Customizing Windows 8 Start Screen

Microsoft Introduced Start Screen in Windows 8, Some People liked it and some don’t. Well, if you are Using Windows 8 from quite a some time then you will be familiar with its start screen. Even the Start Button is Missing in Windows 8, No doubt Start button is back in 8.1 as per public demand. Current Windows 8 users may learn how to Upgrade to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8  and you can even Get back Start Button in Windows 8 using Third Party Softwares.

Windows Show up  Start Screen in Windows 8 as soon as you login to your PC. You Always need to Customize Windows 8 Start Screen as per your liking. You may want to remove some tiles, change Colors and much more. So today in this article i will Show to Some Ways to Customize Windows 8 Start Screen.

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WAYS TO CUSTOMIZE WINDOWS 8 START SCREEN

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1) Resize Tile Size: Some Tiles in your Start Screen like Calender, News and Photos are larger than Some other Tiles like Music and Videos. But you Can control the Sizes of Each tiles, You can easily Enlarge or Shrink any tile by just Right Clicking on that particular tile and Selecting Larger or Smaller from the Bottom.

In addition, you Can even turn of Live tiles like News and Finance which shows you live updates from the internet. All you need to do is right click on the tile and select Turn live tile off, Henceforth only the name will be shown to you.

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2) Arrange tiles in Groups: Start Screen Comes with this Feature that most people are not aware of, You can arrange your tiles in to groups and give it a name. To Make Group First Arrange all the tiles in one block which you want to Group, Use Drag and drop facility to arrange tiles.

Now Hold CTRL Key and Scroll the Mouse Wheel Down, you will see Similar like below picture

You Can see 4 Different Groups of Tiles, Now Right Click on the Group that you want to name. You will be shown Name Group Option Below, Click it and Name your Group.

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3) Change Start Screen Color and Design :  The Start screen is by default in Purple Color or it may be different if you have chosen your own color while Installing Windows. But now if you are bored with the Current Colour then you can Change it very easily.

To do so just hove your muse to right corner of your screen to show up Charm bar, Click on Setting from the bottom and select Change PC Settings. Make sure you are in Personalize Catagory, Click on Start screen to change start screen Color and also you can choose a nice design of your choice. Moreover you can change your Account Picture and also the lock screen Picture. If you are using Windows 8.1 then it comes with the facility to add Custom Background Image, Unfotunately its not there in windows 8 but can be added using third party utility.

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4) Add Shutdown Shortcut to start Screen: To add shutdown shortcut to our start screen we will manually have to create a shortcut, give it a location and name it. To do so Right click on your Desktop, Hover on New and Select Shortcut. Copy and Paste this>  shutdown.exe /s /t 0 When it says Type the location of the item, Click Next andName it  Shut Down and Click on Finish.

Now Our Shortcut is Ready, You can change icon of the Shortcut if you need to by Right Clicking on the Shortcut > Properties > Change icon. Select the icon you find appropriate and Click Ok.

After Changing the Icon, Right Click on it again and Select Pin to Start, This will make this shortcut to show up on start screen immediately, you can drag and drop it anywhere you find best place. You will have to be Careful as on Clicking on it will shutdown your Computer immediately without any warning.

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5) Pin Websites and Folders To Start: Till now we already Saw 4 way to Customize Windows 8 Start Screen, now we know how to Pin a Shortcut to Start screen, Same Steps For the Folders as well, Right click on any Folder that you want on the Start Screen and Select Pin to Start.

Windows 8 has an Option to Pin Websites as Well. We will have to make use of Internet Explorer for this. Open IE, Open The Website that you want to Pin by Entering the Site URL in address bar.

Now Click on the Gear icon which you will find at the top right corner of IE.

Thats it Now Check your Start screen and there you find a tile with your Pinned Website. Now Whenever you Click on it, IE will Open up that Website for you.

Use Your Keyboard As Mouse

Recently My Mouse Stopped Working because of Drivers got Currupted, Device Drivers Getting Currupted in Windows May not be the Common Problem, But Can happen anytime with you, Due to this Problem i was not able to use my mouse. I Tried every possible Solution like uninstalling drivers and restarting my PC. Unplugging and then pluging in my mouse back, and yeah Searched internet too, Since i was not able to use my mouse, i had to Use Keyboard as Mouse While Finding for solution to this Problem.

Guess What ? Nothing Helped and Had to Refresh my Windows 8, But Hey, Everything happens for good. Thankfully I knew how to Use Keyboard as Mouse flawlessly. Well this was just my Reason, at times there are situations where you may need to Substitute your mouse with Keyboard. So today in this tutorial we will Learn to Use Keyboard as Mouse In Windows.

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HOW TO USE KEYBOARD AS MOUSE IN WINDOWS

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Windows OS has an Inbuilt option Called MouseKeys, Not much people are aware of it but yes now you are.  You can Enable/disable and disable MouseKeys very Easily.

• You can Enable it by Pressing  Alt + Shift + Numlock keys. As soon as you do it, you will be prompt with the below dialog box, Just Click Yes to it.
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• Make Sure your Numlock is Off while you Use keyboard as mouse.

• Done !!! Now you will see MouseKeys icon on your taskbar, which means now you are all set.

• Now talking about the Controllers,  Use 8,2,4 and 6 Keys from Numpad to move Up, Down, Left and Right Respectively.

Alternatively You can also use Third Party Program Called NeatMouse , This software is portable, Main advantage to use it is it gives you better Control because of additional options that it makes available. it have an option to Remap Controller keys according to your Comfort.

Probably we will have to Use Keyboard as Mouse temporarily and not for long time so one may not prefer to get third party software for this task, but many may do it as it is free and can be helpful.

Lock / Unlock Any Folder Without Using Software password Windows 7, 8,10

Lots of times we need to protect folders in our computer for various security reasons. Most of the time few confidential data needs to be secured from other users on same computer. We always asked to download some 3rd party software to protect our local folders, and these 3rd party software will help us to create password for our folder and make it secure.

There are few disadvantages using 3rd party software:

1. There might be Virus or spy in 3rd Party software
2. If this software is trial version, we may end up without unlocking our folder
3. Software may contain some threats or other malware which may harm our computer
4. We always have to rely on this software and re-install again incase we are formatting our PC

Good news is, Now you can Protect folder without using any software but simply using batch file programming. Don’t worry, even if you don’t know programming, I will help you to make your life easy and teach you step by step and with proper print screen.

* This trick will work on all windows platform (Win XP, Win 7, 8)

1. Open Notepad (Start –> Run –> type “Notepad” –> Enter

You can open Notepad program on your windows XP , 7 or Windows 8 machine using Start –> Run –> type “Notepad” and press Enter

2. Copy Given Code into Notepad

cls

@ECHO OFF

if EXIST "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"goto UNLOCK

if NOT EXIST MyFolder goto MDMyFolder

:CONFIRM

echo Are you sure to lock this folder? (Y/N)

set/p "cho=>"

if %cho%==Y goto LOCK

if %cho%==y goto LOCK

if %cho%==n goto END

if %cho%==N goto END

echo Invalid choice.

goto CONFIRM

:LOCK

ren MyFolder "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"

attrib +h +s "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"

echo Folder locked

goto End

:UNLOCK

echo Enter password to Unlock Your Secure Folder

set/p "pass=>"

if NOT %pass%== wolfsoft goto FAIL

attrib -h -s "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"

ren "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"MyFolder

echo Folder Unlocked successfully

goto End

:FAIL

echo Invalid password

goto end

:MDMyFolder

md MyFolder

echo MyFolder created successfully

goto End

:End

Your Notepad file will looks like above screen.

3. Save the Notepad file as .Bat file

Goto File –> Save as

Select “All files” in Save as option

Give file name: Protect.bat (Extension .Bat is must)

4. Create Secured Folder using Batfile

Double click on Protect.bat file and that will create a new folder as shown below

Copy all your secure data/files inside newly created Folder.

5. Lock Folder

Once all data moved to new Folder, you can protect the folder using Locker and secure folder with a password.

Simply double click on “Protect.bat” file which will ask you with below type of command prompt.

Enter “Y” and press Enter to Lock your Folder and secure.

Congratulations, Now your Folder is Hidden and protected. You have protected your folder without using any software.

**Make Sure you have turned off show hidden files in folder option.

Now, you definitely need to understand the process of Unlocking this folder, and retrieve your information back.

How to Unlock Folder without using Software

Unlocking your folder is pretty simple. You simply need to enter default password when prompted.

Note down, default password to unlock folder without using software is “wolfsoft”

Double click on Protect.bat and it will prompt you to enter password to unlock your protected folder.

That’s it, your folder is back to visible mode. You can now work on your data and re-protect them as and when needed.

Bonus Trick: Change default password

Ofcourse you can change the default password easily. Simply open “protect.bat” file with notepad and change the default password as per your wish. Below is the illustration shows the location of default password in notepad.

Yes, now you have setup your own password to protect a folder and make it password protected in windows xp, 7 or 8 and that too without using any software.

*You always can place and hide Protect.bat file to make it more secure, else there are chances that someone can open and read your password.

Hope this tutorial on How to Lock / Unlock Folder Without Using Software in your Windows computer helped you to learn some new trick.