Windows 8 Tips & Tricks

Have you found interesting tricks and/or hidden features in Windows 8 that you find useful*? Please post them in this thread and I'll include them in the listing in this first post. If there are sufficient entries, I'll further categorize them.

Please keep this about useful techniques you've found while using the OS. This is NOT a Windows 8 love/hate thread.

*Some of these features may also appear in older OSs.

Installation and Deployment

• Free E-book from Microsoft: Introducing Windows 8: An Overview for IT Professionals
• For a clean install from an upgrade DVD, select Custom installation. More on this here.

Tricks on the desktop:

• Mouse over the left-hand bottom of the screen and then right-click on the start screen modal. A contextual menu for a wealth of system utilities pops up:
  
  Spoiler

  
• (This is especially useful for File Explorer) Middle mouse key click any running item in the task bar to open another instance of the program. If you don't have a middle mouse button, you can right-click on the item then left click on the item name:
  
  Spoiler

  
• Mouse over the upper left corner of the screen to see a modal of the most recent running application in the Windows 8 UI. Repeatedly click on the modal to toggle between running Win8 UI apps. Move the mouse directly down to open a sidebar with all running apps that you've recently viewed, with the start meuu at the bottom. This trick applies to the start screen and all apps as well.

Old and maybe forgotten:

• Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to bring up task manager directly.

Win8 UI (start screen):

• Right click anywhere on the start screen to bring up all apps; click on the "all apps" icon on the bottom of the screen to return to the start screen.
• Right click on multiple items (no need to hold down ctl) to pin/unpin them as a group on the start screen.

Utilities:

• To Shut Down, go to the desktop and press Alt+F4 on your keyboard. This brings up a Shut Down Windows dialog. Note that if you don't click on the desktop first, this will simply close the program you're currently focused on.
  
• Enable Hibernate and a great search shortcut
  
• Storage Spaces
  
  

Great tips, here is one I learned from http://blog.laptopmag.com/how-to-shutdown-windows-8-in-just-one-click

I have not put my hands into windows 8 yet so I will be just a reader here. Im sure to come back here to check things out.
Nice topic.

New tip to enable hibernate and search shortcut added and a bump!

I just built a machine with Windows 8 (64 bit) last weekend. I had envisioned using a Linux based hard disk extender program, but I don't really want to learn Linux to address any problems. Windows Home Server had a version of this feature, but it was dropped from WHS 2012.

Windows 8 has a feature called Storage Spaces. I used three 2 TB drives to build a parity setup. It provides 4 TB for network storage. One drive can fail and the data is supposed to be safe. The setup process was quick and easy. But it's way too early to determine how reliable the feature will be.

Windows 8 seems faster than Windows 7. But I don't know if that will change as you add more and more programs.

But I have to say Windows 8 reminds me of one of those very early computer games where you were met with an obstacle. Then you tried this and that until you finally stumbled on a solution to overcome the challenge and finally work your way to the end of the game.

I'm sure there are hidden tricks and features that will be discovered by users over time. But it also reminds me now of dealing with a crying infant. You try this. You try that. What you're doing is guessing what the baby wants.

BachOn

New shutdown shortcut added, storage spaces added, along with a link to a great article about it from Arstechnica, title for section updated to "utilities".

hafa said:

[*]Right-click on any running item in the task bar and then left click on the item name to open another instance of the program. This is especially useful for File Explorer:

Click to expand...

Middle-mouse click (scroll wheel click) does the same thing and saves a click. This also works in Win7. Very useful for File Explorer and launching new browser instances.

Biggest thing for me was to think of the Start Screen as a big start menu... yeah it is different, but helps hate it less

Oroka Sempai said:

Biggest thing for me was to think of the Start Screen as a big start menu... yeah it is different, but helps hate it less

Click to expand...

+1

Added JeremyCT's middle mouse click trick; added spoiler tags to hide images to increase readability.

Installed Win8 last night. I purchased the "upgrade version" media for 20 bucks from the university bookstore, but lo and behold, it installs as the full version! Pop the DVD in and select Custom installation.

Added New category: Installation & Deployment. New topics in this category include Super Nade's installation tip and a link to the robust, Free E-book from Microsoft: Introducing Windows 8: An Overview for IT Professionals