a complete shutdown followed by a cold boot. So those are the different ways you can perform a full shutdown of Windows 8, which comes in handy if you recently installed a new piece of hardware, etc. Enjoy!

Check Disk and System Files in Windows 8

If you’re having problems with your Windows 8 install, there are a couple of tools you can use to try and fix the problems. For hard disk errors, you can run check disk (chkdsk) and for corrupt or damaged system files, you can run system file checker (sfc). You can run both from within Windows 8 itself, which saves you from having to boot to the advanced startup screen.

Run Chkdsk in Windows 8

To run chkdsk, go to Computer and click right-click on the disk you want to check and click on Properties.

Click on the Tools tab and then click on the Check button under Error Checking.

Windows 8 will begin scanning your drive for any errors. This could take a few minutes.

Once it has completed, you’ll see a message on whether there were any errors found on the hard drive or not.

Finally, you can click on Show Details, which will load up the Event Viewer and show you that it actually ran chkdsk on the system.

Run System File Checker in Windows 8

System File Checker is a great tool that will verify all of the original files installed with Windows 8 and make sure none of them have been deleted, replaced or otherwise damaged in some way. It it does find a problem, it basically loads the original system file to replace the deleted or damaged one.
If Windows 8 is freezing a lot or crashing a lot, you might want to try and run system file checker as it could be a a problem with corrupt or missing system files. Also, it you see other strange issues in Windows 8 like missing apps or apps not opening, etc, then there is no harm in running SFC.
You can run SFC by going to the Start Screen, right-clicking on an empty spot and choosing All apps. Scroll to the right and then right-click on Command Prompt.

Choose Run as Administrator from the bar that pops up at the bottom of the screen. Now at the command prompt, type the following command:

sfc /scannow

This will start the verification process for all system files in Windows 8.

Once it finishes, it will display either a message saying everything fine or it will tell you which files had problems and were replaced by the system. These are two easy to use tools in Windows 8 to help troubleshoot many different types of problems. Enjoy!

Assign Fixed Static IP Addresses to Devices on Home Network

If you’re like me, you probably have 20 devices connected to your home network: phones, printers, network attached storage devices, TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles, media players, and finally computers. Whew! With all those devices, you probably also like to share data and files amongst them. Well, normally that works fine as most of the time the DNS name of the device is used.
If the IP address changes, you can still use the DNS name to access the device. However, there are quite a few instances where you end up using the IP address to access a device and if that IP address changes, then you have to reconfigure the device. For example, I have a printer that also scans and will save the file directly to a computer. However, it uses the IP address instead of the name of the machine. Every time the machine reboots, it gets a new IP address and I have to type that new IP into the printer. What a pain!
In this article, I’ll show you how you can assign static or fixed IP addresses to the devices on your network without manually configuring each device. For example, you can always assign a static IP address to a Windows 8 PC by going to network settings, but it’s far easier to just assign the static IP address on your router. This saves you from having to configure 20 devices individually to easily managing all the static IP addresses from one central location.
Most modern routers have some sort of IP address reservation page or configuration option that you just have to find, usually under the Local Area Network or LAN section. Here I will show you how to do it on an AT&T U-verse router and a Netgear router. Hopefully, it’s pretty much the same on other routers like Belkin and D-Link.

Assign Static IP Addresses via Router

To get started, you’ll need to login to your wireless router via a web browser. In order to do this, you’ll need the IP address of your router. If you already know it, then you can skip this section. To figure out your router IP, you can simply look up the default gateway on your computer. Here’s how.
Open a command prompt on any PC by following this procedure:
Windows XP – Click on Start, click on Run and type in CMD
Windows 7 – Click on Start and type in command prompt
Windows 8 - Go to Start screen, right-click, choose All apps, then scroll right and click on Command Prompt
Now at the command prompt, type in the following command, which is just one word:
ipconfig
You should get a screen that looks like this:

Make sure you are looking at the correct network adapter. For example, you see the above screenshot says Ethernet Adapter Local Area Connection, which is the IP address info for my Ethernet connection. If you are using wireless, it should say Wireless adapter. The ip address you want is the one listed under Default Gateway.
Now take this IP address and open a web browser. Type it into the address bar and press enter.

This will load the web interface for your wireless router. Note that you will probably have to enter the router username and password in order to gain access. If you never changed it, then you can check out a site called routerpasswords.com that lists out all the default ones for many routers. If you have the original packaging, it should be on there too.
http://www.routerpasswords.com/
Now that you’re in the router, you’ll need to find the section that shows the current IP addresses that have been allocated by the DHCP server. On my AT&T router, I had to click on Settings, then LAN, then IP Address Allocation.

To give a device a fixed IP address, just find it in the list and then click on the Address Assignment drop down. By default, it is set to Private from pool:IPRange.

From the drop down, you can choose a fixed IP address. Just make sure you don’t pick a fixed IP that is already taken by another device on the network.

For my Netgear router, the process was a little different. First, once you logged in, you have to go to Attached Devices to see all the connected devices and their MAC addresses.

Find the MAC address for the device you want to give a static IP address to and then click on LAN Setup.

Click the Add button under Address Reservation and then either choose from the radio buttons at the top or manually type in info yourself.

That’s about it! This is a much easier way to assign static or fixed IP addresses to devices on your network rather than manually configuring it on the device itself. If you have any problems or issues, post a comment and I’ll try to help. Enjoy!

Monitor Folder for Changes and New Files in Windows 8

Looking for a way to monitor a folder in Windows 8? Maybe you want to see when a new file is added to the folder, when a file is deleted or when a file is edited? There is a new utility from Nirsoft called FolderChangesView that lets you monitor a folder and it’s subfolders for any type of change.
It’s a tiny utility that uses very little memory and works on any version of Windows from Windows 2000 to Windows 8, 32-bit or 64-bit. You also don’t need to install it, you can just run it independently. When you run the EXE file, it will ask you which folder you want to monitor:

It doesn’t have a browse button to select the folder, which would have been nice, but when you start typing the path to the folder, it does autofill the paths for you.

You can also check the box to monitor all subfolders under the specified folder, which will do exactly that. Once you click OK, you’ll see that the green play button is now greyed out and the red stop button is clickable. This means that the folder is being monitored for changes, modifications and new files.

If you make any changes to the folder, they immediately show up in the table with the filename and a count value under the appropriate column header. So if I delete a file, it will show a 1 under Deleted Count, etc.

If you created a new folder, then you’ll see that the extension column is blank. Otherwise, you can quickly see what new files were created, which ones were edited and which ones were deleted. Note that this program will also capture information about any temp files that happen to show up in the folder. When I opened an Excel file, it created a temp file called ~$Book1.xlsx, 5BA0F100 and B7E20E25.tmp. Unfortunately, there is currently no option to hide temp files from the monitoring process yet.
The other downside to the program is that there is no way to remove it from the Windows taskbar! You pretty much have to leave it open on the taskbar in order for it to capture data. I was hoping you could minimize it down to the system tray/notification area, but when you click on the X, it just shuts down the program. Since the program is new, I’m sure they’ll be updating it soon with new features, but for right now, it doesn’t work unless it’s running very visibly on your taskbar! If you want to do some stealth folder monitoring, this program won’t work for you.
However, I played around with the program and found that it was able to monitor a network folder for changes! So technically, you can run it on your PC and have it monitor another folder that is on a file server or on another computer as long as you map it as a network drive. If you can map a network drive, you can use this program to monitor folders remotely.
Lastly, you can go to Options and choose the columns you want to see. By default, all of them are enabled.

Overall, it’s a simple program that can be used to quickly monitor a folder locally on your computer or remotely on another machine. It’s also relatively new, so future versions should have more and better features that make the program a little more polished. Enjoy!

Connect to Shared Folder in Windows 8 from OS X

I recently upgraded one of my computers to Windows 8 and setup a shared folder so that I could easily transfer files from my MacBook Pro and Windows 7 machines to Windows 8 over the home network. I did a clean install of Windows 8, created a shared folder and attempted to connect to my shared folder from OS X Mountain Lion.
Unfortunately, I was not able to connect and it took me a little time to figure it out. In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps to connect to a shared folder on Windows 8 from OS X.

Step 1 – Configure Windows 8 for Sharing

Obviously, the first thing you’ll need to do is create a shared folder on Windows 8. Right-click, go to Properties and click on the Sharing tab. Go ahead and share the folder and set the permissions to whatever you desire in terms of access.

The next thing you need to do is make sure that File and Printer Sharing is turned on and allowed through the Windows Firewall in Windows 8. Go to Control Panel and click on Windows Firewall. Then click on Allow an app or feature through Windows Firewall.

Scroll down until you see File and Printer Sharing and make sure that it is checked.

Lastly, you can decide how you want users to access the folder on Windows 8. By default, when connecting from another machine, you have to enter the username and password of an account that has access to that shared folder on Windows 8. If you setup a Windows 8 user account without adding a password, you won’t be able to connect to the shared folder. You’ll first have to add a password and then you could connect. However, if you feel your home network is super secure, you can always turn off password protected sharing, which means anyone can connect to the shared folder without having to type in a username or password.

You can do that by going to Control Panel, Network and Sharing Center, Advanced sharing settings and then expanding All Networks. Here you will see an option called Password protected sharing, which you can turn off. I personally keep it turned on, but if you really hate having to type in a username and password to connect, this is an option. Also, if you use Windows 8 without a password, this would save you from having to setup a password on your account. Note that even if you have a Windows account with a password, if you turn off password protected sharing, then people can still connect without typing any credentials.
Finally, on the Mac, open Finder and look under the Shared section for the Windows 8 PC.

When you click on it, it will try to connect and you may get a message saying Connection Failed.

That’s ok! That’s where that password protected folder setting in Windows 8 comes into play. If it’s turned on, you need to connect using the Windows 8 account credentials. You can do that by clicking the Connect As button at the top right.

Go ahead and type in your credentials and then click OK. Note that if it’s a Microsoft account you have setup on Windows 8, you’ll need to type in the full email address and the same password as your actual Microsoft account.

That’s about it! Now you should see the Windows 8 shared folders in Finder on your Mac.

If you have any problems connecting to Windows 8 from a Mac, post a comment here and I’ll try to help out. Enjoy!

Difference between BD-R, BD-RE, DVD-R, DVD+R

If you are interested in getting a DVD or Blu-ray drive to burn some data off to an external disc that you can store in a safe deposit box or for some other reason, then the sheer number of formats and versions can make the task quite confusing.
For example, there are five different formats for DVDs and Blu-ray discs have even more formats! In this article, I’ll try to break down the different types of formats without worry about a lot of technical details that you’ll find when you read about the differences on other sites. I personally just want to know the main differences, what works better and what’s best suited for burning as a consumer.

DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM

To get started, you should first know the actual order that these different DVD formats were created. In 1996 DVD-RAM was developed, followed by DVD-R in 1997, followed by DVD-RW, then DVD+RW, followed by DVD+R in 2002. So that hopefully clears a little confusion as to the timings.
So now, what format is better? Well, if you want to burn a DVD that is compatible with a larger number of DVD players, then it’s best to stick with the earlier released DVD-R format. DVD-RAM is basically really old and it’s hard to even find those anymore unless you go on eBay.
DVD+R has some advantages over DVD-R in terms of error checking, better tracking and speed control resulting in more reliable media, additional session linking methods which results in fewer damaged discs. Most of the differences are very technical in nature, but allow for faster writing speeds and more rewrites without errors.
Of course, the W added to either + or – (+RW, -RW) just means that the disc is re-writeable. Again, the + format is more reliable because it was released later, but more drives are compatible with the minus format. However, it’s been long enough that unless someone is using a really old DVD drive, they should be able to play any plus(+) format DVDs.
DVD single layer discs can support up to 4.7 GBs of data and double layer discs can support up to 8.5 GBs of data.

BD-R, BD-RE, BDXL, Mini-BD

When it comes to Blu-ray disc formats, it’s really confusing, so I won’t even mention the stuff that’s really not important. Basically, there are only a couple of formats you need to worry about as a consumer and those are BD-R (Blu-ray disc recordable), BD-RE (Blu-ray disc recordable erasable), BDXL (multi-layer disc recordable), and Mini-BD.
BD-R format can only be written to once and BD-RE can be erased and recorded on again multiple times. The max speed currently available for Blu-ray discs is about 12x, which is much lower than the 20x and 52x speeds of DVDs and CDs, respectively.
Mini-DB discs are basically BD-R and BD-RE formatted Blu-ray discs made for camcorders and other small digital recording devices. Within the last two years (2010), a newer format called BD-XL has been defined that allows for triple and quadruple layers on a single disc. This ups the capacity of a BD-R XL disc to 100 GB and 128 GB, respectively. That’s huge! BD-RE XL discs can support up to 100 GB of data at this time.
The newer BDXL discs are not compatible with current Blu-ray disc drives, though some manufacturers are able to release a firmware upgrade, but the drive has to be fairly new to support the upgrade. Basically, if you plan on using the BDXL format, it should be archival purposes as you’ll probably be the only one to read the data back using your very expensive Blu-ray drive that supports the BDXL format.
Again, this is a very basic overview of the different formats for DVD and Blu-ray, but hopefully it gives you enough to understand what everything means without getting overloaded in lots of useless details. Any other questions about what type of disc your should burn,

How to Open a File with No Extension

Have you ever run into the scenario where you end up with a file that has no extension? How do you go about opening it? One way it so simply guess and try to change the file extension to different file types and try to open the file. That sometimes works if someone says they are emailing you a Word document, but for some reason the file has no extension. Obviously, you could just try a .doc or .docx extension and it’ll probably open.
But if you have no idea what type of file it is, trying a bunch of different extensions is a waste of time. Additionally, you may not have the program installed that the file type is associated with, so even if you changed it to the right one, it still may not open. For example, if the file actually has a PSD file extension and you try to open it without having Photoshop installed, you may incorrectly deduce that it’s not the correct file extension.

In this article, I’ll show you a quick and more accurate way to determine the type of file you may have. In order to do this, I created a couple of test files and then removed the file extensions. I created a Word document, a PDF file and an image file for demonstration purposes. Obviously, your file could be of a different type, but the procedure will be the same for any type of file.

Install a HEX Editor

Yes, a HEX editor may sound insanely geeky and technical, but it’s really not that bad. There is a freeware program called XVI32, which you don’t even have to install to use. You can just download it and run the EXE file! Here’s what the main interface looks like once you open it.

On the left side is the hex viewer and the right side is the data inspector, which basically converts the hex values into actual data values. It’s pretty much impossible to understand anything on the hex side, so don’t even worry about it. Most of the data on the data side will also not make sense, but there will usually be a few key pieces of text that will tell you what kind of file you are working with. In my first example, I opened a Word document in which I have removed the .docx extension. Here’s what it looked like in XVI32:

The first place to look is at the very top of the data inspector. As you can see, we can see .XML, which means this is a XML file. But wait, you’re saying, isn’t this a Word document? Technically, all word documents are XML files in Office 2010. All of the content of a Word document is actually stored inside of an underlying XML file, which is why you see that there.
However, if you scroll down a little in the data inspector, you’ll see the following at the end of one of the paragraph sections:

There you finally see “word” and “document”, which tells you it’s a Word document. Some filet types like Word documents are a little harder to figure out because of the underlying XML structure, but you just have to keep scrolling and looking and you’ll figure it out. The other files types are really easy. For example, this is what I get when I open a PDF file in XVI32:

Right at the top on the first line is PDF, so you know you’re working with a PDF file. Super easy! And here is what it looks like when opening a PNG image file:

Again, very easy to figure out since PNG is written right at the very top of the file. As a last example, I also decided to try out an MP3 file to see what it looked like. This one was a little harder, but if you look at the very top and Google any three or four letter combos that happen to be in all caps, you’ll figure it out.

As you can see, ID3 pops up at the very first line. Even though it doesn’t say MP3, ID3 gives you a huge hint because ID3 is the metadata that stores all the information about a music file like the artist, title, album, year, etc. So by seeing ID3, you can guess it’s an MP3 file. Also, you see other hints like “Ninja Tune Records”, which means it’s probably some audio file.
Overall, I find this to be a much better way to figure out how to open a file with no file extension rather than randomly trying out various file extensions without any idea. If you still can’t figure out what kind of file you have,