Helpful Built-in Windows Utilities and Apps

Here are some helpful built-in Windows utilities and apps.

• Energy Audit. From the Start menu, search for CMD. When you find it, right click and run as Administrator. At the command prompt, type powercfg – energy and then press enter. Be sure to put the spaces between the words and the hyphen. A report called energy-report.html will be placed in your Windows \ System32 folder. To open the report you need to copy it to another location such as your desktop.
• Erase Unused Space. This is achieved at the command line by typing: cipher /w:X (the X is the drive letter).
• GodMode. This is a feature that creates shortcuts for all Windows configuration settings and controls and puts them in a single folder. Simply create a new folder and name it:
  GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
• Reliability Analysis. It’s possible to track your computer’s reliability using the View Reliability History utility. To find this utility, go to the start menu and type reliability.
• Screen Recorder for Diagnostics. Windows includes a screen recorder for diagnostics. It’s called the Problem Screen Recorder. To run it, just type psr at the Start Menu.
• Window Move / Adjust Shortcut. Here are some shortcuts to adjusting Windows.
  • Maximize. Pressing the Windows menu key, and the up arrow, maximizes the current window.
  • Restore. Pressing the Windows menu key, and the down arrow, restores the current window if it is maximized.
  • Minimize. Pressing the Windows menu key, and the down arrow, minimizes the current window if it is not maximized.
  • Side / Middle Placement. When you want to send a window to the left or right, use the Windows button and the right or left arrow. When used repeatedly these will put your window in the middle of the screen also.
  • Switch Monitors. If you have two monitors, when you press the Windows button and an arrow key (right or left) the window will jump to the other display.