How to Open the Charms Bar in Windows 8

Charm Bar is a brand new feature addition and we all are seeing it for the first time in Windows, so I thought it would be great to provide a basic introduction and the things it can help you with.

Charm Bar is the universal toolbar of Windows 8, and thus you can access it from anywhere no matter which application you are working on.

Screen shot of Charms Bar

How to get This Bar:

1. Press the Windows  + C keys.

NOTE: The Charms bar will stay open with this option until you either click on a charm, press Windows+C again, or click on a empty area in the main screen. You can also use the up & down arrow keys and Enter to select a charm.

2. Move the pointer to the bottom right corner of any connected display screen, then move the pointer up to be able to select a charm.

3. Move the pointer to the top right corner of any connected display screen, then move the pointer down to be able to select a charm.

4. For touchscreens, swipe inward from the right edge of the screen.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Charm Bar

Search - Win+Q (Allows you to search across the OS throughout applications)

Share - Win+H (Apps that use the search contract can share data through this charm)
Start - Windows (Takes you to the Start Screen)
Devices - Win+K (Display connected hardware devices)
Settings - Win+I (Displays Network, Volume, notifications, languages,shutdown options, and more PC Settings)

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Windows 8 Edition Comparison Chart

Microsoft officially announced that there 3 editions of Windows 8: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 RT. While Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro are designed for x86 and x64 processors, Windows 8 RT will only be available pre-installed on PCs and tablets powered by ARM processors.

And also there will be an exclusive edition for the corporate world. Windows 8 Enterprise edition will include all features available in Windows 8 Pro edition plus some additional features for the IT organization. According to the official Windows team blog, a local language-only edition will be available for China and a small set of select emerging markets.

 As we mentioned already, Windows 8 RT is exclusive for Windows running on ARM processors and can’t be installed on x86 and x64 processors. Storage Spaces, Windows Media Player, Remote Desktop (host), Group Policy, Encrypting File System, Domain Join, Client Hyper-V, Boot from VHD, BitLocker and BitLocker To Go features will not be available in Windows 8 RT edition. But the best thing is that you won’t need to purchase a copy of Microsoft Office for your Windows 8 RT edition as Microsoft has decided to include Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote) in Windows RT edition.

So, if you are a desktop, notebook, netbook, or ultrabook user, you will have only two editions to choose from. To get all features of Windows 8, you need to go for Windows 8 Pro edition.

To know more about the differences between all three editions of Windows 8, check out the given below chart.

As you can see in the above comparison chart, one can’t upgrade from Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate edition to Windows 8 edition. That is, one can upgrade Professional or Ultimate editions of Windows 7 to Windows 8 Pro edition only. The base edition of Windows 8 won’t include Drive Encryption, Group Policy, Remote Desktop (host), Domain Join, Client Hyper-V, Boot from VHD, BitLocker and BitLocker To Go, Encrypting File System features.

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Error code 0x8007007B when activating Windows 8

If you want to personalize your copy of Windows 8, you need to activate it first. But if you have a version from  MSDN or TechNet, it might not be as simple as it should.

When you go to System Centre to activate your copy of Win 8 and see a pre-entered product key that you have not entered yourself

You´ll probably run into Error code 0x8007007B

Solution

If you try to activate Windows 8 and get Error code 0x8007007B, this is how to fix it.

1. In desktop mode, right click the lower left corner and select “Run” (or just press WinKey+R from either the start screen or the desktop).

2. Enter “slui 3″ and press ok.

3. Enter your correct product key and hit Activate
   And it’s fixed!

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New File System- ReFS From Microsoft

ReFS is a New FileSystem from Microsoft, will initially debut with Windows 8 Server, it stands for Resilient File System. Although it is designed to be better in many dimensions, resiliency stands out as one of its most prominent features.

Main Goals of ReFS:

• Maintain a high degree of compatibility with a subset of NTFS features that are widely adopted while deprecating others that provide limited value at the cost of system complexity and footprint.
• Verify and auto-correct data. Data can get corrupted due to a number of reasons and therefore must be verified and, when possible, corrected automatically. Metadata must not be written in place to avoid the possibility of “torn writes,” which we will talk about in more detail below.
• Optimize for extreme scale. Use scalable structures for everything. Don’t assume that disk-checking algorithms, in particular, can scale to the size of the entire file system.
• Never take the file system offline. Assume that in the event of corruptions, it is advantageous to isolate the fault while allowing access to the rest of the volume. This is done while salvaging the maximum amount of data possible, all done live.
• Provide a full end-to-end resiliency architecture when used in conjunction with the Storage Spaces feature, which was co-designed and built in conjunction with ReFS

According to Microsoft, ReFS will be an always-online file system "for the next decade or more" that is architected for "extreme scale" with large volume, file and directory sizes, as well as data verification and auto-correction via checksums while maintaining compatibility with a "wide subset of widely adopted" NTFS features.

ReFS will support a maximum size of 4 PB per storage pool path and file lengths of up to 32,000 (unicode) characters, up to 2^64 (18,446,744,100,000,000,000 or about 18 quintillion) directories in a storage volume, and up to 2^64 files in a single directory. ReFS also supports, in theory, to a maximum volume size of 2^78 bytes, as Windows stack addressing is limited to 2^64 bytes, which translates to 16,384 PB. The file size limit is 2^64-1 bytes.

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Why 4 Colors in Microsoft Logo

Microsoft recently released a brand new logo. 

History of Microsoft logo:

Do you know each of the 4 colors in the new company logo represents a division or product line? Each color is used in that respective product's logo.

Blue for Windows, Windows Live, Server, SQL Server, Azure (including Cloud), Outlook.com, and Internet Explorer. (The Azure logo has not yet been updated)

Red for Office

Green for Xbox and Xbox Live

Yellow… May be It is Bing!!!!

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Windows 8 Developer Preview Keyboard Shortcuts

 Here is Some Keyboard shorcuts for Windows 8 Developer Preview

This is already published in Microsoft MSDN Blog

 

Key and Function in Windows 8

Windows logo key+spacebar: Switch input language and keyboard layout
Windows logo key+Y: Temporarily peek at the desktop
Windows logo key+O: Locks device orientation
Windows logo key+VK: Cycles through toasts
Windows logo key+shift+V: Cycles through toasts in reverse order
Windows logo key+Enter: Launches Narrator
Windows logo key+PgUp: Moves tiles to the left
Windows logo key+PgDown: Moves tiles to the right
Windows logo key+Shift+.: Moves the split to the left
Windows logo key+.: Moves the split to the right
Windows logo key+F: Opens File Search App
Windows logo key+C: Opens Charms Bar
Windows logo key+I: Opens Settings charm
Windows logo key+K: Opens Connect charm
Windows logo key+H: Opens Share charm
Windows logo key+Q: Opens Search pane
Windows logo key+W: Opens Settings Search app
Windows logo key+Z: Opens App Bar

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How to Enable Hybrid Boot in Windows 8

Microsoft has introduced a new feature in Windows 8 which is known as a Windows 8 Hybrid Boot. This allows the user to reduce startup times after shutting down your Windows 8 PC.

What is Hybrid Boot in Windows8
Really fast compared to previous OS Windows 7. Because of the new feature called Hybrid boot. Generally in hibernation mode, all files are saved in the same state, but in Windows 8 Hybrid Boot mode only the system files are saved, so that booting will not take much time.
Shutdown and startup times are considerably less in Windows 8 because of Windows 8 Hybrid Boot integration. Windows 8 Hybrid Boot is enabled by default, but in case you want to disable it or enable it or may be if not enabled by default, you can do it from the control panel. Here is how.

How to Enable Hybrid Boot

Kindly follow the below mentioned steps in order to enable or disable Windows 8 Hybrid Boot :

• Open Control Panel.
• Navigate to Hardware and Sound, then to the Power Options.
• From the left pane, click : Choose what the power button does.
• Click on Change settings that are currently unavailable.
• Now at the bottom, you will be able to enable or disable hybrid boot.

When Windows 8 Hybrid Boot is enabled, Windows 8 does not close the kernel session. The user session is only closed in case of Windows 8 Hybrid Boot.

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