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You often open certain programs, files and folders to perform a task, like launching Chrome, a Pomodoro timer, Irfanview and Microsoft Word to start your work day. Wouldn’t it be easier to do that with just one click?

If your programs and files often change, then you can look at an app like MadAppLauncher to assign hotkeys to different programs. It’s quick, but you’ll have to remember all those keyboard shortcuts, not to mention it’ll take more time.

To launch programs in a batch, you have plenty of other options.
Create Your Own Shortcut To Launch Programs In A Batch



You don’t always need third-party programs to start multiple software in a single click. All you actually need is the humble, built-in Windows Notepad. You could also use the powerful NotePad++, but Notepad does the job just fine.

For example’s sake, let’s say you want to launch Chrome and a spreadsheet called Invoices in MS Excel.

Start a new Notepad file and type this:

    @echo off

    cd “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\”

    start chrome.exe

    start “” “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\EXCEL.EXE” “C:\Users\Home\Desktop\Invoices.xlsx”

    exit

All you have to do is save this Notepad file as “launch.bat” (not .txt) and you’re good to go. It’s much simpler than it sounds. You’ll need to know how to find the target location of any program or folder, and you can even add a custom icon. For details, check out our step-by-step guide to create a batch launcher in Windows.

To launch it with a keyboard stroke, pair it with AutoHotKey or others like HotKeyP to make custom hotkeys for anything.

If you want to kill any program in the same BAT file, like Firefox, the command is:

    taskkill /im firefox.exe

Learn more about how to kill programs in batches at Cybernet News.
Use Jump Lists And Preview With 7APL


If you can’t be bothered to create your own notepad file, 7APL will do the heavy lifting for you. As a bonus, it throws in some neat features like hotkey launches and a smart use of jump lists, which does more than just pinning your favourite folders for quick launches.

7APL is a portable app, which makes your life easier and saves resources. Create a new profile and add programs or files by browsing to their icon. Set a hotkey for the profile (using modifiers like Ctrl, Alt and Shift) and save your changes. You can also add some programs as exceptions to any of these rules.

If 7APL is running, you can hover over its icon in the taskbar and interact with the thumbnail preview to launch a profile or browse between options. Unlike most batch launchers though, 7APL doesn’t need to be open to start using it. Right-click the icon and in the jump list, you will see all your profiles. Click to execute!
Splat Starts Programs, Kills Programs, Delays Launches



Of all the batch launchers, Splat is the most powerful tool. You’ll need to keep it running in your system tray, but the sheer customization it offers is worth it.

Once you create a new profile, you can start adding what to do with programs when the profile is executed. For any program, file or folder, you can choose to:

    Run (if not running)
    Run (even if running)
    Close Application
    Kill Application
    Start/Stop Service
    Wait/Delay

The first four are self-explanatory. Closing an application is a great idea to manage your PC’s performance, not to mention focusing on the task at hand to eliminate distractions.

Stopping non-essential Windows Services can be a good way to speed up Windows. But please know what a service does before you choose to stop it.

The Wait/Delay option can be used with regular time intervals or set by your CPU’s load, choosing to wait till it’s below a certain percentage before launching the program.

Again, you can assign hotkeys to any profile, and there are a lot more modifiers and keys you can use here than in 7APL.
What Else Do You Want To Do In One Click?

Programs and files are now taken care of, but what other actions do you want to perform with a hotkey or a single click?

Windows offers a wide variety of tools that you can access using your command prompt window including the “attrib” tool which is designed to help you search for files by location and name then view and modify their file attributes.
What Attributes Can You Use?

Now that you have your elevated command prompt window open, you will need to know what types of attributes you can edit using the “attrib” tool. There are two main types of attributes, “basic” and “extended.”

Basic Attribute Switches (R, H, A, S)

    R – This command will assign the “Read-Only” attribute to your selected files or folders.
    H – This command will assign the “Hidden” attribute to your selected files or folders.
    A – This command will prepare your selected files or folders for “Archiving.”
    S – This command will change your selected files or folders by assigning the “System” attribute.

“Attrib” Syntax

You will need to know the proper syntax to use for the “attrib” tool before you get started.

    ATTRIB [+ attribute | - attribute] [pathname] [/S [/D]]

In this syntax, you will need to know what the different switches and parameters represent.

    The + and – indicate whether you will activate or deactivate the attribute specified.
    The attributes you can use are those explained above.
    The “/S” signifies that you want to search the entire path specified including subfolders for a particular file.
    The “/D” signifies that you want to include any process folders as well.
    The pathname indicates the location of your target folder or file. The proper syntax for path files is shown below.

    Drive and/or filename - C:\*.* OR C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\samplefile.txt

If you decide not to specify any of the attributes listed above, the files or folders will revert to their current attribute settings.
Let’s Practice

Now that you know the types of attributes you can use and the syntax you need to use, let’s practice some scenarios. Open the start menu in Windows 7 and 10 or open the search function in Windows 8 and search for CMD. Next, right-click on it and then press “Run as administrator.” While you don’t need to open an elevated command prompt window, it will help you to avoid any confirmation dialog boxes.

Scenario 1 – Clear “Hidden and System” attributes with a single command to make your files or folders normal.

For this example, we will first create a file in your “Documents” directory called “sample.txt.” First, open up the directory and right-click somewhere in the window, move your mouse to the “New” section, click on “Text File,” and name the document “sample.”


Now go to your CMD window. We will change the file’s properties so that it is both a system file, and hidden. Do this by entering the following command.

    attrib +h +s C:\Users\Martin\Documents\sample.txt

Remember to substitute the “Martin” section of the path parameter with your computer’s username.

Once you have done this, you will notice that the file has disappeared from your documents folder. Now that we want to remove the System and Hidden file attributes from “sample.txt,” we will need to use the following simple command.

    attrib –h –s C:\Users\Martin\Documents\sample.txt

Note that if you try to enter the file name without a path, you will receive an error. You must remember to add the entire path to your command. Now, if you go back to your “Documents” directory, you will see the file in the list.

Scenario 2 – Make all text files in your “Downloads” folder read-only system files.

Now we will create a few sample text files in the “Downloads” directory and we will edit them using the “attrib” tool so that they all become read-only system files.


Once you have your sample text files created, it is time to use CMD to write a command that will change the attributes of all text files in a specified directory to “Read-Only and System.” For this, we will need to use wildcards to select all the text files. You can do this by using the command below. Remember to substitute the “Martin” section with your computer’s username.

    attrib +r +s C:\Users\Martin\Downloads\*.txt

Now you can open your downloads folder, right-click on one of the text files and then select properties. You will note that the file attributes have been changed.  To remove these settings simply use the same command, but replace the plus signs with minus signs.

    attrib -r -s C:\Users\Martin\Downloads\*.txt

Scenario 3 – Prepare a file located on your desktop for archiving.

Let’s start by creating a sample text file on the desktop. Now, navigate to your CMD window and enter the following string to prepare the selected file for archiving.

    attrib +a C:\Users\Martin\Desktop\sample.txt



Scenario 4 – Hide an entire Directory/Folder on your desktop.

Let’s say for example, you have sensitive data in a folder on your desktop called “Private,” and you want to hide it along with all its files and subfolders. It is important to note that when you are working with directory attributes, you cannot use wildcards such as “? and *.” You will need to be explicit in your file path. First, you need to create a folder on your desktop and put a few files in it. Once you have done that, navigate to your CMD window and enter the following command.

    attrib +h C:\Users\Martin\Desktop\Private


Once you press “Enter,” the entire folder will disappear since it will be hidden.



Now you can play with some of the other settings to make changes to any file attributes on your computer.

We were testing out our theory that all freeware download sites are awful when we got infected with the ShopperPro adware, which just completely takes over your entire browser window with obnoxious ads, redirects Amazon links to some shady site, and is awful. Here’s how to remove it.
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The funny thing is that we were writing about how to remove the almost identical BoBrowser malware, and after removing that, the ShopperPro malware took over the computer almost instantly. It was literally hiding in the wings waiting for its chance to strike. This is why we recommend running Malwarebytes after uninstalling any badware, because there’s almost always something else hiding.

Note: we sometimes get criticized for using the actual malware uninstaller to uninstall the malware, rather than using some tool. But the fact is that to prevent going to jail, many of these malware companies actually do provide a (mostly) working uninstaller. As long as you run Malwarebytes after uninstalling, you are generally fine.

And that’s the thing, what they are doing isn’t technically illegal (although it should be). They trick you into agreeing to the install at some point while you were trying to install a stupid 3D screensaver, and then they provide an uninstall mechanism. It’s all perfectly legal, and somebody is going to hell for it. But nobody is going to jail.
Investigating ShopperPro

The crazy thing about this malware is that if you go into Chrome’s plugin pages or extension pages, nothing shows up at all. As it turns out, this is a process that gets launched through Task Scheduler and then hijacks the browser using some deep dark Windows process hooking functions.

As we can see in this screenshot of Process Explorer, it comes from some entity called Goobzo LTD. Why they are allowed to have a certificate to digitally sign their software is beyond us.

When you head into the Threads tab and take a look at some of the DLLs that are in use, things become a little more clear. This actually comes from that YouTube Accelerator that you might have installed or been tricked into installing.

Because all of these malware types piggyback on each other, and then try to install even more adware. It’s awful.
Removing the ShopperPro Malware

The first thing you’re going to want to do is either open Task Manager or Process Explorer, and kill everything you see that has anything to do with ShopperPro or YouTube Accelerator (or anything else you don’t recognize). Make sure you’ve closed all your browser windows as well. We need to make sure that the processes aren’t in memory anymore, or the uninstall will fail.

Now that everything is closed, we can go into Uninstall Programs and remove Shopper-Pro.

And then remove YouTube Accelerator, making sure to remove all shared components.  You should probably go ahead and remove every other app that you don’t recognize while you are at it.

At this point, ShopperPro is mostly gone.
Finish Removing All Traces with Malwarebytes

Sadly most antivirus programs won’t remove crapware and adware, because they aren’t technically malware since at some point you got tricked into clicking Accept on a screen when you should have turned off the computer and thrown it out the window instead of installing freeware from shady websites.

That’s why we always recommend running a scan with Malwarebytes, which focuses on adware and spyware and removing all of these awful things. And no matter how much you try to clean things up yourself, there are going to be traces of stuff left over — and in many cases, there is just more adware waiting to take the place of the adware that you just removed.

Download and run a scan with the free version of Malwarebytes — it’s completely free to scan and remove the badware. They do have a paid version that tries to block this stuff from happening in the future, but you can use the free version or the free trial to clean up your system without paying anything.

Click that green Apply Actions button when the scan completes, and then reboot your computer. If anything else shows up, might want to run another scan.

Even though we did a bunch of manual cleaning, Malwarebytes still found some places in the registry that were referencing ShopperPro. It’s worth taking this extra step for sure.

Whenever you’re happily setting up your new Ubuntu system (or Linux in general, for that matter), one of the things you’ll probably think about the least is getting the correct fonts installed. If you’re a bit confused about why I mentioned fonts, it’s because most distributions (or at least those who’d like to remain legal) only use free, or “libre”, fonts. While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with using these fonts, there will most likely be multiple cases where you’ll be required to have certain fonts, such as writing papers for school.

Therefore, it’s important to get these fonts installed so you can continue your life without having to think twice.
Why Aren’t They Already Included?

As I just mentioned, most distributions do not automatically include these fonts because they want to remain legal. The fonts that we’re accustomed to are owned by their respective companies, and everyone who uses them is essentially using them via a license. Those Linux distributions can’t include them without asking you to accept the license, so they don’t include them.

However, if you install them manually, you’ll be accepting the respective license, which therefore makes it legal to use them. You accept the license by either a specific dialog which appears asking you to accept, or by the sheer act of installing them.
Microsoft Fonts


Installation of the Microsoft / Windows fonts, which include Arial and Times New Roman, is actually extremely easy. Simply open up the Ubuntu Software Center, and then search for :

ttf-mscorefonts-installer

Once found, hit the Install button and let it download. Once it begins installing, you’ll be asked to accept Microsoft’s license on the fonts. Afterwards, it’ll continue installing the fonts, and you’ll be set as soon as it completes. If you wish, you can also open up a terminal and run the command :

sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer.

Again, after it downloads the necessary files, you’ll be asked to accept the license (by hitting enter), and it’ll finish with the installation.
Mac OS X Fonts


For some of the popular fonts that ship with Mac OS X, you’ll have to go through a somewhat more complex process to install them. Please note that for educational and professional environments (minus graphic design and similar fields), you will more than likely not need these fonts, as much of the world depends on Microsoft’s fonts, specifically Times New Roman. However if you would like to have these on your Ubuntu system, you’ll need to open up your terminal and enter in the following commands:

    wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26209128/mac_fonts.tar.gz
    tar zxvf mac_fonts.tar.gz
    sudo mv fonts /usr/share/fonts/
    sudo fc-cache -f -v

These commands do the following:

    Download a .tar package with the fonts.
    “Unzips” the .tar package.
    Moves the unzipped font files into the system’s fonts folder.
    Updates the font cache.

After completing this process, you should have the Mac fonts ready to go. Essentially, it’s as easy as copy and paste. Please note that if the very first command doesn’t work, then the link is most likely broken. If that is the case, you’ll need to find another Mac fonts .tar package online and download it, then continue.
Installing Other Fonts



Since we’re on the topic of fonts, installing fonts which you find online and aren’t associated with Microsoft or Apple can be easily installed as well. After you download a font file from a website such as dafont.com, you can simply double-click on the file. A window will appear which shows examples of the font in use, and offers an Install button. Clicking this will do all the work necessary to successfully install the font on your system, which makes it painless.
Conclusion

Thankfully, getting the fonts that we want installed on our Ubuntu systems isn’t too hard to accomplish, especially with instructions like these in hand. Plus, it’s something you only have to do once, which is great for those who don’t do a clean upgrade with each new Ubuntu release. However, I’m sure a script could be written which can do everything for you automatically.

Do you think it’s a burden that Linux distributions cannot include such fonts? Which fonts do you need the most or prefer the most? Let us know in the comments.

If I was to ask you what you used a calendar for, how many of you would say “to remind myself of something“, and then stop? Probably quite a lot of you because that is what traditionally a calendar has only been used for — reminders about birthdays, social events, work shifts, etc.

But since the Internet has rocketed into outer space, the calendar has undergone a complete transformation, with loads of features, including synchronization to other platforms. True, we are still using them for reminding us of things, but there are so many other uses for a calendar, now that it has gone digital.

The leading contender in digital calendars is Google Calendar, which comes free with every Google account. I highly recommend you use it because it has so many unique possibilities, as a visual motivational tool. Here are 8 ideas.
Reminders

Putting reminders on the calendar can be a pretty powerful motivational tool in itself. Now, I’m not talking about “get nose hair pulled, Friday 3pm”. Rather, I am more thinking about reminding yourself about the fantastic things you are going to treat yourself to, if you do something undesirable first.

Examples? Well, how about putting an entry on Saturday or Sunday saying something like “allow myself to eat LOTS of chocolate!!“. Then for the preceding week, lay out on each day on the calendar, a very strict diet and exercise regimen. Then every time you feel yourself faltering and looking at the cookie jar, just look at the calendar and see that goal of lots of chocolate on the weekend, that you will deny yourself if you blow the diet during the week.

Trust me, the “If-Then” motivational logic works. When I did it, I lost almost 2kg that week (and put a bit back on due to the chocolate on the weekend). You just have to visually see yourself getting closer and closer to that big treat, and suddenly something in you tells you not to blow it.

Or put into the calendar all your planned holidays and day trips. Then you will have something enjoyable to work towards. Whenever your work or some other task feels insurmountable, seeing that upcoming trip to Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion on the calendar works wonders.
Motivating YourSelf Using Jerry Seinfeld’s Chain Method

I had to look this one up when my editor suggested it, because I am not really that much into Seinfeld. So I had no idea of what his “chain method” was. Now that I know, it’s quite a good technique. It relies on psychology and competitiveness, two factors which are good for motivational purposes.


It goes like this — decide what it is that you need to do. When you have done it for that day, put a big red X on that day. If you continue doing this every day, then you will start to make a chain of X’s. The purpose now is not to break that chain. You must keep the habit streak going, and you can only do so by completing whatever task you have to do.

How can you do that on Google Calendar?

Well there are two ways. First, you can print out Google Calendar in “month” view and do it with a big marker pen. That would be the old school method. To print out the calendar, just go to the top right of the calendar page, drop down the “More” menu, and choose “Print“.


But if you want to save paper and go all digital, then just create a new event for each day you want to cross off, and choose “all day“. To do it faster, switch on keyboard shortcuts in your calendar settings, and when you want to make a new event, press “C”. In the event description box, put in something like “DONE!” and make sure it has its own unique colour.
Using Colors To Denote Urgency


Since we’ve just touched on the subject of colors, it is worth expanding on this topic for a moment. All throughout our lives, we have been taught that certain colors mean danger or urgency, such as red (the lights at a road crossing are a good example of this). The infamous Homeland Security terror alert level uses colors to tell us if we are safe or not.

So you can apply the same principle to your Google Calendar. Set up your own color-coded levels, from “urgent” right down to “loads of time, don’t worry about it”. Then give each of your tasks its own color, depending on its priority. Are you a writer and have a deadline looming? Maybe you need to mark that one as red then. Need to hang the picture up on the living room wall? That can wait a while. Maybe give that one a light yellow, or white.

Visually seeing what is urgent and what isn’t, judging by colors on your calendar, can be a powerful reminder of what really needs to get done.
Recording Weight Loss


If you are on a diet, then recording your progress is definitely worth doing, and where better to do it than on a calendar? Some of the color codes can be applied here — have a certain color for weight gain and a certain color for weight loss. So you can see at an instant whether more is going on, or more is coming off.

Make a new all-day event (press C on your keyboard again), and put your new weight in the event field. Give it the appropriate color, and suddenly it’s “Holy Fat-busting, Batman!”
Motivating Yourself To Do Housework

This is something which instantly sucks the energy out of me, as soon as I think about it. So I conveniently forget about the dirty dishes in the sink, and the vacuuming which needs to be done. Meanwhile, the rats are making themselves a sandwich and sitting down to watch TV. So putting housework tasks into your calendar can be a real “in your face” reminder to get it done.

Melanie Pinola at Lifehacker has set up a really neat housework add-on for Google Calendar. Just scroll part of the way down that page to get the iCal, XML, and HTML plugins. Clicking the appropriate link will automatically populate your calendar with the tasks. You will have to customize it though, according to your needs.
Plan Your Content If You Are A Writer

If you are a serious writer, you will know that writing every day is a must if you are going to develop any kind of a work ethic. Plus, if you are a freelance writer, the number one rule is “time is money”, so it pays to plan out what assignments you will do when. These are two good reasons why it is absolutely essential that you use Google Calendar to plan out your content.


By clearly laying out your working week on your calendar, it will give you more motivation. Firstly you can color-code the assignments according to urgency, and secondly it gives your week a sense of organization, seeing it all laid out nice and neat.

You can see at a glance when you have spare time, so you can go round movie studios flogging the rights to your next book.
Use Google Calendar’s Background Image As A Motivational Theme

I am not a huge fan of this one, because I feel that the background images can make it difficult to read the calendar. However, I can see how it would motivate some people to do a task, so it would be remiss of me not to mention it.

First you need to enable the option in the “Labs” section of Google Calendar, and then after saving that, go to the “General” section of your settings. Scroll right down to the bottom and you will now see an option to upload your image. Save and you will now see your new calendar.

Here is the calendar with my dog in the background. Now when I am doing work, and I wonder why I bother, I can look at him on the calendar, and think “to put a roof over that adorable animal’s head, and feed him”.
Posting Motivational Quotes via IFTTT

Are you the kind of person who is motivated and inspired by quotes such as “eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines”? Then why not use Google Calendar to give yourself a daily dose of “quoteyness?” (just made that word up).

For this, you can turn to the friendly automator called IFTTT (If This, Then That). We have seen how you can combine IFTTT with Google Calendar. For motivational quotes, you can use the IFTTT motivational quote recipe, and if necessary, you can change the quotes website in the RSS feed section. Or this recipe that uses quotes from Goodreads. Or failing all that, create your own IFTTT recipe.

Don’t forget that you can create (and share) multiple Google Calendars for specific areas of your life. Use imported information in the calendars and make your days and dates more interesting.
How Does Google Calendar Help You Daily?

There are so many other uses for Google Calendar that we couldn’t possibly fit into the one article. So I will turn it over to you now. Do you know of another visually motivating method that Google Calendar could do for you? Please let us know in the comments below what you think, and if you tried the above suggestions.

Your Raspberry Pi doesn’t come with an operating system. This is not a weakness, however, rather a feature that means you can choose from a wide of OSs, each of which can be flashed to an SD card (or microSD card for the Raspberry Pi B+) in a few simple steps. Here’s how to get a new OS installed and running on your Pi – and how to clone your perfect setup for quick disaster recovery.

Operating systems such as the recommended Raspbian, ArchLinux, Risc OS and even Android come ready to run on your Raspberry Pi. I’ll show you the two main ways add an operating system – and once you’ve got your Pi setup how you want it, we’ll look at how to clone the card so that it can be restored following errors (or for temporary reuse of your SD card).

The following tutorials assume that you have a basic Raspberry Pi package and Windows to manage your SD card writing and cloning.
Flash An OS To SD And Boot Your Raspberry Pi

Whichever operating system you download for your Raspberry Pi, the process of writing it to an SD card is the same. However, there are some differences in SD card writing between desktop operating systems. You’ll also need to ensure that your card is blank and formatted, and at least 2 GB.



For Windows users (and also those of you with Mac OS X) the tool of choice for writing a Raspberry Pi OS image to SD card is SD Formatter, from the SD Association. With the card inserted into your computer’s card reader, and ensuring you have the correct Drive letter selected in the drop down menu, open the Option menu and select Full (Erase)  and On. This ensures that the full capacity of the storage card will be available.

Click OK, then Format to begin.

To write the disk image, use Win32DiskImager, available from Sourceforge. You may need to run with administrator privileges. Select the correct drive letter for your SD card, browse to the image file and click Write to commence the process. Win32DiskImager will inform you when the data has been written.

If writing the disk image seems too much hassle or is beyond your abilities, it is possible to purchase SD cards with Raspbian pre-installed.
Booting Raspbian For The First Time

With Raspbian installed, you’ll need to login with the following credentials:

Username: pi

Password: raspberry

For other operating systems, check the documentation to find the default login credentials.

Remember that the password will not be displayed as you type it; there are no Windows-style * symbols representing the letters. Instead, it will appear that you haven’t entered a password. This is a security feature in Linux to prevent people guessing the length of your passphrase. Just type the password regardless.

In Raspbian, you can change your password by running

sudo raspi-config

And selecting the Change Password option.
Install Raspbian, XBMC, Risc OS, OpenElec & ArchLinux Easily With NOOBS

For a simpler, more streamlined install of the more popular Raspberry Pi distros such as Raspbian, ArchLinux, XBMC and OpenElec media centres, as well as Risc OS and Pidora – you can employ NOOBS, the New Out Of Box Software installation system.


NOOBS is available from http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads and doesn’t require “writing” to SD card in the way Raspbian and other Pi operating systems are. You will need a card greater than 4GB and should use the SD Formatter tool to format (Full Erase On, Format Size Adjustment On). When downloading NOOBS, note that offline and online installers are available, differing in size; the smaller download will require that your Raspberry Pi is connected to the Internet via Ethernet.

A keyboard and/or mouse will be required to install an OS with NOOBS, as will a HDMI display.

With the Raspberry Pi booted into the NOOBS interface, you can choose your operating system(s). Our full guide to NOOBS includes everything you need to know about this method of setting up a Raspberry Pi OS.
Perfecting Your Raspberry Pi OS

Different Raspberry Pi projects require a varying amount of software; it really all depends on what you’re planning to do.

For instance, if you want to use your Raspberry Pi as a media centre, then you might use NOOBS to install XBMC or (the better option, in my opinion) OpenElec.



With this done, you will then need to install various updates from within the media centre software (much as you would if you had installed Raspbian). There may be other applications that you need, add-ins for the media centre such as Vimeo or YouTube, perhaps the TED Talk channel, etc.

As with any computer system, installing the operating system is only the first step. Updates, optional software and other tools will also need to be added before you’re happy that the Raspberry Pi is ready for its intended use. The same process would be followed if you were configuring your Pi as a wireless print server, perhaps, or even webserver.

Once this is done, you should have your Raspberry Pi installation perfected.
Disaster Management: Cloning The OS

The point at which you’re happy with the installed OS is precisely when you should make a clone of it. This is a full backup image of the SD card saved to your hard disk drive (or second SD card) that can be easily flashed should you run into trouble.

Windows users can again employ Win32DiskImager here, ensuring that the perfected Raspberry Pi SD card is inserted in your Windows card reader before launching the utility.



Find the Image File field, and browse to the folder where you will be saving your SD card image; in the Device box, select the drive letter of the SD card, and after confirming both are correct, click Read to begin the cloning, following any on-screen instructions. Give the process time to complete before proceeding.

Should you need to revert the SD card back to its “perfect” state later on, you’ll need to remove all partitions (WIN+R to launch Disk Management, right-click the SD card and select Delete) before restoring the image. You might also reformat using SD Formatter, as explained above.

Again using Win32DiskImager, browse for the image file, set the Device drive letter and then click Write. Once the process is complete, your SD card will be reverted to the “perfect” configuration you worked on earlier, and your Raspberry Pi should be ready to put to use once more.

Find out more in our comprehensive explanation of cloning your Raspberry Pi SD card.
Conclusion: Make The SD Card Work For You

One thing is clear about the Raspberry Pi: it relies on the SD card to on extent or another. As such, understanding how to use this type of media with the little computer is vital.

Writing an operating system to SD card is the Raspberry Pi equivalent of installing an operating system. As you’ll have noticed, it’s much quicker than installing Windows to a HDD, and with NOOBS doing the hard work, even simpler!

We can’t underline enough how important it is to make an image of your SD card. With the various ways in which you can find your Pi not working correctly, having a quick restore file saved to a HDD is really quite important.

Have any thoughts or observations? Do you want to ask a question about this article? Please use the comments below.

Suddenly found that you’re the owner of a new Windows Phone? Perhaps you made the jump after being convinced by our strong argument for switching. Whether you received a Nokia, HTC or other model for Christmas or have simply made a seasonal upgrade to your previous device, switching to a new mobile OS can be something of a culture shock.

Over the past few years we’ve published a considerable collection of guides and tutorials for readers to get familiar with Windows Phone 8 and 8.1. In this post – which you might consider your one-stop resource – we’ll show you how to get to grips with the Android and iOS alternative as quickly and easily as possible.
Getting Started With Windows Phone 8.1

After unboxing your Windows Phone 8.x device, you’ll naturally want to switch it on and start setting it up. Begin by adding or setting up a Microsoft account, much as you would on Windows 8.



With a SIM card inserted you shouldn’t have any trouble making calls, but you might need a bit of help setting up your email and social networks (all of which can be set up from the same screen).

Windows Phone’s tile-based interface can be a little jarring at first, although it is remarkably fast. You can tweak it to add new colours and tile backgrounds and create a very striking phone UI, and of course you can complement this with custom alerts and ringtones.

You should also spend a few moments configuring your Windows Phone 8.1 lock screen to ensure all relevant alerts are displayed when your phone is locked.
Syncing Contacts and Data With Windows Phone 8.1

After setting up your emails, you might like to sync more, such as your existing contacts from another device. For users switching from Android, simply adding the Gmail account you used with that phone will result in your contacts being synced to Windows Phone.

Meanwhile, if you have your Facebook account set up on Windows Phone 8.1, contacts using that social network can be accessed via the People hub, a deep level of integration that goes back to Windows Phone 7.



Other syncing is available. You may, for instance, want to sync your phone with a Windows computer, in order to ensure that all photos are saved to a hard disk drive. Note, however, that these are also synced to your Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) which comes free with the Microsoft account you used to set up your Windows Phone. Microsoft Office Mobile documents (see below) are also synced to OneDrive.

As well as email data, you might like to have your Windows Phone calendar sync all of your important dates and appointments. Microsoft’s Outlook calendar and Gmail calendar are both supported.
Windows Phones Tips & Secrets You Should Know

It might not be the most popular mobile operating system, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a vast collection of shortcuts and tricks that you can use to make better use of your time. Custom text messages for calls you ignore can be set up, while the power of pinning useful items to your Start screen should not be underestimated.


Windows Phone 8.1 is more than just a checkerboard of tiles and faces. It has hidden depths, secrets that you may not realise, such as its ability as a gaming platform, competent multitasking and even linked mailboxes. We’ve compiled a list of 10 Windows Phone secrets that you should take a look at.
The Biggest Feature: Cortana

To help you get the most out of your Windows Phone, you should activate Cortana. Microsoft’s digital assistant is set to be a big part of Windows 10 so it makes sense to get used to it now. Cortana is a similar feature to Siri on iOS and Google Now on Android, but with more personality and arguably better usability.



Much like having an in-car computer, Cortana can be used to help you to navigate while driving, hands-free, and she also has a smashing sense of humour.
Make Sure Your Windows Phone 8.1 Device Is Secure

Security is of the utmost importance to any portable electronic device that stores personal data. Failing to establish a secure phone can result in data loss and even identity theft.

Ensure you are up to speed with the methods you can use to secure your Windows Phone, as well as ensure that the Find Your Phone tool is active and running. There are also various general tips that you should consider to keep your phone secure and out of sight of thieves.
Get Productive On Windows Phone

There was a time when phones and PDAs running Windows Mobile were commonplace in the workplace. These days, it tends to be a blend of iOS, Android and Blackberry, but don’t let this put you off – many productivity tools exist for Windows Phone.
 
Perhaps most obvious is the Outlook integration that comes with setting up an email account, coupled with the presence of the rest of the Microsoft Office Mobile suite, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

Meanwhile if you’re away from your PC a lot and need to access data through your phone, you can setup remote control in anticipation of this, which enables quick and easy access to your main computer. Meanwhile if you need an Internet connection or your Wi-Fi is down, a Windows Phone device can be used as a wireless hotspot, as long as you have a mobile Internet connection that can be shared to your PC or laptop.

Finally, if you find that the native Internet Explorer mobile browser isn’t up to scratch (you might find it slow or difficult to use) you can choose from several alternative mobile browsers, each claiming to offer fast browsing.
Enjoy Yourself With Windows Phone

Windows Phone isn’t all about speed, productivity and Cortana; you can use it to enjoy yourself too, with media and video games.

There are many YouTube apps for Windows Phone, so if you’re not interested in watching TV or videos streamed through services like Netflix, you can always enjoy yourself with the latest top clips on the popular video network. It’s also very easy to make your own videos and upload these. Meanwhile, if you use a media centre at home, several remote media centre apps are available for Windows Phone 8 to help you browse and play your library on your TV.



Various services provide free music streaming for Windows Phone, from the native Music app to TuneIn Radio (our TuneIn Radio review), which we recommend as one of the must-have apps for any mobile platform.

Finally, the Windows Phone store features a vast library of games, many with some Xbox Live integration and just as many that are unique to the platform. The choice is huge here, with genres as diverse as puzzles and turn based multiplayer. If current games aren’t your thing, meanwhile, you might also use emulation to enjoy games from older systems such as the Nintendo GameBoy.
Your Windows Phone Is Functional, Productive & Entertaining!

With your new Windows Phone sitting in your hand you should find a whole lot of useful links, hints and tips above.

Should you still have any questions, however, then please use the form below and ask!

Don’t feel intimidated! The Windows command prompt is simpler and more useful than you expect. Graphical interfaces may be convenient, but sometimes it’s quicker to run a specific command to perform a specific task.

If you’ve never touched the Windows command prompt, or if you’ve given up on it due to issues in the past, we ask that you reconsider. If you still don’t like it, that’s fine and we won’t blame you. However, we think you might be surprised by what you can accomplish with just a few keystrokes.

Run Any Program Easily

Quick program access is important for productivity. Some of us have taskbars and start menus overflowing with shortcut icons. It’s not an ideal situation, often pushing users to seek out taskbar alternatives like these multifunctional docks.

Fortunately, there may be an answer that you hadn’t considered before. With a little bit of setup, you’ll be able to run any program that you want with a single command.


First, you have to create a new folder (such as C:\Shortcuts). This folder will hold the shortcuts that allow fast-access to any program on your system. Once created, we’ll need to add that folder to the system’s PATH environmental variable:

    Right click on My Computer and select Properties.
    Click on Advanced System Settings.
    Under the Advanced tab, click on Environment Variables.
    Under System Variables, edit the PATH variable. Add ;C:\Shortcuts to the end of the variable’s value (don’t forget the semicolon separator).
    Under System Variables, edit the PATHEXT variable. Add ;.LNK to the end of the variable’s value (don’t forget the semicolon separator).
    Click OK to close out of all windows.                                               

Now that the environment variable is established, all you have to do is create shortcuts to your programs, place those shortcuts in the C:\Shortcuts directory, and rename them as one-word commands.



Now, whenever you open up a command prompt, you can run those programs using those shortcut names. The command prompt’s current directory won’t matter. These shortcut commands will work from anywhere.

Rename Local Drives

The label command offers a quick way to change the name of a drive on your system. It’s so simple that there isn’t much to explain about it. Just use it like so:

label [drive:] [name]

For example, if I wanted to name my main drive “MakeUseOf”, I’d run the following command:

label C: MakeUseOf

Defragment Hard Drives

Modern file systems (e.g. NTFS) don’t need to be defragmented as often as file systems of the past (e.g. FAT32), but it’s still an important part of Windows maintenance, if you want to keep your system in tip-top shape. Be cautious with defragmentation of SSDs, though.

Though there are several excellent defragmentation utilities, you can still make do without them using the defrag command:

defrag [drive:]

That’s all. However, if you’d like a bit more diagnostic information while the defragmentation occurs, you can use the progress switch to print out progress to the prompt:

defrag [drive:] /U

And if you want as much information as possible, you can toggle the verbose switch:

defrag [drive:] /U /V

Monitor Hard Drive Health

The chkdsk command (read: “check disk”) is a diagnostic tool that scans through your hard drives and tests for potential issues like corrupted data or physical damage. It’s just as easy to use as the defragment command above:

chkdsk [drive:]

Two useful parameters are the fix switch, which attempts to fix any encountered errors, and the recover switch, which will try to recover what it can if it encounters any bad sectors.

chkdsk [drive:] /F /R

Safely Eject External Drives

While drive ejection is as simple as right-clicking on the drive and selecting Eject, sometimes this isn’t possible. For example, you may be stuck in Windows Recovery with no other option than to use the command prompt. What do you do then?
           
You can use the diskpart command (read: “disk partition”) to eject the drive:

command-prompt-tasks-eject-drive

When diskpart’s specialized prompt is ready, type list volume to get a list of all drives currently recognized by your system. Take note of the drive’s ###, then type select volume [###] according to the drive you want to eject. Make sure you only select drives that are marked “Removable” in the list.

Type remove all dismount to eject the drive and exit to end the specialized prompt. The drive should now be dismounted and safe to remove.

If you have trouble getting the system to recognize the drive again, repeat the process up until you’ve selected the volume, then type assign letter=[letter] to remount the drive. For example, assign letter=I would mount it as an I: drive.

Search File Contents

A handful of tools enable a fast Windows search, but many of them are limited in that they only search through file names and not file contents. The findstr command is a simple way to achieve the latter, allowing you to locate files based on the text within those files.




This command is the most complex command on this list with over a dozen switches that alter how the search is performed. Too much to go over in a few paragraphs anyway, so here’s a complete overview and a few examples to show how the command can be used.

Change File Associations

As you may already know, Windows associates particular file formats with programs so that those programs are used when said files need to be opened. The assoc command (read: “associate”) is an easy way to view and edit these file assocations.

Typing the command by itself will list all of the known file associations on your system. This can be useful for diagnostic purposes, otherwise it’s a bit too much information to digest at once. What it’s actually useful for is changing file assocations.

To view the association of an extension:

assoc [.ext]

To clear the association of an extension:

assoc [.ext]=

To set the association of an extension to another filetype:

assoc [.ext]=[filetype]

What is a filetype? For that you’ll need to use the ftype command, which lists all of the known filetypes on your system and which programs they’re associated with. So for example, on my system .TXT is associated as a txtfile and that filetype is opened using Notepad.

Final Thoughts

Yes, there are tools that can handle all of the above tasks, but these commands may come in handy if you ever find yourself stuck in a command prompt or needing to write a batch script.

Plus, we’ve only scratched the surface. Make the command prompt even more useful by learning these important commands for all Windows users and reading over our command prompt cheat sheet. One more important task that ought to be mentioned is the ability to install software through the command prompt.

How often do you use the command prompt? Are you comfortable with it or does it intimidate you? Share your thoughts and questions with us in the comments below!