Have you ever booted up your PC and only gotten a black screen? If so, something’s clearly wrong. You probably then tried a variety of steps to get your PC running again. But what if these don’t help? You might be looking at a nasty malware infection that is messing with your system’s boot files. [...]
Mechanical hard disks have ruled for ages—but their reign is coming to an end. Uptake of faster, more energy-efficient solid state drives (SSDs) is increasing. Fast boot times and overall performance coupled with a decrease in prices are their major upsides, but users need to take special care of their SSDs. This blog post outlines [...]
Device Manager is the central location for installing, uninstalling, troubleshooting, and even optimizing your PC hardware, yet it’s an underappreciated Windows feature. IT pros are often unaware of its full feature set, and beginners steer clear of its confusing (and potentially dangerous) interface. In this week’s post, the TuneUp blog team will show you seven [...]
Have you heard of Windows XP Mode (AKA “Virtual Windows”)? Part of Windows 7, it’s designed to make transition from the legacy Windows XP operating system as smooth as possible. Windows XP Mode is the best way to run your favorite applications that aren’t compatible with Windows 7, however, there are some performance issues that [...]
“XP Mode” is key to running older and incompatible programs under Windows 7. A couple of weeks ago, we guided you through the necessary steps for setting up XP Mode. Now it’s time to dive deeper into this virtual Windows XP, troubleshoot your performance issues and better integrate your “old” programs into Windows 7. Here [...]
“XP Mode” is part of Windows 7 and is designed to make the transition from XP as smooth as possible. It runs a full copy of Windows XP in the background so that users can install and run all applications that are not compatible with Microsoft’s latest OS. However, there are some performance issues and [...]
Nearly everyone recognizes Window’s signature blue background and design. Even though Windows changed things up and made its design for Vista green, actually personalizing the Windows backdrop has always been tricky, that is, until now. This podcast shows you how to change the Windows style to suit your tastes and personality. We tell you how [...]
It’s the Achilles’ heel of older and slower machines—you try to watch HDTV on your PC or netbook, and it stutters. You try to play a Blu-ray disc, and it won’t start. You try to play a 720p or 1080p video file, and the image immediately starts to tear and lag. In this post, we [...]
What is the worst-case scenario when it comes to your PC? Windows gives you the blue screen, a cryptic error message or a completely black screen during the boot-up process! Beginners don’t even know where to begin; it even baffles IT professionals. Luckily, there are some very effective ways to repair Windows using Microsoft’s own [...]
Earlier this year, we shared a neat trick for getting rid of those annoying message balloons in Windows 7, like the one below: However, this shortcut only worked on Windows 7. But today, I’ll show you a trick to disable pop-up messages that works in Windows XP, Vista, as well as Windows 7. The best [...]
