Windows survival skills: 8 things every PC user should know how to do

Your PC will die, someday. Or it will slow down, generate error messages, or — worse still — get hacked. While you could always call a professional, why not solve the problem yourself? And you can, just by learning some basic Windows tasks yourself.

You’ve learned how to take care of yourself in the real world. Your PC is no different. You’ll need to maintain it, protect it, and keep it fed with data at all times.

Nothing in this checklist is particularly complicated or even hard. But it’s basic knowledge that you should already know. And if you don’t, we’re here to help!

Manage Windows Update

Windows Update governs all of the changes Microsoft brings to your PC. Some of these are critical updates to Windows itself, needed to solve some unexpected vulnerability or bug. Others are new features that Microsoft wants to add to your PC. Finally, Microsoft periodically adds new virus signatures and other improvements to the Windows Defender anti-malware system, allowing you to surf the web without fear.

Most of the time, Microsoft’s Windows Updates take place in the background, without your intervention, as a convenience. But it’s important to know where to look (inside the Windows Settings menu, then in the Windows Update submenu) to understand what Windows Update can and can’t do. Would you like to try out the latest updates as soon as they’re available? Conversely, would you like to pause updates for a certain period, like during an end-of-quarter reporting period or exams? Or even roll them back? Would you like Windows Update to manage other Microsoft products, too?

Windows Update is one of the least intensive tasks within Windows. But it’s also critical to the safety of your PC.

Dig deep into Windows Settings

For that matter, there’s more to the Windows Settings menu than just Windows Update. It’s here that you’ll find all of the features and functionality within Windows, organized into separate categories. Do you want to increase the size of the text because you forgot your glasses? See Settings > Accessibility. Want to pair a new set of earbuds? You’ll find that in Settings > Bluetooth & devices.

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The number of Windows Settings options may seem overwhelming. On the left-hand side of the Settings menu, however, is a small search box that can help find what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, the search box is looking for specific query topics. (Some alternatives are programmed in: In Windows, your monitor is called a “display” but the search box will recognize both terms.)

It’s perfectly fine to complain about how Microsoft or Windows does certain things. But you owe it to yourself to at least see if you can solve the problem yourself. The Windows Settings can help.

Stay safe online and within Windows

Simply protecting yourself from bad guys is a combination of anonymity, smarts, luck, and common sense. Windows Defender is a solid though not totally foolproof way of protecting yourself online from downloadable malware, and thankfully Microsoft’s app pretty much manages itself.

Chris Hoffman/IDG

But protecting your digital keys — passwords — via a password manager or some other method is an absolute must in this day and age. The best VPNs hide and encrypt your digital identity, so you can slip surreptitiously past criminals and companies who have no rights to watch you as you surf online. Windows has tools like Windows Sandbox to provide even more protection. Finally, you need to bank on your experience and common sense not to click on every provocative link and email that you see, minimizing your online risk.

We’re not here to dictate that you must use a VPN or password manager. But there are risks to surfing online, and you should know what Windows provides, what it doesn’t, and what additional options are available to secure your PC — even if you don’t use them.

How to back up and restore data

Of late, Microsoft Windows has begun pushing hard for you to back up your PC into its OneDrive cloud. For some of you, this is a huge annoyance, as Microsoft has begun flipping on automatic backup by default: on your Desktop, Photos, Documents, and Video folders. That backup process can rob you of available bandwidth and impact the broadband data cap your ISP imposes.

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But knowing how OneDrive and backup works, and even restoring that data on a new PC, may save you enormous time and effort as Microsoft simply performs those tasks in the background. Likewise, understanding what apps and data might not be backed up should be something that you take time to learn about, too. Apps typically are not backed up; neither is their associated data. But many games are.

To its credit, Microsoft has quietly simplified the process. Autosaving a Microsoft Office (Microsoft 365) document is almost automatic, and you can basically log on to any new PC and automatically provision it to authenticate you to Microsoft 365 and keep working. But it’s still worth knowing what works and what doesn’t.

How to install and uninstall software and services

These days, “installing” software doesn’t even require you to insert a disk or a DVD-ROM. You simply click an “installer” and the whole process proceeds from there.

Microsoft

There’s nothing wrong with that. But understanding the nuances of software and services is a must. If everything on phones is an app, much of the PC’s “software” is a subscription. Understanding the difference between the “perpetual” version of Microsoft Office versus the Microsoft 365 subscription that enables it could save you literally hundreds of dollars. Likewise, there’s a difference between installing the “same” game via the Windows Xbox app and Steam; the latter offers timely updates, and the former sometimes doesn’t.

You also need to know what apps are automatically backed up to the cloud (Microsoft apps, basically) and what isn’t (everything else). Finally, knowing how to search for and uninstall an app will get rid of space-clogging programs you don’t use, and save storage space that you can put to something else.

How to reset your PC

Resetting your PC is sort of the culmination of some of these tasks. If your PC is inexplicably slowing down, that may be due to any number of things, including just the accumulation of all the digital flotsam and jetsam from years of work. If all of your files have been backed up to the cloud or a backup drive, resetting a PC basically allows you to start over with a fresh install of Windows. All the clutter? Gone.

Jared Newman / Foundry

Resetting your PC isn’t something that needs doing every month. And doing so is pretty easy: It’s yet another Windows Settings option (System > Recovery). The process doesn’t take especially long, perhaps 20 minutes or so, depending upon your system. But knowing when to reset, what you’ll need to back up, and the benefits of doing so is knowledge you need.

Access your PC’s BIOS/UEFI

I doubt that you’ll have to access the BIOS of your PC more than once or twice. It’s the nitty-gritty interface between the operating system and the internals of your PC, a pre-boot environment that allows you to make some basic changes.

I myself only used it recently to tweak some UMA frame-buffer settings to boost some performance in an AMD Ryzen system, but normally I leave it alone. Knowing how to tweak your BIOS is a slightly more advanced function, but you should at least know that it’s there, how to access it, and what it’s used for.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Understanding browsers and plugins

A large portion of our digital lives is lived on the web. On your phone, most providers encourage you to download an app. (Too many, in my opinion.) On Windows, a lot of what you need can be found on the web.

But the web often needs some taming. You should know where to go to find browser plugins and/or add-ons: the Chrome Web Store, for example, or Microsoft’s own Edge extensions. Did you know that since much of the web is built upon the open-source Chromium engine, some plugins will work on multiple browsers? Or for that matter, Firefox has its own browser ecosystem of plugins? Many people consider a basic ad blocker a necessity. (Learn how to whitelist, and then whitelist PCWorld.com, while you’re at it.)

Marshall Gunnell/IDG

Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge are certainly fine tools to browse the web. But you should at least have a nodding familiarity with other browser options, what they look like, and what they can do for you. Imagine if every car in the world was free, but you only used a Chevrolet. Wouldn’t you feel just a bit like you missed out?