When Windows breaks: How to fix it, piece by piece

Description

You must like the customizability of Windows. But, with all that freedom you can mess up things. Read this tutorial before burning your installation.

Solution:

Reigniting IE

Internet Explorer can suffer with excessive interfering. In case, you have junk the desktop version of your browser then click gear icon on the right side of the IE toolbar. After this select “Internet Options.” Open the “Advanced” tab from the new window and click “Reset” button available at the bottom of the screen. You need to decide that whether you want to clear personal settings. If yes, click “Reset” again.

File History

Enable the File History feature of Windows 8 or 8.1. File History is the tool to back up your Windows Libraries, desktop, contacts, and some of your favorite folders to external drive, network drive, or some other storage location. It saves everything as a different version and thus, you need to take several steps back to restore an older state. For enabling it, connect another drive to your system and then go to “Control Panel” > “System and Security” > “File History” to set it up. You can find the advanced options in the left-side menu. By default, Windows 8.1 hides the Libraries. Enable them. For saving a folder that is not a part of one of the default Windows Libraries, add it.

Reset your Libraries

Right-click the “Libraries” listed in the Windows File Explorer and choose “Restore default libraries” to make it uncluttered and clean. Also, you can restore individual libraries. Windows will not confirm that whether you want to reboot Libraries or not. So, click when you are sure about doing it.

Reset the Ribbon UI 

Talking about the Ribbon UI in Windows 8, it is very much customizable. Just open “Windows File Explorer” in the desktop and browse the “View” tab to click “Options” button on the right side of the Ribbon menu. Three tabs hidden in the Folder options window contain its own “Restore defaults” button. After clicking that button, there is no turning back.

Reset the taskbar and Start menu

For resetting Windows taskbar, right-click an empty section of the taskbar and select “Properties.” After this, open the “Taskbar” tab and click “Customize” button. Below the scrolling list of options, you can find the blue link for Restore default icon behaviors. Also, you can restore the Start Menu’s defaults. Open the “Start Menu” tab, click “Customize” button and then press “use default settings” button available at the bottom of the “Customize Start Menu” pop-up that appears.

Mr. Microsoft, tear that firewall down!

Moreover, you can reset Firewall. Go to “Control Panel” > “System and Security” > “Windows Firewall” and click “Restore defaults” in the left-hand pane.

System Restore

It acts like File History. If you are finding things insecure then it can return your PC to a previous, workable state. These system restore points are created once per week or while installing a new app or update. To create a snapshot of your system, you can go to “Control Panel” > “System and Security” > “System” and then select “System Protection” from the left-hand pane. Click “Create” button. If you want to use this feature then go to the same place and click “System restore” button. 

Refresh and reset

Windows 8 also include new "refresh and reset" options that can restore main aspects of Windows to their native state. Refresh is the option which will not touch your personal files. Apart from personal files, everything else will be replaced.

Reset is the nuclear option. With this, you can remove everything you have installed, created or changed on your computer. Before using reset option, take back up of all your important stuff.

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