Check Windows 8 Apps Internet Usage Details

      Windows 8 opens up many news options which were not built in into the previous version of Windows. Though through performance monitor you can check which application is using what amount of network resources in real time in Windows 7, yet Windows 8 takes this reporting to an all new level by adding a standard features called the App History. The app history feature in Windows 8 easily and quickly shows you how much Internet has been used by which app in Windows 8.
Not only the Internet usage, details, you can also check the CPU time, tile-updates etc. done by the App in the App History feature of Windows 8. In this small 3-step tutorial, I will show you how you can quickly check the Network (Internet) usage details of any app installed in Windows 8 PC, Tablet, laptop or Desktop computer. Simply follow these steps.

Step 1: Boot Windows 8 and open the Desktop. On the task bar, right click on the empty space and select Task Manager. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + ESC


Step 2: The above step will launch the task manager. On the task manager screen, click on the tab called App History.


Step 3: On the App History screen, click on the Network column to sort the applications based on the usage of Network or Internet.

Once you click on this column, it will display the network usage by each application which you have used or installed on your Windows 8 PC, tablet or laptop device.
Similarly, you can check the CPU time, Metered Network and tile updates. Also if you want to reset these statistics to monitor the usage from scratch, there is a link called “Delete usage history” on the App history screen which will delete the old records so that you can monitor the changes again starting from the reset time.

How To Run Old Programs With Compatibility Issues In Windows 8

There are times when you may want to run old programs which you had run in earlier version of windows before windows 8, now as some of these apps are not updated to run on windows 8, so when you try to run the same they may cause one of the following problems.

• App fails to Install or Uninstall
• App fails to run with a Windows version check message
• App fails to launch due to administrative privilege
• App crashes due to specific memory problems
• App fails due to mismatched system files
• App fails due to Unhandled Errors on 64-bit Windows

In all the above cases they may throw different error messages while you attempting to run a program in windows 8. In all these case the program compatibility assistant feature helps end users to run desktop apps which used to work for earlier Windows versions. Windows 8 has built in app program compatibility assistant that enables apps designed for Windows 7 or Windows versions to work great on Windows 8.

PCA on windows 8 tracks apps for a set of known compatibility issues. It identifies the fixes, and provides as dialog to the user with instructions to apply a recommended fix. The user can decide to apply the recommended fix, or choose to do nothing and cancel out of the recommendation as well.

Best Way To Run an Old Program In Windows 8

The best way to run the apps is to right click on the and then select it to run as administrator

Now when it may throw you the following error saying that this app may not run properly. You can still run the app by selecting the option which says Run the program without getting help as this option may work for you in many cases.

Or the best way to run a program which has compatibility issues is by Troubleshoot the compatibility of the program before running the same, this option again you can select by right clicking the program or setup file of the program.

The Compatibility Troubleshooter is a mechanism in Windows that allows you diagnose problems with apps and apply recommended fixes to get them working properly. The compatibility troubleshooter allows users to go through a set of questions, and based on the replies, it will apply a set of fixes and allow the users to test their apps and verify the fixes. Once verified, the fixes will be applied permanently to the programs to make them work better on Windows 8.

Once you run the program compatibility troubleshooter, it will give you the option to run the program with recommended settings applied and next time windows 8 will automatically remember these settings while running this program.

Stop Windows 8 To Boot With Malware Infected Drivers At Boot Time

                Windows 8 is no doubt more secure than windows 7 as it comes with features like Secure Boot which actually prevents rootkit or malware infection. There is another less known feature of windows 8 which can actually stop windows 8 to load the malware infected drivers at the boot time in case there are any bad drivers which may cause harm to computer.
This new feature is called Early Launch Anti-Malware (ELAM) technology in Windows 8 which is by default disabled but can be easily enabled through group policy settings, this policy settings can be really useful for system administrator and super users of windows. As per this new technology it will make windows 8 to load the Early Launch Anti Malware software to start before all other third-party components. ELAM drivers are initialized first and allowed to control the initialization of boot drivers, potentially not initializing unknown boot drivers.
The Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver has four different settings mode.

1. Good: The driver has been signed and has not been tampered with.
2. Bad: The driver has been identified as malware. It is recommended that you do not allow known bad drivers to be initialized.
3. Bad, but required for boot: The driver has been identified as malware, but the computer cannot successfully boot without loading this driver.
4. Unknown: This driver has not been attested to by your malware detection application and has not been classified by the Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver.

Enable EALM Feature In Windows 8

If you suspect that the windows 8 on your computer might be infected by a malware driver which can seriously impact the performance of your computer and may also steal user data and make important files corrupt, you can simply enable this in built feature in windows 8 so that windows does not load the infected malware driver at the time of boot.
You will need to do this via Group Policy Editor, Press Windows + R to open run prompt and type gpedit.msc and press Enter or click Ok
Once the group policy editor is opened, go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates >  System > Early Launch Malware >  Boot-Start Driver Initialization Policy as shown in the image below.

                  Now you should check the Enabled check box and then Select the state – Good, unknown and bad but critical drivers so that windows loads all the good drivers which passed the validation test, all unknown which are not marked either bad or good but these drivers does not have malware and bad drivers as well which are either marked as malware but are required for windows 8 to boot.

Some Malware Removal Guides

In case you already know that your computer is infected with a malware you can follow our guides on malware which can really help you to get rid of any type of malware infection on your computer.

• Infected With a Malware? Fix It With Microsoft Malware Prevention Troubleshooter
• How To Clean Malware Infection From Computer
• Tips To Stop Virus or Malware From Harmful Websites To Infect Your PC

You can also try Microsoft Official malicious software removal tool which removes malicious software from an already-infected computer. Antivirus products block malicious software from running on a computer and removes only specific prevalent malicious software. Specific prevalent malicious software is a small subset of all the malicious software that exists today which are identified by microsoft as super dangerous.

Some Software And Applications Don’t Work In Windows 8 Because Off .NET Framework Error

       Windows 8 comes with some new features and new components of Windows which are updated in the Windows 8 over the previous Windows 7. Since many applications and software have not been updates to support Windows 8, you might face some problem especially with some applications which depend on Microsoft .Net framework 3.5. In Windows 8, the default version of the .Net framework installed in 4.5 instead of 3.5 installed in Windows 7. Now when you install a software in Windows 8 which required .NET framework support and has not been updated to use the newer 4.5 version will not start and will throw an error of the .NET framework 3.5 not installed. In this article, we tell you how to Fix .NET Framework Error in Windows 8 for software which don’t start at all.
First of all, if you are upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8, then you will not face this error as in an upgrade, Windows 8 preserves older 3.5 version of .NET framework, however, if you have done a clean install, then in that case, you will get 4.5 version of .NET framework by default which is the newer version. Now if you install a software which was written to work on Windows 7, and run it on Windows 8, then it will not work if it is programed to use the 3.5 version, then it will not work at all.

Fix Windows 8 Application or Software Does Not Start Because of .NET Error

Solution 1:

To fix, you have two options, one is that you install a Windows 8 compatible updated version of the software or App and it will not give you much of a problem. Now the shortcoming of this solution is that you may not get Windows 8 compatible version or you might not want to buy another software if it’s a paid one and you already have a license to the Windows 7 version of the software. In that case, follow the second solution below.

Solution 2:

The second solution includes installing Windows .NET Framework version 3.5 which is already included in the Windows 8 but not enabled by default. To enable and install thee 3.5 version, simply follow the below instructions: 

Step 1: Locate command prompt in all apps, right click on it and select the option which says “Run as administrator”. This will launch the command prompt in administrator mode.

 

Step 2: Mount the Windows 8 ISO or insert the Windows 8 Installation DVD in the DVD player on your computer. On the command prompt, assuming your drive on which you mounted Windows 8 ISO is d: (which maybe DVD drive or virtual drive) and your Windows 8 is installed on c: drive. On the command prompt opened in steep 1 above, type the following two commands one by one and press enter at the end of each command.

xcopy d:\sources\sxs\*.* c:\dotnet35 /s
Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /All /Source:c:\dotnet35 /LimitAccess

Watermark Remover for Windows 8

      My WCP Watermark editor allows us to customize Windows 8 by personalizing texts around the desktop. This application can edit Windows 8 watermarks and also remove watermark completely if not required without changing your favorite theme.

How to Remove Watermarks in Windows 8

1. Download My WCP Watermark Editor software from the link given at the bottom of post.

2. Install or copy the application to a folder.

3. Right click on the application and select Run as administrator.

4. Once the application opens, check “Remove all watermark”

5. Click Apply new settings.

6. Reboot your PC and watermark will be gone.

This free watermark remover will work on Windows 8 CP & RP editions and also compatible with x86/x64 versions.

Download Free Watermark remover for Windows 8:

 My WCP Watermark editor [554KB]

Create Folders Without Any Name or Words

This trick will allow you to create files and folders without any name.

Just follow the following steps:


1. Select any file or folder.
2. Right click on it, press rename or simply press F2.
3. Press and hold the alt key. While holding the Alt key, type numbers 0160 from the numpad.
4. Press Enter and the nameless file or folder will be created.

Note: Type the numbers 0160 from the numpad, that is, the numbers present on the right side of the keyboard. Don't type the numbers which are present on top of the character keys

Windows 8 - Close Metro Apps

 Err! Where’s the close button?
Metro apps in Windows 8 do not have a Close button. Apps are suspended in the background when you switch. They are automatically killed if you require more system resources.

Windows 8 Picture Password

Go to Control Panel. Click Users > Create a Picture Password to get started. Choose an image and create a combination. You will need to produce the same combination at the time of login.

Windows 8 Mount ISO

Windows 8 now provides an inbuilt support for hosting an ISO file on a virtual drive. Right click on any ISO file, click Mount and the file will be mounted into a virtual drive.

Windows 8 Hide Ribbon

Windows 8 has a multi-purpose ribbon while browsing the file system. If you are not comfortable with it, you can remove it. Go to Run, type gpedit.msc and hit Enter. Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer option. Double-click “Start Windows Explorer with the Ribbon minimised“, set the value to Enabled and click OK.

Windows 8 Picture Password

Go to Control Panel. Click Users > Create a Picture Password to get started. Choose an image and create a combination. You will need to produce the same combination at the time of login.

Windows 8 Virtual Machine

Microsoft’s Hyper-V, an inbuilt virtualization feature, allows you to create and run virtual machines. Run OptionalFeatures.exe, select Hyper-V and click OK to enable the feature. On the Metro screen, find and click on the Hyper-V Manager tile to start exploring its potential.

Windows 8 Install from USB

Ah! Burning is outmoded.
Use the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool to install Windows 8 from an USB drive. Direct the program to your Windows 8 ISO file and it’ll create a bootable Windows 8 installer on USB drive.

Windows 8 Restore Start Menu

Again mummy! I want my old start menu.
Launch REGEDIT and browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer. Double click RPEnabled, and change it from 1 to 0 to remove Metro, the new Task Manager, Start menu and more. On the other hand, set RPEnabled to 2 to remove Metro, restore the Start menu but keep most of the other enhancements.

Windows 8 - Automatic Login

Don’t want to see the login screen anymore? Type netplwiz in Run dialog box and press Enter. It launches the User Accounts dialog. Uncheck the “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer” box and click OK. Enter the username and password of the account that you’d like to be logged in automatically. Click OK and reboot.

Windows 8- Checking Weather

 An inbuilt weather checking helps you see current weather conditions in the selected city. Click Weather to launch the app. Right click and select Add City. Type the name of your nearest city, and choose it from the list, when it appears.

Windows 8 - Close Metro Apps

 Err! Where’s the close button?
Metro apps in Windows 8 do not have a Close button. Apps are suspended in the background when you switch. They are automatically killed if you require more system resources.

Windows 8 - Run 64-Bit Internet Explorer 10

Open Internet Explorer 10. Go to Internet options menu and select the Security tab. Click Enable 64-bit Mode box. Restart your browser.

Windows 8 Old Control Panel

Mummy! I want my old control panel back.
Do you miss the old control panel interface? Wasn’t it much simpler? In the new interface, click Control Panel. Navigate to the bottom of the screen and click More Settings. The old Control Panel interface will be showcased.

Windows 8 Pin or Unpin Tiles

Bang! There it falls off the screen.
Right click on tiles on the Start screen to pin/unpin tiles or remove apps.