In an ideal world, nothing would ever go wrong with your Windows laptop or desktop—but as you know, the sun doesn't always shine, your favorite sports team doesn't always win, and you might occasionally run into problems with your PC. If that happens, Microsoft has provided a suite of troubleshooting tools called the Windows Recovery Environment (or WinRE for short) to help you solve the issue yourself.

You might not be too familiar with WinRE, which is a positive sign—it probably means your computing has largely been trouble-free in recent times. However, it's worth knowing about the options that these utilities offer, whether you're experiencing problems right now or want to be well prepared in the future.

What is the Windows Recovery Environment?

The first Windows Recovery Environment screen. Credit: Lifehacker

First and foremost, WinRE is a way to solve issues stopping your PC from starting up normally. It may even appear automatically if your computer doesn't boot properly—it's built right into Windows systems, so there's nothing to download or install. You can also use WinRE to reset Windows and return it to its original state, in addition to the reset option in Windows Settings.

If you can get into Windows normally, you can launch the Windows Recovery Environment by opening Settings and choosing System > Recovery > Restart now. If not, you might see WinRE appear automatically—most systems should be configured to launch the utility after two or three failed boot attempts.

Alternatively, there will be a key you can press during boot up to launch WinRE rather than Windows: If you're not sure what it is, check the documentation that came with your PC, or search online for your make and model of computer. For some Asus computers it's F12, for example, and for some Dell computers, it's the Windows key.

All the Windows Recovery Environment options (and how they work)

Use a device

The first option you'll see lets you boot from a USB drive or a DVD rather than your hard drive, which you might need to do if you can't start up your PC normally. From there, you can carry out further troubleshooting or reinstall Windows. If you need to create a USB drive or DVD to boot from, check out Microsoft's guide.

Alongside Use a device, and options to turn off your PC or carry on to Windows, there's a Troubleshoot entry on the menu. Select this for more options.

Reset this PC

This is the first option under Troubleshoot. Choosing a reset will do just that: reset Windows to its original settings, hopefully clearing up any issues you've been having. Along the way, you'll be asked if you want to wipe all your personal files and programs too—the reset is more comprehensive if you do, but you'll need to move all of your data back again afterwards, so make sure it's safely backed up somewhere first.

The reset option might be all you need to get Windows working again. Credit: Lifehacker

If Use a device or Reset this PC aren't the solutions you're after, you can dig deeper into the Windows Recovery Environment by choosing Advanced options.

Startup Repair

With this option, Windows will attempt to fix some of the more common issues relating to startup, with no further input required from you. It'll look at the key files controlling the boot up process, registry files, and drivers. Fingers crossed, you'll be back into the normal Windows environment in just a few minutes.

Startup Settings

This gives you some alternatives to booting Windows in the usual way, including the classic Safe Mode, which loads the operating system with as few configuration files and drivers as possible. By starting a stripped-down version of Windows rather than full-fat Windows, you may be able to bypass any issues and troubleshoot your problems further—by removing malware, for example.

Command Prompt

This opens up a text-based command prompt window, a throwback to the days of MS-DOS. As its so bare bones, you may be able to get command prompts working even if you can't get into Windows—so file commands, for example, or further diagnostic checks. For more details on command prompts, see Microsoft's guide.

There are several troubleshooting approaches you can take. Credit: Lifehacker

Uninstall Updates

Sometimes a Windows update will cause problems for your system (and maybe many others, too). This option lets you view updates that have recently been applied to the operating system, and remove them if needed—which may then enable you to get into Windows as normal.

UEFI Firmware Settings

This is where you can make changes to the fundamental UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) software that works underneath Windows (and which has now replaced the BIOS). You're able to check on the status of hard drives and peripherals, and make sure your computer is working at the most basic level—we've written a more detailed UEFI guide here.

System Restore

Essentially, System Restore rolls Windows back to an earlier point in time, ideally undoing whatever change is causing your current PC woes (it'll uninstall apps that have recently been added, for example). These restore points should have been automatically created by Windows, and you'll be prompted to pick one from the list, depending on how far you want to go back.

I like to use my computer's desktop the way I use my physical desktop—somewhere to place documents and photos related to what I'm currently working on. The problem is that I'm usually working on multiple projects, meaning my computer desktop is a mess of unrelated things.

Say I'm selling my old Macbook but also organizing important cat pictures for my newsletter—that all takes up a lot of space, and I don't need to see all of those photos all the time. Wouldn't it be better if I could switch which things show up on my desktop depending on my current project?

That's idea behind Infinidesk, an indie Mac app from developer Ben Shirt-Ediss that lets you create as many virtual desktops as you like and switch between them from the menu bar.

Credit: Justin Pot

The idea behind Infinidesk is that you'll make different desktops for different projects, allowing you to use your desktop as a workspace for each of them. This isn't at all like your Mac's native Mission Control—it doesn't affect the windows you have open. The focus, instead, is simply on the icons visible on your desktop. You can create as many different desktops as you need to. When you create a new desktop, all of your current icons will disappear, allowing you to add new ones. When you switch between desktops, all of your icons will disappear and reappear accordingly.

It's a simple concept, and it won't be useful for everyone—only some of us even still use our desktops to store files at this point, and you might already have your own system for keeping things organized. But if your desktop is spiraling out of control, Infinidesk might help you keep things tidy without making the desktop useless in the process—especially if you have one computer for both work and personal use.

Infinidesk offers a free version, with a catch: you can only switch desktops 50 times. That should be enough for you to get a feel for whether this application is useful for you, though. The full version costs $12.99, as a one-time payment.

Microsoft's iconic Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is dead after 40 years. RIP to the most panic-inducing screen a Windows user can encounter. Now, get ready to fear the Black Screen of Death.

In a blog post on its website today, the company revealed it's ready to go live with an error screen redesign it's been testing since March. In an update to all Windows 11, version 24H2 devices coming "later this summer," the BSOD will finally be put out of its misery.

It's likely to be a bittersweet moment for Windows users, who will undoubtedly have mixed feelings about the warning's fate. Despite its ominous name, getting a BSOD wasn't always as serious as it seemed—a simple crash could trigger it, and restarting could easily fix it. It could be worse than that, too, but in many cases, the old BSOD simply added a bit of personality to the most annoying interruptions to your workflow. Especially in recent years, when you would see a sideways frowning emoticon alongside your error message.

But sometimes, personality isn't what you need, especially when you're already stressed out about your computer encountering a serious error. Businesses and travelers alike were bombarded with a particularly unsolvable Blue Screen of Death during last year's extended Crowdstrike outage, so it makes sense why Microsoft might want to move away from any association with it.

Credit: Microsoft

Enter the new Black Screen of Death. Looking more like other Windows error messages, this is a simple black screen that says, in white text, that "Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart." Below that is a progress counter, alongside your error code and which process triggered it.

"The updated UI improves readability and aligns better with Windows 11 design principles," Microsoft Vice President of Enterprise and OS Security David Weston said in today's blog post.

I'll agree that it's arguably a bit less ominous then the current BSOD, which spends a lot of screen space on that big frowning emoticon, and used to say "Your PC ran into a problem that it couldn't handle" before anything else. Personally, I think the new approach might better reflect most situations that might trigger a BSOD—they're usually not as scary as they seem. Plus, the old error screen didn't actually tell you which process failed, so seeing that on its replacement is a nice bonus (it would occasionally show a QR code, but I often couldn't get it scanned before my computer restarted).

Still, part of me will miss the old Blue Screen of Death, in the same way I miss the Red Ring of Death that claimed my first Xbox 360. Stockholm syndrome, I suppose?

At any rate, Microsoft says that when it releases the new Black Screen of Death (not the official name for the error message, but neither was "Blue Screen of Death"), it will also release a new Quick Machine Recovery feature, which will help you access PCs that can't restart normally. In other words, the company is trying to make sure we won't get another Crowdstrike incident anytime soon. And if we do, it'll hopefully make us feel a little less blue.

Looking for a Windows video player that looks nice, is easy to use, and supports every media file you can imagine? Screenbox is a free and open source application that fits perfectly in Windows 11. It's the media player Microsoft should have made for its own operating system.

We've talked about IINA, a sleek Mac alternative to VLC. Screenbox is the Windows version of that. It goes without saying that VLC is a powerful video player—if you like it, you should absolutely keep using it. But there are downsides: VLC's various toggles can feel cluttered and overwhelming and the mostly gray application doesn't exactly blend in on a modern Windows desktop. Screenbox is built using LibVLCSharp, meaning it supports every media format VLC does and offers the same performance. The big difference is the user interface.

And what a difference it is. Open a video with this application and you'll see a beautiful player with only buttons that are useful. And there are some nice features included too. The player supports YouTube's hidden keyboard shortcuts, meaning if you're learned those, you'll be able to use them in your desktop video player. There's also picture-in-picture support, allowing you to play a video in the background while you're working on something else.

The application also offers a media library feature, if you want it. By default, your video and music folders are included—you can add more folders in the settings. I find this particularly nice for browsing music. You can explore by track, album, or artist.

Credit: Justin Pot

But most people, I suspect, are going to use this just to open the occasional file, not manage a library. I like that it works for both use cases, though. Check it out if you haven't found the perfect Windows media player yet—it might work for you.

It's a sad fact of life: Sometimes you have to work when you'd rather be watching the game. I can't fix that problem for you, sadly, but I can give you a way to keep track of the score on your Mac.

Apple offers a great sports scores app for the iPhone, which is the best way to keep track of the score while you're doing something else. There's nothing like that from Apple for the Mac, though, which I find a little disappointing. Sure, you can ask Siri for the score, but there's no way to passively keep track of the score while you're working on something else. Happily, there's a free app that puts the score for many major leagues right in your menu bar: the aptly named MenuScores.

This is a free and open source application that offers scores for major sports leagues in both Europe and North America. Just install the application and you'll see "Select a Game" in the menu bar. Click this and you'll see a list of leagues—hover over any of them to see a list of games. Click a game and you'll know the score every time you glance at the menu bar. You can optionally get a notification when the game starts and ends.

Credit: Justin Pot

The supported leagues include the NHL, NBA, NCAA men's and women's basketball, the NFL, MLB, F1, PGA, LPGA, EUFA Champions league, EPL, ESP, GER, ITA, and NLL. Most sports fans aren't going to want to see all of theses, so you can disable any league in the settings. You can also disable notifications and configure how often scores should refresh—options range from every five seconds to every five minutes. Scores are pulled in using ESPN's API.

The application isn't perfect. It would be nice if I could get more details about games by clicking them, even if that meant opening a website. I also wish there was support for MLS games. Even so, this is a great tool if you're a fan of even one supported league. I know I'll be opening ii late in the afternoon most days during hockey season.

You just set up your brand new Mac and are about to scroll through a long document. You press the middle button on your mouse, expecting to be able to scroll by moving your cursor the way you can on Windows or Linux. Nothing happens. What gives?

It turns out macOS doesn't support this feature, sometimes called auto scrolling. There are all kinds of little annoyances when you switch from one operating system to another, even if you prefer the operating system you're switching to. This is an example of that but, as usual, there's an application you can install to get things working the way you expect.

Scrollapp is a free and open-source application that does one thing: Add the fast scrolling feature to your Mac. This simple application can be downloaded from the website and installed by dragging it to your Applications folder. You might see a security warning after trying to run it—you'll have to head to Security and Privacy in the Settings app to enable the application. After you do that, you'll see Scrollapp running in the menu bar, as seen above.

After that, you should be able to scroll the way you did on Windows—just click the middle button and move your mouse. You can also enable the feature from the menu bar—just click the Start/Stop Auto-Scroll option—or by pressing the Control key and scrolling a little. That last option is great for trackpads.

The speed of scrolling depends on how far your cursor moves from the starting point, meaning you can scroll more quickly by moving your cursor farther. It's a great way to power through a long document when you're looking for something specific.

Disabling the auto scrolling is simple: Just click the left mouse button, or click the middle button again.

This is a simple application, granted, but it solves a specific problem that new Mac users have. If you have more such problems, we've got advice about adding the best Windows features to your Mac, so be sure to read that for more tips like this one.

AI always reminds me of Clippy, the infamous talking paperclip added to Microsoft Office in the '90s. This little guy frustrated users, was based on a faulty understanding of how people want to use technology, and had a way of showing up even after you specifically turned it off.

It was probably inevitable, then, for someone to make a tool that combines large language models and the 30-year-old animated paperclip. That someone is developer Felix Rieseberg, who built a Windows 95-themed Clippy app that can run real large language models on your computer. The application is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux devices, and works offline.

Clippy looks just the way you remember and hovers over whatever you're working on. He cycles through several animations. Click on him to start chatting, the way you would with any other large language model. The application works offline, meaning you can chat with Clippy on a train or airplane if you really want to.

To be clear: this is not intended to be a functional tool. Rieseberg calls it an art project he made just because it's fun. "If you get as little as a small chuckle out of it, I’m happy to hear it," says the project's "about" page.

Even so, Clippy is probably the easiest tool I've come across for running large language models locally on a computer. Just download the application, install it, then choose which model you want to run in the Windows 95 themed preferences. The default, Google's Gemma, works well enough.

Credit: Justin Pot

This application is based on Ollama, an open source application built by Meta which makes it possible to run a variety of large language models on your own computer. Clippy offers eight different models to try out. Generally, the larger they are the more system resources they'll take to use—you can try a few different ones to get a feel for how well they work on your device. It's fun, if not entirely practical. Clippy can't access the internet, so you can't get real-time information, and the responses aren't as sophisticated as what you'd get from a top-of-the-line AI service.

There are a few more things you can tweak in the settings, including the default font and whether Clippy should always be on the top. You can also write your own system prompt for Clippy, allowing you to take control of his personality.

This AI-powered art project isn't going to change the world, and it's not supposed to. It's a piece of art, like this musical masterpiece Clippy inspired earlier this year.

YouTube is an amazing tool. If there's anything you want to do, from playing an instrument to fixing household appliances, there is a video on the site somewhere outlining exactly how to do it. The problem: YouTube doesn't always act like a tool. It's easy to get sucked down a rabbit hole of related videos, comments, and other distractions (mostly because the site it designed to make sure you do exactly that).

If you wish YouTube behaved more like a tool and less like a dopamine factory, I recommend Untrap. This browser extension, available for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, lets you make almost 300 tweaks to the YouTube website, allowing you to remove the distracting features and enable a few useful ones by default.

To get started, install the extension and click the icon. You will see a few useful options, including the ability to hide all shorts, but to find the really useful things, click the All Settings box at the bottom. This lets you browse tweaks for every page on the YouTube website, including video pages, the home page, and the search results.

I suggest starting with the place you spend most of your time: video pages. Scroll through the list and you'll find various tweaks you can make. The first thing I did was turn on "Hide Related Videos" and turn on "Automatically Show Chapters." This immediately transforms the space to the right of the video from a rabbit hole of distractions into a tool you can use to browse the currently playing video with intention to find the exact information you're looking for.

Credit: Justin Pot

There are more great features here. You can disable the suggestions that show up at the end of the video. You can force the theater mode, meaning the video will always take up the full width of the screen. You can automatically extend the video description, meaning you'll never again have to click the little "More" button in order to find the link that you're looking for. You can even disable the comments completely, if you wish you spent less time scrolling through them. You're in control.

There are similar options for YouTube's homepage, the subscriptions page, and even the search results. If there's anything about YouTube's interface that you find distracting or generally not useful, just disable it. In an ideal world, YouTube (and every other site) would work this way, but it's nice that there are tools out there that let you customize things.

In an ideal world, you'd lead a long and happy life only ever shutting down and restarting your PC via the Start menu. Click the power icon, choose your option, and you're done. However, life doesn't always work out like we plan it, and sometimes you may need to trigger a restart or shutdown from the command prompt instead.

Maybe something is stopping the Start menu from working, or perhaps you find yourself on a screen where the Start menu isn't available. One of the scenarios where I use the command prompt to shut down Windows is when I'm in the initial setup phase for the operating system and don't want to complete it right away.

The shutdown command can turn off your PC on a timer. Credit: Lifehacker

You might also have loaded the command prompt interface to try and troubleshoot a problem that's stopping Windows from working—in which case you need to know how to power off or reboot your computer without pressing and holding the power button. (If you are having PC issues, see also this lesser-known emergency restart option.)

Using the command prompt

If you're completely new to the command prompt, it's the text-based interface hidden away in Windows, a remnant of the old days before computer operating systems had pointers and graphical user interfaces, and still useful for running a variety of low-level system operations.

PowerShell doesn't look too different to the command prompt at first glance. Credit: Lifehacker

The command prompt is also accompanied by PowerShell, which is a more modern and feature-rich version of this interface. As far as these shutdown and restart commands are concerned, you can use either for the job, but if you ever need to run more advanced text commands, scripts, and automations, PowerShell is better set up to accommodate them.

You can launch either the command prompt or PowerShell from the Start menu: Just type the first few letters of either utility into the search box at the top to find them. There are various other options too, like right-clicking on the Start menu button and choosing Terminal, or by typing "cmd" into the search box on the taskbar and hitting Enter.

Using the "shutdown" command

The text command you need to either shut down or restart your Windows computer is 'shutdown'. If you type it into the command prompt or PowerShell and then hit Enter, you'll get a full description of shutdown, and all the ways you can use it (by the way, you can add "| more" to this or any command to see a page of text at a time).

Type "shutdown /s" to trigger a standard shutdown

The most basic flags you'll need are "shutdown /s" and "shutdown /r" to power off and restart your computer, respectively. In both cases you'll see a dialog box on screen telling you what's happening, and the action is taken in less than a minute. These commands will initiate a normal shutdown process, so you'll be prompted to save any unsaved work in your open programs that usually do that.

This will restart Windows and launch the advanced boot options screen. Credit: Lifehacker

Type "shutdown /s /f" to force a shutdown

To force all apps to close without any further prompting—perhaps if you need to make sure the shutdown or restart goes through without a hitch—add the "/f" to the end of your command (so, either "shutdown /s /f" for a shutdown or "shutdown /r /f" for a restart). You do this at your own risk though, with the risk of losing data that hasn't already been saved, and it's probably best left as a last resort.

Type "shutdown /r /o" to access advanced boot options

For troubleshooting purposes, the "shutdown /r /o" command is useful because it reboots your computer into the advanced boot options screen. That's the one that gives you access to features such as using a USB drive to recover your PC, running the built-in start-up repair utility, and rolling back recent updates to Windows. You can also get back to the command prompt from here without starting the operating system.

The shutdown command can also be used to stop a shutdown. Credit: Lifehacker

Time your shutdown by adding "/t"

Another flag that can be useful is the "/t" flag followed by a space and a number. This puts the shutdown or the restart on a delay, giving you time to close apps or finish downloads. The number is the number of seconds Windows should wait, and it can go from 0 (instant) all the way up to 315360000—that's 10 years, if you were wondering. If the seconds are set to anything above zero, the "/f" flag is also applied.

Stop a shutdown with "shutdown /a"

One final one that you might find helpful: You can use "shutdown /a" to abort a shutdown that's currently underway (perhaps one that you've set on a timer). For a full rundown of all the ways you can use this command, including some advanced options for IT managers (such as remote shutdowns), check out the official Microsoft documentation.

Alongside a couple of new Surface devices, Microsoft has also announced a number of notable upgrades on the way for Windows 11, covering the Start menu, Copilot AI, and core Windows utilities such as Paint and the Snipping Tool.

The Start menu changes are significant, and I wrote about them last month when they were first spotted in hidden code. The menu is becoming bigger, more customizable, and more usable, with the option to see all apps immediately—and several options for how those apps are arranged on screen.

If you don't want to see recommended shortcuts (to recent files, for example), these can be hidden. You can also increase the size of the pinned apps panel. Another change is the addition of a "phone companion" (essentially the Phone Link app) on the right of the Start menu.

This revamp is coming to the Windows Insider channel in the next month, Microsoft says, and there are several other updates on the same timetable. One is AI actions in File Explorer, which will give you access to AI-powered features from the right-click menu: Think summarizing documents and editing images.

Another feature coming soon to Windows Insider users is AI text generation and summarizing in Notepad, plus lightweight formatting options. For the first time you'll be able to make text bold and italic inside Notepad, and introduce lists and headings. There will also be support for the Markdown formatting language.

Already available to Windows Insiders, and coming soon to everyone else, we have Copilot Vision. It means you can chat with the AI about whatever's on screen—whether you want shopping advice or help with image editing— and Microsoft has previously given us a good idea of how it works.

Features for Copilot+ PCs

Some of the newly announced features are arriving first on Copilot+ PCs (those that meet a certain performance criteria) with Snapdragon chipsets. Again, these updates are appearing in the Windows Insider channel first, before making their way to everyone else with a Copilot+ PC. Microsoft has intimated that they'll roll out eventually to PCs powered by AMD or Intel.

First, Microsoft is putting an AI agent inside Settings, so you can get help finding the toggle switch you need or figuring out how to do something. One example shown in the Microsoft demo is typing "my text is too small" to find the option for font size. The AI agent can even change settings for you, if you give it permission.

We're also getting more actions for the Click to Do feature (essentially an AI-powered, context-sensitive right-click menu), including options to schedule meetings in Teams or launch the Immersive Reader mode for text. Windows search is getting a boost too, with greater coverage for photos, settings, and the Microsoft Store.

The Photos app built into Windows has slowly been getting better and better, and it'll soon pick up a relight feature for dynamic lighting control. You'll be able to set up to three lighting sources, and adjust the brightness and intensity, while seeing the changes on the image in real time.

As for Paint, it's gaining the ability to create custom stickers from text prompts, and a new object select tool that will use AI to select objects with a single click. If you need to move or remove something in an image, this should make the process of selecting it faster and more straightforward.

The Windows Snipping Tool is getting more features as well: intelligent screenshot cropping, the ability to extract text from screenshots, and a color picker. Finally, the Narrator on Copilot+ PCs is being upgraded to offer rich image descriptions, so it'll be able to describe charts, photos, and other visual elements that are on screen.

I couldn't live without copy and paste—it's core to the way I write and work—but it's a pretty abstract feature when you think about it. Copy something and it goes... somewhere. Then you can paste it. Oh, and if you copy a second thing the first thing is gone.

This is a problem solved by clipboard managers. These applications let you review everything you've copied recently and even select an older item to paste it. They work well, but generally require a lot of context switching. What if you want to copy multiple things and then paste them later, all in the order you copied them, without having to open a clipboard manager and choose the items in order? There's a free and open source Mac tool for that: Batch Clipboard (which I found via MacMenuBar).

This application isn't a clipboard manager—in fact, it can easily be used alongside one. With the application running, you can copy text, images, or files using the keyboard shortcut Cmd-Control-C to start building a batch. When you're ready, you can paste them, one at a time starting at the beginning of the batch, using the keyboard shortcut Cmd-Control-V. You can click the menu bar icon at any time to see the current batch.

It takes a second to wrap your head around, but is quite useful in certain contexts. If, for example, you're reading a document and want to collect a few quotes, you can copy each one to your batch and them paste them all to your notes in sequence, taking the time to add a bit of context as you go. This allows you to focus on reading instead of constantly switching back and forth between the source document and your notes.

Credit: Justin Pot

Getting started is simple. After downloading the app, you can launch it to read the quick start guide—it will talk you through using the application and ask you to enable permissions. You can access the settings by clicking the menu bar icon and clicking "Settings". You can customize the keyboard shortcuts, decide whether the application start when your computer does, and change how many history items are visible in the menu. You can also choose for the application to ignore items copied from particular applications.

You could, in theory, use Batch Clipboard as an alternative to a clipboard manager—click the menu bar icon while holding the Option key and you can review everything you copied recently. You could also use it alongside a dedicated clipboard manager, or just open it when you specifically want to use the batch copying feature. Check it out if clipboard managers have never quite clicked with you.