Association of Computer Technician Student

Technology Update: I set up Windows 11's God Mode and then made it even faster with these shortcuts

I spend a lot of time tweaking Windows settings for testing things, and honestly, Windows 11 doesn’t make that experience fun. Microsoft has scattered system options between the modern Settings app and the old Control Panel, and some of them are buried so deep that you end up clicking through multiple menus just to change something simple. All of that makes even basic adjustments feel far more tedious than they should.

I’ve tried tools like Wintoys, and they definitely make things easier. But they still don’t cover every setting there is. That’s why I continue to rely on God Mode. Not only does it bring hundreds of settings into one place, but it also lets me create shortcuts for the options I use most often.

=====God Mode is already useful — custom shortcuts make it even better
Everything important, just a click away

I don’t know about you, but managing settings on Windows has never felt particularly smooth to me. It doesn’t matter if you use the modern Settings app or directly search for an option through Windows Search, the experience is still somewhat broken. I used to love using the Control Panel to tweak things, but ever since Microsoft started redirecting some of the options to the Settings app, the whole experience has become oddly fragmented.

That’s exactly why I love Windows' God Mode, even though its interface looks slightly dated. It basically gathers all the important system settings and puts them on one list. I can simply scroll through the list or use the search tool to find what I need. I’ve even pinned the God Folder folder to my taskbar so I can access it from any screen.

Still, as convenient as God Mode is, I’ve realized that opening the folder itself is still an extra step. Also, depending on the setting, I’d still have to scroll through the list or search for the option I want to tweak. So to avoid that, I’ve now created shortcuts of settings I need almost daily.

=====Turning Windows settings into one-click shortcuts is easy
Drag and drop to create

Adding your most-used settings to the desktop is quite easy. But to do that, you first need to create the God Mode folder if you don’t have it already. For that, right-click anywhere on the desktop, choose New > Folder, and rename the folder using the following command:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Hit Enter and the folder will change into a Control Panel icon, which you can customize later if you want. Once that’s done, open the folder and find the setting you use often. Right-click it and choose Create shortcut. Finally, hit Yes when you see the confirmation prompt. You can even do this to create shortcuts for a specific Control Panel applet, like Devices and Printers or Power Options.

Yes, it’s possible to create desktop shortcuts for specific Windows Settings directly, but God Mode makes the entire process dramatically simpler. With it, I no longer have to search for obscure commands or look up special scripts. I can just open the folder, find the setting I need, and drag it to the desktop. It’s that easy.

=====I stopped searching for settings after doing this
I finally stopped digging through endless menus
The biggest advantage of creating these shortcuts is just how fast everyday tweaks become. Before this, I’d usually open the God Mode folder, launch the Settings app, dig through the Control Panel, or use Windows Search to find what I needed. That works fine for occasional tasks, but it becomes quite annoying for settings you need almost daily.

For instance, one of the shortcuts I have is Choose a power plan. It lets me switch between all the different power plans, depending on what I’m doing. While the Windows 11 Settings app already lets you change power modes, it doesn’t show the hidden power plans you’ve enabled or the custom ones you’ve created from scratch.

I’ve also created a shortcut for Free up disk space by deleting unnecessary files, which launches Disk Cleanup. It gives me a quick way to get rid of temporary files and old Windows update data. More importantly, having the shortcut sitting on my desktop acts as a visual reminder to clean things up regularly instead of waiting until storage starts running low.

Another shortcut I regularly use opens the Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows menu. It lets me turn off unnecessary visual effects, animations, shadows, and other performance-related settings. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to speed up any old PC.

Of course, these are just the shortcuts I personally need. You can explore God Mode and create the shortcuts for settings you need the most. The trick is to know when to stop. If you end up creating too many shortcuts, you’ll end up replacing one problem with another, which is finding the one you need on a cluttered desktop.

-=By Pankil Shah | Published: May 22, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT

Technology Update: Microsoft surprises with its first server Linux distribution: Azure Linux 4.0

ZDNET's key takeaways
• Microsoft released its first full Linux distro: Azure Linux 4.0.
• Azure Linux ix split into Azure Container Linux and the virtual machine edition.
• Microsoft effectively admits that it's a de facto Linux-based company.

Minneapolis -- So, there I was at Open Source Summit North America, listening to Brendan Burns, co-founder of Kubernetes and today Microsoft's corporate vice president of Azure Cloud Native and Management Platform, and Open Source, talk about the evolution from open source to agentic AI. Then, in the middle of his presentation, he said, "When I started in Azure 10 years ago, it was not the majority operating system running on the Azure cloud. It has become the majority operating system running on the Azure cloud in the past 10 years. And today, I think we're really excited to announce that we're going to be having Microsoft's open-source Linux distribution, a supported version of Linux supported by Microsoft, available on Azure, out for anybody to use."

I blinked. Backstage, Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's CEO, blinked, and all the Linux-savvy people in the crowd went, "Huh?"

Microsoft has released Linux-based programs before. The first was the Azure Sphere edge computing device. This was followed by CBL-Mariner, a Linux-based container software platform, which was later renamed Azure Linux. Never, however, had Microsoft released a general-purpose Linux distro, until now.

That was it. That was all he said. Zemlin called him back onstage and asked if he'd really just announced a Microsoft Linux distro. Burns replied that yes, he had. Zemlin continued, "When Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation, there was this big conspiracy theory that somehow the Linux Foundation was undermining open source in partnership with Microsoft, and now you announce that you're shipping a Linux distribution. That's amazing."

He's right. It is. We've come a long way from the days when former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux a cancer. Now, Burns said, "It's been a really great journey, and it's been awesome to see everybody within the company rally around it."

So why did the news catch us all by surprise? It was because the news was originally meant to be announced at Microsoft Build. But, at the last minute, Microsoft decided to let the news out now.

Burns left the conference before I could get further details, but the Linux Foundation's crack PR team arranged for me to meet Lachlan Evenson, Microsoft's principal program manager on Azure's open-source team. He told me Microsoft is turning Azure Linux into a full-fledged general-purpose cloud distribution with Azure Linux 4.0 while simultaneously productizing Flatcar Container Linux as a hardened, immutable container host called Azure Container Linux (ACL).

The former is a general-purpose virtual machine (VM) image for all Azure customers, not just Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) users. Until now, Evenson noted, "we had Azure Linux only available to third-party customers through AKS specifically, and that was Azure Linux 3.0." Going forward, this will be ACL.

Evenson emphasized that Azure Linux 4.0 is the culmination of years of internal usage and the evolution of the earlier Mariner distribution. "So we've been running Azure Linux for many years internally, and we got through to 3.0, and we only allowed it on as a container host on AKS. What we've done is make it a general-purpose, so this is all the learnings that we've had in the heritage of Mariner."

=====Fedora-based, open source, Azure-tuned
Under the hood, Azure Linux 4.0 is based on Fedora Linux and is delivered as an open distribution on GitHub. This code is available now. Yes, Red Hat knows that Microsoft has done this. Evenson continued, "So, we made a decision to use Fedora as an upstream, so it's using RPMs in the Fedora ecosystem. Microsoft curates the packages and the supply chain to fit Azure's cloud platform." Microsoft also created "it to be purpose-built for Azure, which integrates vertically into all of our infrastructure to give you the best Azure Linux experience on Azure."

While Azure Linux will ship as a VM image, Microsoft is already preparing a developer-friendly path onto Windows desktops: "And as of today, we have it as a VM image for your VM host on Azure. We're going to announce WSL images as well."

While developers will be able to run Azure Linux locally through WSL, Microsoft is not positioning it as a traditional desktop Linux. Asked whether he could run it on his laptop, Evenson said: "I will be able to run it on my laptop, or what have you. Yes, on Windows 11." However, when pressed about a desktop experience, Evenson was clear that there are "no plans" for a graphical environment.

"It's optimized for server-side in the cloud," he said, adding that even on a developer machine, users should expect a lean environment. "Minimal packages, yeah. The idea is that we offer you a consistent experience to do your development on your machine, and that you can take your workloads as you develop them on your machine and run them with VS Code. You can run your applications on that, and know that the platform is the same that you're running on the cloud, so that you have that kind of consistency between environments."

=====Azure Container Linux
Flatcar itself remains the upstream project, but Microsoft is packaging it for Azure customers. Evenson described Flatcar as "purpose-built, immutable, secure by default, production-ready operating system, and Azure Container Linux is the productization of that, but we're still investing in the upstream Flatcar ecosystem and pulling that downstream into a productized exterior experience just for container workloads, so it's a container hosting in AKS."

To underscore the immutable model, he added, "Everything's baked in, so there is no package manager. We bake the bits into the immutable, and they're in the immutable version. So Azure Container Linux is the immutable version. So you shouldn't be changing any system packages or any application packages. Anything that you need to change is customer workloads run in containers."

=====Lifecycle, support, and upgrades
For existing Azure Linux 3.x users, Microsoft is promising a straightforward path forward rather than a disruptive migration. Evenson outlined a defined support window: "We have two years of support."

Editor's note: A spokesperson later clarified that the lifecycle of support is four years.

Within that window, Microsoft aims to keep kernel choices stable while providing upgrades. "So what we try to do is pick specific kernel versions that we're using for over the lifetime of the two years of support for that specific version, and then we offer an upgrade pathway for customers as well, so it's fully supported and then upgradable in the two years." This is paired with a predictable monthly security update rhythm.

That said, security is central to the Azure Linux story, especially amid a surge of kernel issues in the AI era. Evenson framed Microsoft's value proposition around owning the entire supply chain: "So, part of the value proposition is that because we are taking care of the supply chain of all the pieces to build the distribution, we have minimal surface area of the packages, curated kernel, and customizations for running on Azure to support all the hardware, and we also have best-in-class security."

Microsoft is committing to monthly patches for Azure Linux -- just don't call it Patch Tuesday. However, if a serious Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) appears, Microsoft promises to offer a patched image "as soon as those patches come out."

The new Azure Linux is also designed to let customers offload much of the update management if they choose. When asked whether users would need to intervene to stay current, Evenson pointed to built-in automation: "Whether they're VMs or AKS, we have the ability to opt in to automatic upgrades based on security." In larger, scaled-out deployments, those updates are handled gradually to avoid disruption.

For customers with fragile or highly customized applications, opting out remains an option. "So if you opt into that, you will always be up to date and secure with the latest versions," Evenson said, before acknowledging the other camp: "You can definitely opt out of it."

He tied this approach back to a philosophy of staying ahead of public disclosure: "As Jim said, we've got to make sure that our customers can keep up to date with the rate of change and the rate of disclosures and patches, so we've really baked that into the core of the operating system, that we can take those updates really quickly, so that you're not waiting,"

=====Positioning in the AI-native era and with partners
Evenson cast Azure Linux as a response to the "AI-native explosion" and the dominance of Linux as the substrate for modern AI applications. "All AI applications are running on the Linux stack," he said. Microsoft, he argued, has "learned to build very hard on Linux images, and we want to give that to our customers, so that they can be successful in the AI native era."

At the same time, he stressed that Azure Linux is meant to complement, not replace, other distributions in Azure's catalog. Asked whether Red Hat knew about the new offering, the answer was unequivocal: "Actually, yes." Evenson added, "We still have a great ecosystem of partners, right? This changes nothing with those relationships. If you want to run Red Hat, if you want to run Ubuntu, that's absolutely okay. What we saw was an opportunity to give you a batteries-included experience on Azure. We have eight endorsed distros on our platform, and we will continue to work with those."

As Microsoft announced in a blog post, "Today, more than two-thirds of customer cores in Azure run Linux, and the platforms running Microsoft 365, GitHub, and OpenAI's ChatGPT all sit on Linux foundations. When ChatGPT scales across more than 10 million compute cores worldwide and serves a billion queries a day, Linux and Kubernetes are what make that possible."

So here we are. Microsoft is running its most important services on Linux. Thus, it only makes sense that Microsoft is finally shipping a complete, albeit server-centric, Linux distro while continuing to support multiple other Linux distros. Today, Microsoft has finally admitted that it is, outside the desktop, primarily a Linux company.

-=Story by Steven Vaughan-Nichols

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Technology Update: Ubuntu 25.10 users need to make a critical move before July deadline

Canonical opens the official graphical upgrade path to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS today, preventing impending security risks.

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS was released last month for those looking to do a clean install, but the upgrade paths are only now beginning to open up. Ubuntu 25.10 users can now jump to the new version before it reaches end of life in July and stops receiving security updates.

Until now, there has been a way to upgrade, but it’s unofficial and there was no guarantee it would work. You used to have to open the terminal and type do-release-upgrade -d. From today, however, graphical upgrades are available. All you need to do now is open up the Software Updater, then press the Upgrade button and select ‘Yes, Upgrade Now’. Before upgrading, you’ll want to ensure you’ve applied any outstanding updates first.

The reason that Canonical has held off until now to let 25.10 users upgrade is because following the release of 26.04, there were a handful of bugs that saw some important packages get uninstalled on some systems, creating issues.

Now, while 26.04 may be stable enough for people coming from 25.10, Canonical is not opening the upgrade path for people on the old LTS, version 24.04 until August, after it has released 26.04.1. People running 24.04 LTS will be expecting the highest level of stability, so it is waiting for the new version to mature a bit more before allowing upgrades.

If you’re on Ubuntu 25.10, you can expect a whole bunch of new features including the latest version of GNOME and the Linux kernel. Furthermore, you need to update anyway before July unless you want to be left high and dry, which won’t be a good position to be in.

-=Paul Hill | May 15, 2026 | 07:14 [EDT]

Technology Update: Why some USB-C cables charge faster than others

Have you ever plugged a fast-charging compatible device, like a smartphone, into a USB-C cable that only charges slowly? It happens to the best of us. That’s because while the USB Type-C standard ensures that most connectors are similar, it doesn’t necessarily standardize the technology inside the cable. Not all USB-C cables are created equal. If you’re wondering why the USB-C standard is so important – and it’s a valid question – it’s because it makes peripheral ports and connectors on cables and accessories fundamentally more versatile.

You should always be aware of the power output of a cable. USB-C is actually divided into several variants, where standardization exists for the connector. It starts with USB-C 2.0, the entry-level version, capable of data transfer rates of up to 480 Mbps. From there, you have USB 3.2 Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen 2×2, and USB 4, which supports PD (Power Delivery) and Thunderbolt. USB-C PD supports fast charging with power up to 100 watts in some cables and with a maximum of 240 watts in newer cables.

Because this can be confusing, the best explanation is that each version of USB-C is capable of providing different output powers. You need at least 18 watts or more to facilitate fast charging. Ideally, for modern devices, you need a 40-65 watt charger and cable, depending on the electrical needs of the device. If you use a cable that is not rated for higher power output, no matter what the power adapter provides, your devices will not be able to charge quickly. The cable limits the amount of energy supplied. Additionally, there are specialized cables for data, video, audio, and power compared to other options.

=====What changes the charging performance of a USB Type-C cable?
The connector for USB Type-C is the standardized part you’ll recognize that makes it easy to connect modern charging cables and data cables between compatible devices. It is reversible and shares the same design across all platforms. But it’s what’s inside the cable that truly influences the power capabilities of the entire connection.

The cable “gauge” or thickness of the wires inside determines the data or power limits. A lower gauge number means a thicker design while a higher gauge number means thinner. Higher gauges can interfere with efficient power delivery, resulting in less power flow and slower charge times. Cable length can also change cable performance. Longer cables have to deal with more resistance, which means more power or voltage loss and lower charging rates.

The final piece of the puzzle is general compatibility. For example, PD or Power Delivery standard is necessary for high output power. If the cable in question doesn’t support PD over USB-C, you won’t be able to get the high power needed for fast charging. Additionally, because some cables are specialized, if you opt for a data cable rather than one that prioritizes power delivery, you might see slower charging speeds.

=====How do you know which USB-C cable is the right one to use?
USB-C cables are made in different ways – that’s exactly why they’re not all the same. The easiest way to identify a cable’s specifications is to read and follow the manufacturer’s product information, whether on the brand’s website or retailer listing. This is not always available, in which case you can look for a certification logo from the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). It must appear on the original cable packaging and sometimes, very rarely, on the cable itself. Certified cables have passed the necessary tests to guarantee their high performance.

You can also consider features like the thickness and feel of the cable, whether it is braided or made from premium materials, and whether or not the e-marker chip is present in high-power cables. This chip, which stands for Electronically Marked, exists in cables rated 60 watts and above and acts as a safety controller preventing more power from flowing than the cable can handle. If the chip is not present and the cable advertises 60 watts or more, this presents a safety risk.

Ultimately, if you have trouble finding information about the cable’s PD support or specifications, if you can’t identify any USB-IF logos on the packaging, or if it looks cheap, you’ll want to avoid it. There is a lot of confusion around USB-C, beyond cables. If your device isn’t charging quickly, it may not be because of the cable. For example, a common myth about USB-C ports is that the ports themselves are all the same, but they’re not. Some ports may support high power and fast charging, while others do not.

-=By Briley Kenney | May 10, 2026 | 05:17 pm [EST]

NEWS Update: Roblox clamps down on chats and age checks as legal pressure builds

Roblox has long faced criticism over child safety on its platform. Now it has started settling with state attorneys over the issue, and the total is climbing fast.

On April 21, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced a $12.2 million settlement with the child-focused online gaming platform. The State of West Virginia also settled for $11 million the same day. Those came a week after Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford got the company to hand over $12 million.

Their problem with Roblox is clear from the settlement documents: they believe it hasn’t been adequately protecting children from predators on its platform.

=====What Roblox has to change
As part of Alabama’s settlement, Roblox must now run age checks on everyone via facial age estimation or a government ID starting May 1. That applies to both new and existing accounts. The company must now also monitor account behavior to catch users who lied about their age.

Adults and under-16s won’t be able to talk with each other at all unless they’re on a “trusted friend” list, added via QR code or a phone-contact import, and users that don’t undergo age verification can’t chat to anyone.

Communication involving any minor cannot be encrypted, so law enforcement can read it during investigations. West Virginia’s settlement also insists that Roblox alert minors the first time they enter a private chat, so children understand how to communicate safely.

Roblox already stopped people from chatting without age verification as of January this year, but under new measures it will start restricting access to games for those that don’t undergo the process. Starting in June, the platform will split into three tiers: Roblox Kids for ages 5–8 will forbid any chats at all, and will only allow access to games labeled ‘minimal’ or ‘mild’ on its maturity scale. Those who don’t complete age verification will also have these restrictions. The other two account levels are Roblox Select for 9–15 year-olds, and standard accounts for those 16 and up.

=====Plenty more lawsuits to come
Three settlements in eight days totaling more than $35 million must hurt, but it’s just the beginning. Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Kentucky, and Tennessee are all pursuing similar claims: that Roblox exposed children to risk and then misled parents about its safeguards.

In February, LA County sued Roblox, accusing the platform of choosing profit over safety and leaving kids exposed to grooming and explicit content.

Roblox is also separately dealing with nearly 80 federal lawsuits filed by families in California alone. And Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has also issued legally-enforceable transparency notices to Roblox and other tech companies. These force them to detail what they’re doing to protect children. Those notices are backed by fines of A$825,000 a day (that’s about US$590,783) for non-compliance.

=====Where the money will go
The $12.2 million from Alabama’s settlement funds school resource officers through the state’s Safe School Initiative. Nevada’s is earmarked for the Boys & Girls Club and “nondigital activities,” plus a law-enforcement liaison and an online-safety awareness campaign. West Virginia will invest $500,000 in safety education workshops for parents and children, create a $1.5 million three-year public safety campaign, and spend $2.4 million on a dedicated internet safety specialist for six years.

====Stay alert
There’s a predictable rhythm to how big tech companies face down state attorneys general. First comes pushback, then rhetoric about shared values, and then they start handing over cash.

It is a step forward that Roblox is agreeing to new safeguards, but questions remain.

In its own lawsuit against Roblox launched last month, Nebraska complained that the company’s existing age-check technology was inadequate. From the complaint:

“Rather than meaningfully protecting children, the system has repeatedly misclassified users’ ages, placing adults in child chat groups and minors in adult categories, while age-verified accounts for young children have already been traded on third-party marketplaces, undermining any purported safety benefits.”

What happens when the age-estimation AI guesses wrong on a 14-year-old who looks 17, or when a “trusted friend” QR code gets passed around a group chat somewhere it shouldn’t?

The company’s Persona age-check tool has also turned out to do more than check ages: researchers say they found an exposed frontend showing the system was also running facial recognition against watchlists.

Settlements address past concerns, but they don’t guarantee future safety. Parents must still do the work to ensure that they know what their kids are signing up for and who else they might be playing with.

-=by Danny Bradbury | April 23, 2026

Maligayang Araw ng mga Ina!

Technology Update: 6 PowerShell commands that fix the most common Windows 11 problems in seconds

PowerShell is a Windows utility you can use to fix a surprisingly large number of common Windows 11 issues. It's often faster than digging through Windows 11 menus and in many cases, you can simply copy, paste, and execute commands without any further intervention on your side.

The following PowerShell commands can help you troubleshoot and fix a number of Windows 11 conundrums, from repairing corrupted Windows files to fixing random network-related problems. I also included a command that summons a powerful Windows 11 debloating tool, because debloating Windows can often make your PC noticeably faster and help deal with all kinds of bugs and glitches.

Before we start, I always recommend running PowerShell as administrator because most of the commands shared below won't work without admin privileges. To do this, just search for PowerShell in the Windows 11 search box or Start Menu, right-click the result, and click "Run as administrator."

=====Update your outdated apps
Winget to the rescue

If you suspect that a random outdated app is giving you a headache, you can run the winget command-line tool, which is capable of downloading, installing, and updating apps on your PC. To update most of the apps on your PC (unfortunately, winget cannot update every app), just type or copy the following command:

winget upgrade --all

The winget utility will then start updating your apps one by one. Depending on how many apps need updates, the process can take a while. Just note that you'll have to stay close to the PC while apps are updated, because some will require manual intervention on your side.

=====Resolve network issues
All it takes is copying and pasting a few PowerShell commands

Random network-related problems are par for the course on Windows. I've been encountering them more often than I'd like on my handheld PCs, but the following PowerShell commands can solve them in a jiffy in most cases.

For basic troubleshooting type:

ipconfig /all

This will list all your network adapters, both active and inactive, along with various details about your network configuration. This info can be very handy when troubleshooting connectivity issues.

Refreshing your PC's IP address can often be the only fix you need to solve network issues. However, this can affect any firewall rules set up for your PC’s IP address in your router, so make sure to adjust them afterward. To refresh the IP address, run the following two commands:

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

If you're encountering a "DNS Server Is Not Responding" error on your PC, clearing the DNS cache can often solve it. To clear the DNS cache, run:

ipconfig /flushdns

Resetting the Windows Sockets (Winsock) catalog to default settings and rebuilding the TCP/IP stack can often remedy various network connection issues. To do this, run the following two commands:

netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset

Then reboot your PC.

Lastly, you can restart your network adapter right from PowerShell, another trick that can fix random connectivity issues. To perform this, first run the ipconfig /all command to find out the name of the active network adapter (or multiple adapters, if you have both Ethernet and Wi-Fi). Once you find out the name of the active adapter, run:

Restart-NetAdapter -Name "The name of the active adapter"

My motherboard has two Ethernet ports that are listed as "Ethernet 3" and "Ethernet 4." Since the Ethernet 4 adapter is active, I need to type the following:

Restart-NetAdapter -Name "Ethernet 4"

Restarting the adapter only takes a few seconds.

=====Fix your storage problems
The chkdsk command is super handy

Storage-related issues can trigger all kinds of erratic behaviour on Windows PCs, such as random crashes and freezes followed by a BSOD, slowdowns, error messages, and more. Check Disk (chkdsk) is the first-aid PowerShell command that can often resolve various storage issues. The base chkdsk command scans your storage drives for errors. If no errors are found, you're fine. If errors are found, you can run the following command:

chkdsk /r

This will fix errors discovered on the disk as well as locate bad sectors and recover readable data. Since chkdsk needs to lock the drive it's repairing you can use it to repair secondary drives while the PC is active. However, if you want to repair your boot drive, you'll need to schedule chkdsk to run the next time your PC reboots.

=====Repair corrupted Windows files
With SFC and DISM commands

Corrupted files can wreak havoc on a Windows PC, even if we're talking only about one or a few corrupted file instances. Use Windows System File Checker (SFC) to quickly scan and replace corrupted files. To run the tool type:

sfc /scannow

And let it do its thing.

If problems persist, you can run Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM), which repairs the Windows image. The catch-all DISM command that should fix most issues is:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

This will repair and replace damaged and corrupted files using Windows Update as the repair source, and is the recommended course of action if issues persist even after running sfc /scannow.

=====List folders taking up the most storage
Find out what to delete to free up your PC's storage

My previous PC only had a single 500GB SSD that I used as both the boot drive and for installing games, so I had to deal with low storage warnings regularly because the drive was almost always nearly full.

Oftentimes, I was able to free up a good chunk of storage by deleting random subdirectories inside the AppData folder used by apps and games that were taking up multiple gigabytes of space. The command I used to hunt down the folders taking up the storage space was very similar to the following:

Get-ChildItem "path to the location" -Directory | ForEach-Object {
$size = (Get-ChildItem $_.FullName -Recurse -File -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Measure-Object Length -Sum).Sum
[PSCustomObject]@{
Folder = $_.FullName
SizeGB = [math]::Round($size / 1GB, 2)
}
} | Sort-Object SizeGB -Descending

All you have to do is replace "path to the location" with the target directory you want to scan. Since the AppData folder is always my first suspect, I usually start the hunt by typing the following location:

"C:\Users\Administrator\AppData"

As you can see below, my AppData/Local folder is taking up more than 50GB of space! This isn't an issue on my current PC since I've got a 1TB SSD as my boot drive, along with another 1TB SSD for games, but back when I used a puny 500GB SSD for both Windows and games, this would have been a massive issue.

Once you locate the folder eating up the space, you can go one level deeper and find which subfolders are the real storage sinks. In my case, I'm running the command again, but with the following path:

"C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local"

As you can see below, the Packages directory is the worst offender, but a number of other folders are also taking up multiple gigabytes of space. It looks like I'll have to do some more digging and deleting once I finish writing this piece.

=====Get rid of Windows bloat
winutil can solve and prevent a number of Windows issues

There's no denying that the current version of Windows is the most bloated yet. You've got a bunch of ads and features you don't need, along with plenty of background processes and extras that can slow Windows down and cause various issues over time.

Luckily, Windows Utility (winutil) is a fantastic open-source script developed by Chris Titus that you can use to debloat your Windows installation.

===Warning
Running remote scripts with irm | iex can be risky because it executes downloaded code directly. In this case, winutil is a well-known open-source project made by a trusted developer, but in most cases, you should check the script first and make sure it's safe to execute before typing it into PowerShell and hitting Enter.
===

While it's not a tool for fixing problems per se, it can make your PC run faster and help prevent a bunch of issues from showing their ugly heads in the first place. While it's recommended to run it on a fresh Windows install, you can use it anytime. All you have to do is run the following command:

irm christitus. com/win | iex

This will launch the program, allowing you to tweak various settings, remove a bunch of unnecessary things, and customize your Windows installation to your liking. The tool is quite robust and includes a ton of features, so I recommend checking out the tutorial video created by the developer (who is also a popular YouTuber), as well as reading our winutil guide.

=====PowerShell is a super handy Windows utility
Windows PowerShell is a very powerful utility that's much faster than clicking through a ton of Windows menus. It's not a miracle worker, but you can use it to solve a ton of common Windows problems simply by running a few relatively short commands.

-=Goran Damnjanovic | Published May 02, 2026, 11:45 AM [EDT]