Windows

Ahhh Windows. The crux of general computing, the essence of modern life boiled down to one, simple, beautiful operating system (commence flame war). At any rate, here's a bunch of tips and tricks that will make your life a bit easier.

• Delete the hibernation file: this is a nice little trick to save some space on your hard drive. Not really necessary unless you have limited space, such as when using a SSD. This will delete the file and disable hibernation.
  1. Run the command prompt: windows + r » cmd
  2. powercfg -h off

Every now and then it's good to just completely reinstall windows. Used to, this would take hours and hours, but I believe our record is now somewhere in the vicinity of 10 minutes, with a USB drive and a SSD.

1. Get a copy of windows.
2. Use Windows 7 USB Creator to get windows onto a bootable flash drive. If you don't have a flash drive big enough, get one. I refuse to give instructions on using a CD, it would be akin to giving instructions on how to hand-spin silk when telling you how to tie a knot (single or double Windsor is the easiest).
3. Plug in the drive, reboot. It probably won't boot from the drive, you'll have to go into BIOS and change the boot device.
4. Blah blah blah installing windows.
5. Go to Ninite.com to save yourself a bunch of time installing most of your programs.