Did you know that Windows 8 has some great ways of managing your user files? From adding additional folder locations in the Libraries to ultimately moving your user documents to another location. You can do all of these and more. Here's how to modify the default locations of user files and library properties in Windows 8.

Moving your personal folders has become more commonplace when you have two (2) or more disk drives in a computer. By moving the user files to another drive, you're freeing up space on the operating system's drive. This can be extremely beneficial if your operating system is installed on a Solid State Drive (SSD). When you move a folder to a new location, you change where the folder and files are stored. However, you'll still access the folder the same way you did before you moved it.

Also, instead of moving a folder, you might want to consider including another folder in one of your libraries. For example, if you have a large number of pictures, you can store those pictures in a location other than your primary hard drive and then include that location in your Pictures library. For more information, see below.

How to change the location of user files in Windows 8

There are six (6) user folders in Windows 8, which you can change their locations. They are Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos. You will need to create folders with the same name in the new location before moving any of them.

How to move a user folder to a new location

1. From the desktop, left-click on the File Explorer icon on the Taskbar or press the Windows logo key + E.
2. Navigate to This PC and expand it. If you don't see the Navigation pane go to the View tab, pull down the Navigation pane toolbar, and place a checkmark next to the Navigation pane.
3. Right-click the folder that you want to move, and then click Properties.
4. Click the Location tab, and then click Move.
5. Browse to the location where you want to move this folder. You can select another location on this computer, another drive attached to this computer, or another computer on the network. To find a network location, type two backslashes (\\) into the address bar followed by the name of the location where you want to redirect the folder (for example, \\mylaptop), and then press Enter.
6. Click the folder where you want to store the files, click Select Folder, and then click OK.
7. In the dialog that appears, click Yes to move all the files to the new location.

To restore a folder to its original location

1. From the desktop, left-click on the File Explorer icon on the Taskbar or press the Windows logo key + E.
2. Navigate to This PC and expand it. If you don't see the Navigation pane go to the View tab, pull down the Navigation pane toolbar, and place a checkmark next to the Navigation pane.
3. Right-click the folder that you previously redirected and want to restore to its original location, and then click Properties.
4. Click the Location tab, click Restore Default, and then click OK.
5. Click Yes to recreate the original folder, and then click Yes again to move all the files back to the original folder.

Note:
If you don't see the Location tab in a folder's Properties dialog, then the folder can't be moved. If you see the Location tab but can't edit the folder path, you don't have permission to move it.

How to modify library properties in Windows 8

We are all familiar with files and folders, but when Windows 7 came out, we got another way to manage them, Libraries. Libraries are where you go to manage your documents, music, pictures, and other files. You can browse your files the same way you would in a folder or view your files arranged by properties like date, type, and author.

In some ways, a library is similar to a folder. For example, when you open a library, you'll see one or more files. However, unlike a folder, a library gathers files that are stored in several locations. This is a subtle but significant difference. Libraries don't hold your folders/files. They monitor folders that contain your files, and let you access and arrange the items in different ways. For instance, if you have music files in folders on your hard disk and an external drive you can access all of your music files at once using the Music library.

Windows 8 has four default libraries: Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos. You can also create new libraries. If you don't see the Libraries in File Explorer, go to the View tab, pull down the Navigation pane toolbar and place a checkmark next to Show Libraries.

Here are some ways you can modify an existing library:

• Include or remove a folder. Libraries gather content from included folders or library locations. You can include up to 50 folders in one library.
• Change the default save location. The default save location determines where an item is stored when copied, moved, or saved to the library.
• Change the type of file a library is optimized for. Each library can be optimized for a particular file type (such as music or pictures). Optimizing a library for a specific file type changes the available options for arranging your files.

How to add a folder to a library

1. From the desktop, left-click on the File Explorer icon on the Taskbar or press the Windows logo key + E.
2. Open the library you'd like to change.
3. On the ribbon on top select Manage library.
4. In the Library Locations dialog box, click on Add, navigate to the folder you want to add to the library, and click on Include folder.
5. Click OK.

How to change a library's default save location

A library's default save location determines where an item will be stored when copied, moved, or saved.

1. From the desktop, left-click on the File Explorer icon on the Taskbar or press the Windows logo key + E.
2. Right-click on the library you'd like to change and click Properties.
3. Select the library location that you want as default and click on Set save location.
4. Click OK.

How to change the type of files a library is optimized for

Each library can be optimized for a particular file type (such as music or pictures). Optimizing a library for a specific file type changes the available options for arranging the files in that library..

1. From the desktop, left-click on the File Explorer icon on the Taskbar or press the Windows logo key + E.
2. Right-click on the library you'd like to change, and then click Properties.
3. In the Optimize this library for list, select a file type and then click OK.

It seems like every day, a new software exploit or vulnerability is found. Software vendors work hard at keeping their software secure, but it can take time to test and deploy patches. So what can you do to protect your computer? The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) from Microsoft does just that.

The main window inside of EMET 5

EMET is designed to prevent attackers from taking control of your system. It works as 'shim' in-between your programs and the operating system. EMET looks for the most common attack techniques and will block and terminate any program it is monitoring. EMET works alongside your favorite anti-virus and anti-malware programs for layered security.

I have been using EMET as part of my layered security for years and have written a few blogs on it. With each version, Microsoft keeps improving it. Some of the improvements in EMET 5 include Attack Surface Reduction (ASR), Export Address Table Filtering Plus (EAF+), and 64-bit ROP mitigations. Here's is the current list of mitigations EMET currently looks for.

• Structured Exception Handler Overwrite Protection (SEHOP)
• Data Execution Prevention (DEP)
• Heapspray allocation
• Null page allocation
• Mandatory Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR)
• Export Address Table Access Filtering (EAF)
• Export Address Table Access Filtering Plus (EAF+)
• Bottom-up randomization
• Return Oriented Programming (ROP)
• Attack Surface Reduction (ASR)

There are two (2) different ways to configure EMET, a Graphic User Interface (GUI) and a command-line tool. It is best to configure EMET through the GUI since the command-line tool doesn't allow access to all EMET's features. The built-in configuration wizard will enable you to use either the recommenced settings, keep previous settings (upgrade install), or manually configure EMET (new install).

Easily configure programs to monitor in EMET 5

Once you have EMET installed, it's pretty easy to add programs to monitor. Just open the program you want EMET to watch and then open EMET. On the lower part of the main window, you will see Running Processes. Just find the program you want to monitor in the list, right-click on it, and select Configure Process. You will have to restart any program you have just configured inside of EMET.

When it comes to achieving the best performance from your computer, nothing beats a Solid State Drive (SSD). Right out of the box, they are significantly faster at reading/writing data than a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). But there are a few things that you have to do differently with an SSD. Here's how to safely optimize your solid-state drive.

There are numerous articles available that offer various tweaks to enhance SSD access time, ranging from disabling disk indexing to turning off Prefetch and Superfetch. Some may work for you, while others may not. Generally speaking, if you're running Windows 7 or higher, the operating system should recognize the SSD and modify its behavior accordingly. The following tweaks are entirely safe and will not harm your system in any way.

General SSD maintenance

SSDs operate differently from HDDs, and there are a couple of things you should never do to an SSD. Since SSDs have limited read/write cycles, any program that intensively accesses the SSD can shorten the drive's lifespan. Running a disk defragment program on an SSD is not recommended. As for Check Disk (CHKDSK), you'll need to contact the manufacturer of your SSD to determine if they recommend it.

Microsoft began building in support for SSDs in Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 and has expanded on it in later versions of Windows. Since the low-level operation of SSDs differs from that of HDDs, the Trim command was introduced to handle delete/format requests. To verify that Trim is on, you'll need to open an Administrative Command Prompt.

How to open a Command Prompt with Administrator privileges in Windows 11

How to open a Command Prompt with Administrator privileges in Windows 10

How to open a Command Prompt with Administrator privileges in Windows 8

How to open a Command Prompt with Administrator privileges in Windows 7

You can verify that Trim is enabled by typing the following into an Administrative Command Prompt:

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

If the command returns a 0, then Trim is enabled. If it returns a 1, then it is not. To enable Trim, type the following into the Admin Command Prompt:

fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0

SSD free space maintenance

SSDs do have one downside: their capacity can be smaller than that of HDDs. The capacity of SSDs is getting closer to HDDs every day, but the price for a 4 to 8TB SSD can be expensive. If you have a smaller capacity SSD, maintaining an adequate amount of free space is essential.

Now, there are two scenarios for setting up computers with SSDs: Single-drive (SSD only) and Multiple drive (SSD + HDD). Laptops are usually single-drive, and desktops are almost always multiple-drive. Here are a few ways to maintain free space.

Single-drive (SSD only)

The options here are limited. You can store your files, such as documents, photos, and music, on an external drive or in the cloud to free up space. Here are a few more ideas.

Turn off Hibernation.
With the speed of an SSD, boot times will be relatively faster than with an HDD. You'll find that you can boot your computer just as fast as if you brought it out of hibernation. And since hibernation writes the system memory to disk, you'll free up the same amount of disk space equal to the total system memory. And if you have a lot of memory, this can free up a big chunk of space on your SSD.

Disable Windows hibernation and free up disk space

Turn off the virtual memory/pagefile.
Use this with caution! Technically, virtual memory is used when all of the system memory is full. If you have a large amount of system memory (64GB or more) and don't run memory-intensive software like Photoshop, you should be alright turning it off. And you'll free up a few GB's of drive space in the process.

Managing Virtual Memory / Pagefile in Windows 11

Managing Virtual Memory / Pagefile in Windows 10

Managing Virtual Memory / Pagefile in Windows 8

Managing Virtual Memory / Pagefile in Windows 7

Clean up the drive regularly.
Temporary files and browser caches are a few items you'll need to keep an eye on. Using a program like Piriform's CCleaner or Disk Cleanup that comes with Windows will take care of these files. Disk Cleanup can also be run as a scheduled task.

Clean up Windows 11 with Storage Sense and Disk Cleanup

Clean up Windows 10 with Disk Cleanup

Clean up your hard drive in Windows 8 with Disk Cleanup

Free up more disk space with Windows 7 Disk Cleanup

Clean up and optimize your computer for free with CCleaner

Multiple-drive (SSD + HDD)

This is the optimal setup. Everything applicable to a single-drive scenario also applies here. Windows and program files should be stored on the SSD. Almost anything else that Windows doesn't require for regular operation can go over to the HDD.

Move the virtual memory/pagefile.
Instead of turning it off, move it to the HDD (see the link above).

Move personal files to HDD.
Your documents, photos, and music can occupy a significant amount of space on your drive. Get them off the SSD and over to the HDD.

How to change the location of personal folders in Windows 11

Modifying the default locations of user files and library properties in Windows 10

Modifying the default locations of user files and library properties in Windows 8

Modifying the default locations of user files and library properties in Windows 7

There are several other tweaks you can make, such as relocating your browser cache and temporary folders to the HDD. You can find all that information and more with a quick Google search.

Note: This article was based on Paint.NET version 4. Since this article was written, Paint.NET version 5 has been released. Click here to read the newer Paint.NET 5 article.

One of the things I like to do besides repairing computers is creating graphics. Over the years, I have used many different image editing programs, including Photoshop and CorelDraw. But for free graphics programs, you just cannot beat Paint.NET.

Lately, I have been back through some of my older articles and updating the content. Even though I wrote this article a few years ago, Paint.NET is still one of my favorite graphics programs. And it just keeps getting better all of the time.

The user interface inside of Paint.NET 4

Paint.NET was initially created to replace the Paint program included in Windows but has evolved in to so much more since then. It includes such features as layers, effects, transparency, blending, and best of all, plugins.

With hundreds of plugins available, you can expand on the out-of-the-box graphic capabilities of Paint.NET. Since I have a digital camera that will take photos in RAW format, I found a plugin that opens that type of file. I also use Photoshop and have found a plugin to open those files too.

Paint.NET uses an asynchronous, fully multithreaded rendering engine and supports hardware acceleration via the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). Selections are anti-aliased, and selected outlines rendered with 'dancing ants' animation, significantly improving the contrast between the sample and image. And the user interface is clean and straightforward to use.

The Settings dialog box inside of Paint.NET 4

There are now two (2) versions of the Paint.NET program. The original Windows desktop version and the UWP (Universal Windows Platform). The Windows desktop version is available for download for free from the dotPDN website. The UWP version is available for purchase from the Microsoft Store.

Paint.NET system requirements

• Windows 10, Windows 8.1, or Windows 7 SP1 with platform update
• .NET Framework 4.7.2
• 1 GHz processor (dual-core recommended)
• 1 GB of RAM

For more information on Paint.NET, follow the links below:

Get Paint 4
What's new in Paint.NET

There are some computers out there that still use a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) for storage and could be upgraded to a Solid State Drive (SSD). Each drive type has pros and cons: HDDs are cheaper and have more storage, but SSDs are extremely fast (especially when connected to an M.2 slot). So, if your existing computer has an HDD, odds are you could replace it with an SSD. Here's how to upgrade your computer's hard disk drive to a solid-state drive.

I wrote an article not long ago on how to upgrade the hard drive in your computer and refer back to it often. It describes how to clone a smaller drive to a larger one of the same type. Since SSDs typically have less storage than HDDs, this time, I'll have to shrink the existing HDD partition(s) down below the capacity of the target SSD before I can clone it.

As in the article mentioned above, the first thing to do is check the existing HDD. Doing this will ensure there are no errors that may prohibit the cloning of the drive.

How to check your drive for errors in Windows 11

How to check your drive for errors in Windows 10

Now we have to start cleaning up the drive. Windows has a built-in tool called Disk Cleanup (cleanmgr.exe) that works well at getting out the clutter. Try using it from an admin command prompt; that way, you'll get more options.

Clean up Windows 11 with Disk Cleanup

Clean up Windows 10 with Disk Cleanup

Since we are trying to get the maximum amount of free space we can, we will have to delete some files, including documents, photos, videos, etc. Doing a backup right now will ensure we have a copy of all the files if we need to recover some later.

How to backup your Windows 11 computer using Windows Backup

How to backup your Windows 10 computer using Windows Backup

The next thing we have to do is find out what is taking up space on the existing HDD. For this, I'll use a copy of Space Sniffer. After a quick look, I see that I can free up several gigabytes of space by permanently removing the hibernation file and temporarily deleting the swap file. Windows will warn you about having no swap file, but we will be recreating the swap file once the drive cloning is complete.

Disable Windows hibernation

How to manage Windows 11 Virtual Memory

How to manage Windows 10 Virtual Memory

The next thing we need to do to the drive is to defragment it. For this task, I'll use the built-in Defrag and Optimize Drive app.

How to defragment and optimize your drive in Windows 11

How to defragment and optimize your drive in Windows 10

If the capacity of your drives match

If the capacity of your old drive and new drive are the same capacity, you are ready to clone your drive. The following link has instructions and links to the software to do it.

How to clone the drive in your Windows computer

Once you have your old drive cloned to the new one and you have swapped them out, go ahead and re-enable the swap file. Re-enabling hibernation is a personal choice.

If the capacity of your drives do not match

If the capacity of your old and new drive differ, you will have to manually resize the Boot partition (C: drive). Right-click on the Start button to bring up the Power User menu and select Disk Management. Here you will find all of the drives currently attached to your computer.

If you have more than one drive attached to your computer, you will need to determine which drive has the operating system. This drive will usually have three partitions: EFI System Partition, Boot Partition and Recovery Partition.

Once you have located the correct drive, you need to check the partition structure. The EFI System Partition is always the first partition (the start of the drive) on the left side of the graphical view of the drive, with the Boot Partition in the middle and the Recovery Partition on the right side (the end of the drive). If you have more than one partition behind the Boot Partition, you will need to contact a computer technician to assist with the upgrade.

Since we need to resize the Boot Partition (C:\ drive), you will need to disable and remove the Recovery Partition and recreate it after the drive has been upgraded. This can only be done using an Administrative Command Prompt.

How to open a Command Prompt with Administrator privileges in Windows 11

How to open a Command Prompt with Administrator privileges in Windows 10

When you have an Admin Command Prompt open, type the following to find the location of the Windows Recovery Environment (WindowsRE) boot image and press Enter.

reagentc /info

Take note of the harddisk# and partition#. Then, type the following to disable the WindowsRE boot image and press Enter.

reagentc /disable

Then type the following and press Enter. This will bring up the command-line version of Disk Management.

diskpart

Then type the following to list all of the disks attached to your computer and press Enter.

list disk

To select the disk with the Recovery Partition, type the following and press Enter. This should be the same harddisk number that you made note of earlier.

sel disk #

To select the Recover Partition, type the following and press Enter. This should be the same partition number that you made note of earlier.

sel part #

To delete the WinRE partition, type the following and press Enter.

delete partition override

If your old drive is larger than your new drive, you will need to shrink the Boot Partition. To do this, open Computer Management, expand the Storage section in the left column and select Disk Management. In the right column, right-click on the partition marked as Boot (usually C:) and select Shrink. Remember to take the size down at least 10-15% below the capacity of the new SSD.

Shrinking a partition down in Windows

Once the partition has been resized, it's time to clone the drive. The following article details how to clone your hard drive, including links to the cloning software.

How to upgrade the hard drive in your computer

Note: An issue not addressed in the article above is the form factor; the existing SATA HDD is 3.5" form factor, and SATA SSDs are 2.5" form factor.

This can easily be resolved by using a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter bracket.

Once the drive cloning is complete, and the system is running again, we need to expand the boot partition to use any free space available. Open Computer Management, expand the Storage section in the left column and select Disk Management. In the right column, right-click on the partition mark as Boot (usually C:) and select Expand. Make sure to leave 1GB of space at the end for the Recovery Partition.

To recreate the Recovery Partition, you will need to open an Admin Command Prompt. At the prompt, type the following and press Enter.

diskpart

First thing you need to do is check if the disk partition style is a GUID Partition Table (GPT) or a Master Boot Record (MBR). To do that, type the following and press Enter. Check if there is an asterisk character (*) in the Gpt column. If there is an asterisk character (*), then the drive is GPT. Otherwise, the drive is MBR.

list disk

If your disk is GPT, type the following and press Enter.

create partition primary id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac

Then type the following and press Enter.

gpt attributes =0x8000000000000001

If your disk is MBR, type the following and press Enter.

create partition primary id=27

Once the partition has been created, you will need to format it. Type the following and press Enter.

format quick fs=ntfs label=”Windows RE tools”

To confirm that the WinRE partition is created, type the following and press Enter.

list vol

To exit from diskpart, type the following and press Enter.

exit

To re-enable WinRE, type the following and press Enter.

reagentc /enable

If for any reason the WindowsRE fails to re-enable the Recovery Partition, an in-place upgrade will rebuild the Recovery Partition.

How to perform a repair upgrade of Windows 11

How to perform a repair upgrade of Windows 10

Once the boot partition has been resized, you can enable the Windows swap file. For more information on upgrading computer drives, click on the following links.

How to clone the drive in your Windows computer

How to upgrade the hard drive in your computer