When you run the application, it starts collecting all the locations where Windows looks for startup applications and services and then organizes them into different groups. Using the the available information, you can easily keep a check on all hidden system locations where hijackers, spyware, malware hide their data. Since it automatically starts the system analysis operation, you may need to wait a bit to explore all the scanned locations. However during the scanning process, you can choose to Browse System Settings or Save a log file to review the analysis report later; the former option shows you all the locations where registered autorun items are residing, whereas the latter lets you save the log to analyze and filter the information as per your requirements.

The main screen includes a total of 12 tabs including Autorun, Advanced Startups, Services, Winsock LSPs, Scheduled Tasks, Explorer Plugins, Installed Software, Browser Pages, Hosts, Process List, Logs and Analysis. By default, it takes you to Autorun tab to quickly find and analyze the locations where autorun agents are present. As mentioned earlier, it includes both system wide locations and registry keys that automatically start at system startup.

You can easily check whether the listed items belong to verified or unverified author from Company column. The right-click context menu lets you open Google search results and find additional information for the selected autorun item on SysInfo.org, copy the autorun item’s location to clipboard and jump directly to selected location (registry key).

Surely, the most noticeable aspect of the application is its ability to control and change the settings of autorun items. When you select the item in the Autorun list, it allows you to toggle it on or off, change its source location, and delete the autorun item from the toolbar. Apart from the main window, which is context sensitive and displays only the selected tab-related information, the bottom pane shows additional information about the selected item including File Info, Version Info and More Information (includes extra information such as Makro location path, related registry key source path). The Search & Filters tab includes search function that may help you quickly filter the search results according to selected search type.

In Advanced Startups tab, you will find all the related dynamic link libraries of startup items and applications. Using the information, you no longer need to deploy a dedicated solution to find the system resources that are being used by malicious apps and scripts. By default, it shows the source path of the autorun registry key, but you can expand it to view the related DLLs. For each registry key, you can define a new source path, a handy option for those items that are locked by the system. Don’t forget to use the right-click context menu to find additional information about the selected item.

From Services tab, you can find all the Services Control Sets, including currently active one. It lets you view all services included in the selected Control Set with information including Value name, Data, Company and Description. Using the right click context menu, you can quickly copy the path to clipboard and open registry key in Windows registry editor, while the toolbar offers options to start/stop services from Current Control Set, delete the selected key and save the changes made to the selected Services Control Set.

WinSock’s LSP (Layered Service Provider) is one of the features that is often exploited by a number of malware and viruses. With its ability to become the part of TCP/IP protocol stack, it can affect the internet inbound and outbound traffic. Since most malware are programmed to use LSPs, they can easily send and receive the requests from malicious sources. RunAlyzer gives you the option to not only view all the Winsock LSPs, but also delete the selected entries from Current Control Set registry keys. In addition, the right click context menu holds options to open selected key in Windows registry and copy the source path to clipboard.

Next up, you have Scheduled Tasks tab, containing the tasks that run at Windows logon. Here, you may find all the paths of executable files that run in parallel to perform a specific operation of a task. It could help you in situations where it becomes quite difficult to find the offline sources of spyware, malware and like threats. If your PC is infected with viruses that execute some commands at system startup, then here you may be able to find the associated executable files that trigger the operation. The Toggle button on toolbar lets you enable or disable the selected task, while you can jump to source location and copy the source path to clipboard from right-click context menu.

Managing Internet Explorer plugins can be a mess sometimes. Not only does it become difficult to find the required installed plugin, but it’s also quite tiring to disable and remove them. RunAlyzer offers a simple Internet Explorer plugin manager that collects all the installed components from the Windows registry and lists them down, so that you can easily find and manage them. The toolbar at the top enables you to toggle the components’ related keys and delete the selected ones. The main windows includes Description column to help you find the registry keys of required Internet Explorer’s plugins and components.

The next four tabs including Installed Software, Browser Pages, Hosts, and Logs show the basic information about the respective categories. The Installed Software includes a list of both 32-bit and 64-bit applications’ registry keys, and allows you to search the source location of application’s related registry keys. You can also find the registered uninstallers for installed software. This may assist you in finding the uninstaller from all local disk volumes if it’s not listed in “Windows Uninstall a program” dialog.

The Browser Pages and Hosts tab show configuration settings of your default browser and “hosts” file entries, respectively. The Browser Pages tab displays the default settings including homepage, start page URL, browser startup homepage and default search engine. In Hosts tab, you will find all the IP addresses mapped with domains. Using the Hosts tab, you can easily check whether or not any installed apps forcibly blocking access to those websites that you frequently visit.

The Process List tab has controls to force quit the selected process, unload module (if selected and loaded into the memory) and refresh the process list to view the most recent processes from all active user accounts.

Logs tab deals with all the saved logs, and provides options for creating SBSD and HJT log files for selected components. Just select the components that you wish to create logs for, and hit Save.

Finally, the Analysis tab offers an easy way to analyze all the logged information. The Online Analysis option is designed to send your logged data to RunAlyzer’s servers to create an in-depth analysis report on your startup items’ configurations. All you need is to check the analysis related options and hit “Online Analysis” to begin the process.

In a nutshell, RunAlyzer is all-in-one autorun and system configuration manager that not only organizes the autorun programs, scripts and services, but also enables you to manage them without having to find them from different system locations. The application is in beta, so you might encounter some bugs while listing down the startup items and system settings. During testing, it worked without any major issues. It supports both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Testing was carried out on Windows 7 64-bit system.

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The Internet Explorer-specific options include Clear BHO plugin, Reset WinSockLSP, Clear Outlook Express Title Bar, Restore IE Default Security Item, Repair Network Associated Items and more. You can even manipulate the DNS server address from within the application. This feature is specifically added to counter those rougueweare and spyware that change your DHCP and DNS server addresses to alter the request send and receive route. Using the DNS settings, you can instantly modify or revert the DNS server address if changed by viruses, malware and other like attacks.

Before you run the application, make sure that you have required administrative privileges to modify the Internet Explorer settings, as some of its options may not respond via standard user account. The application doesn’t work in conjunction with installed web security solution nor does it prompt you when malware is detected, instead it helps your anti-virus reset the changes made to your browser. The main screen shows all the available tweaks and options that can normalize network settings, Internet Explorer native features’ settings and more.

Using the app is simple, and it takes just a click to perform the selected repair operation(s). At the top, it holds options to restore the IE default title bar and homepage. You can select Use Blank Page to forcibly redirect IE to blank page even if an antivirus has forcibly changed it. The main window has a total of 22 options that you can use to reset Internet Explorer to default settings.

As stated earlier, you can easily reset and change the primary & secondary DNS server address without navigating to Internet Connection properties sheet. The Reset DNS option restores the default DNS server address (provided by the ISP), whereas other options let you use free DNS services including Google DNS, OpenDNS, OpenDNS Family, Norton DNS, DNS Advantage and Scrubit DNS.

It’s worth mentioning here that some options may require system reboot to make required changes to the browser. During testing, it failed to repair the file associations, remove IE content advisor and block Windows Startup pop-up until we rebooted our system. So, it’s highly advisable to reboot the system after fixing the issues to normalize all the selected settings.

Browser Repair Tool works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Support for Google Chrome and Firefox is in the pipeline. We tested it with Internet Explorer 9 on our Windows 7 x64 system.

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If you’re an avid Linux user, then you may be familiar with the Linux Live CD/USB, which makes it possible to use a Linux distribution without having to go through the hassle of installing it on your primary storage device. Linux distros such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Mint OS, etc., all provide an easy way to load the OS into the computer’s memory using just a bootable CD or USB drive. Windows, on the other hand, is devoid of such a feature, or has been, until now. The enterprise version of Windows 8 implements a fairly new concept of booting and running a fully-manageable Windows Enterprise OS from a USB drive using the Windows To Go feature.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Windows To Go, it’s a Windows 8 Enterprise native tool that lets you run Windows 8 Enterprise from a mass storage device, providing you with a portable and fully functional corporate Windows 8 environment.  In what follows, we will guide you through the process of creating a Windows 8 Enterprise live USB.

Before you start, make sure that you are running Windows 8 Enterprise edition, have 32-GB external storage device and Windows 8 Enterprise installation disk. The latter is required to fetch Windows 8 files, required for creating a live Windows 8 Enterprise disk.

To get started, plug in the external storage medium and head over Start Screen. Now, type “Windows to go”, select Settings from right sidebar and launch Windows To Go from main window.

This will start Windows To Go wizard that guides you through the entire process. In the first step, it checks the total size of connected mass storage. Although it’s recommend to use USB 3.0 external storage device, USB 2.0 works without any issues. Once it detects the external drive, hit Next.

The following step asks you to specify the source location of install.wim file. If you haven’t extracted the Windows 8 Enterprise installation disk image, use the file arching utility like 7-zip to extract the Windows 8 installation ISO file, head over to Sources folder and find the install.wim file. However, if you’re using Windows 8 Enterprise installation DVD, it will automatically find the source path of the required file.

Next up, you are provided with option to encrypt Windows 8 bootable disk with BitLocker. It asks you to enter the BitLocker password to encrypt the device to prevent unauthorized usage. This option is not mandatory, and you can skip it using the respective button at the bottom. However, if you’re planning to protect your portable Windows 8 Enterprise environment, enable “Use BitLocker with my Windows To Go Workspace” option, and set the BitLocker password.

The next steps displays the summary of settings and prepares your storage media for Windows To Go workspace. Hitting Create at the bottom will start the process.

The time it takes to create a fully functional workspace depends upon the data transfer speed of your external storage device.

Once Windows To Go workspace is created, it will open Windows To Go Startup Options, allowing you to set boot options of your portable Windows 8 workspace. You can select Yes, should you need to use it on your current system. Selecting No lets you remove the external storage device and use it on other systems.

If you’re planning to use Windows To Go workspace on another system, you need to change the boot order from BIOS menu, so that system boots up directly from portable Windows 8 workspace disk. In order to do so, press ESC, F10, DEL or other system defined key at system startup to enter into BIOS menu, navigate to boot order menu and set external USB/Mass Storage as first boot option. After saving the changes made to Boot order, restart your system to boot into your portable Windows 8 Enterprise workspace.

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As far as installing Windows 8 as guest OS is concerned, VMware Player automatically skips all the post installation steps that require input from users, including setting first user account settings, entering Windows 8 license key, updating Windows with latest official patches, and so on. Unlike VirtualBox that requires installing guest OS specific additions for installing device drives of the installed hardware and connected display monitors, it installs the most suitable drivers for your guest OS. However, you can always choose to mount the built-in VMware Tools to install and configure recommended device drivers for the installed hardware.

If you’re an avid VMware virtualization software user, you may already know that it offers two options for installing guest OS on the host PC. If the Easy Install feature doesn’t support the OS you wish to install, then you need to manually select the OS or type of OS from the list of all supported operating systems. Although, the Easy Install feature supports only a limited number of operating systems, both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 8 are supported, and it automatically detects the OS type from the specified disk image. For instance, if you specify Windows 8 32-bit disk image, it will automatically set the OS as Windows 8 x86.

Before you start, make sure that Intel Vt-x is enabled in your system’s BIOS menu. It’s Intel’s virtualization technology that not only allows users to run guest operating systems on the host system, but also improves overall virtualization performance. For those who are using AMD systems, make sure that virtualization technology is enabled and your system’s CPU has segment-limit support on long mode.

Now, download and install VMware Player, a free virtualization software from VMware that enables users to create, configure and run guest operating systems. Once installed, select New Virtual Virtual Machine from File menu.

This will open a New Virtual Machine Wizard. The first step is to specify the installation disc. You can use the Windows 8 installation optical disc or select a Windows 8 disk image (ISO format). Choose the type of installation disk, and it will automatically detect the edition of your Windows 8 installation disk, as shown in the screenshot below.

You can also choose to install the operating system later, but we recommend using the Easy Install feature to install Windows 8 without going through the hassle of configuring guest OS options.

Next up, enter the product key, user account name followed by the password, and then click Next. It must be noted that the Windows product key and Personalize Windows options are optional, and you can enter the required information later.

The next step requires you to enter the name of the virtual machine. Here, you can also change the location of your guest OS folder.

By default, the size of the virtual disk image is set to 60, but you can change the size as well as the type of disk image. You can create a single disk or split the disk into multiple files.

Hitting Next will show you the summary of your guest OS configurations, with an option to change the hardware and device driver-related settings, which include CPU, Memory, Network adapter, Sound card, USB controller, Display monitor, Printer and CD/DVD drive.

Once you’ve configured the settings, click Finish to begin installing Windows 8 as guest OS on your host PC. If you’ve already entered the product key and other user account details, it will not prompt you to enter the details again in the installation wizard.

It’s always recommended to install OS additions and VMware Tools to enhance the overall performance of the guest OS. If Windows 8 fails to recognize the sound card, USB driver and other major system controllers, then you may need to manually install the recommended motherboard drivers. You can also try the universal drivers available for you system to fix the device driver configuration issues. In order to install VMware Tools, navigate to Manage menu and select Install VMware Tools option. You may need an active internet connection to connect to VMware server for downloading and installing essential components for your system.

Should you face any problems while following the above steps, drop us a comment below and let us know.

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In what follows, we will guide you through the process of changing special permission assigned to Explorer folder. When you deny the delete permission for Explorer folder, you can keep the thumbnail database files as long as you want to. However, it’s worth mentioning here that you will not be able to delete the thumbnail files, and in order to clean the Explorer folder from junk data, you need to allow special permission to Explorer folder.

First off, make sure that you’ve logged in to Windows from Administrator account or have required administrative rights to change the SYSTEM user’s special permissions. To begin, use Win+R hotkey combination to open Windows Run console, type in %userprofile% and press enter. Now, navigate to \AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows folder, and then right-click Explorer folder to bring up its Properties sheet.

Since you want to change the file access permissions, head over to Security tab, and click Advanced button, present underneath the Permissions table.

This will open the Advanced Security Settings for Explorer. Unlike previous Windows versions, Windows 8 doesn’t allow you to edit the SYSTEM principal (virtual user) file permissions, but you can add a new principal and choose to inherit its permission to other principals in the list. In order to add a new principal and set its file access permissions, click Add.

It will open Permission Entry for Explorer dialog box. Now, hit Select a principal link.

In Select User or Group window, you can either manually add System object by typing in system followed by clicking Check Names button. Once added, click OK.

This will add SYSTEM principal. Now, select Deny and This folder, subfolders and files from Type and Applies to drop-down menus, respectively. Hit Show Advanced permissions link to view both basic and advanced permissions. Now, enable Delete subfolders and files and Delete options and hit OK button to deny the said file permissions for Explorer folder.

Upon click, it will add a new permission entry. Now, click Apply to set new permissions for System folder, and before you close the Advance Security Settings window, navigate to Effective Access tab to confirm the newly applied permissions.

In Effective Access tab. select the user whose file access permissions you want to verify. Click Select a user, type in SYSTEM in Select User or Group window, and then click OK. Once the system user is selected, click View effective access button to check whether the Delete and Delete subfolders and files permissions are limited or not.

In case, it doesn’t restrict the delete permissions, log off from Windows and log in as administrator, and then follow the above mentioned steps. When the delete permissions from Explorer folder are revoked, it will stop deleting your image thumbnail database files. Please note that Windows Disk Cleanup utility will not be able to delete the thumbnail cache, and unless you reinstate Explorer folder’s Full Control, you have to manage the thumbnail cache files by yourself.

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Since it’s a portable application, all you need is to run the executable to launch the application. For the first time usage, it reads all the contact information from your address books, and then list down the contact information in separate fields including Email address, Display Name, Address Type, Created Time, Modified Time, Surname etc. From underneath the main window, you can switch between Contacts, Share, Suggested Contacts and Global Address List. In order to view complete information of a specific contact, just double-click the contact in the list, and it will show all the information in a separate dialog.

If it fails to display the contacts from your address books, then you may need to select your Outlook profile from Options—>Advanced Options. By default, it reads contacts from default Outlook profile, but if you are not using the default profile, select your profile from Outlook Profile drop-down menu.

If you want to export entire contact list in any of the aforementioned formats, press Ctrl+A and then choose Save Selected Contacts from File menu. You can also choose to select only required contacts from the list that you want to export, just hold down Ctrl to select multiple contacts, right-click any selected item and then select Save Selected Contacts to specify the output format.

The application runs on all versions of Windows, and supports both Outlook 32-bit and Outlook 64-bit editions.

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This utility requires nothing except FileZilla Server.xml source path to work. The default path is C:\FileZilla\FileZIlla Server.xml, but you can replace it with custom FileZilla directory. Once you’ve entered a new path, click Save followed by Restart Service. It will read the users details from specified XML file and show the existing users in the Users drop-down menu. Selecting a user from this drop-down menu displays the file and directory access permissions, along with shared directory path.

To change the file/directory access permission, use the read, write, delete and append checkboxes. Similarly, you can modify the directory access permissions including Create, Delete, List and Subfolders. After making required changes to file/directory access permissions, click Restart Service to quickly apply the user settings.

The application only shows you the FileZilla Server Settings, and doesn’t allow you to modify the values as per requirements. In order to change the settings, you need to open FileZilla Server configuration console. However, the Setting tab provides you with a settings summary, so that you can check the current value/status of the required option. For instance, you can easily check the default Timeout duration, current BufferSize, Admin port, number of threads allowed etc.

As of this writing, it doesn’t allow users to gain full control over the FileZilla Settings as well as tweak with Groups options. Hopefully, developer will add new control settings for all major elements of FileZilla Server, in next release. The application is available for free and works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Testing was carried out on Windows 7, 64-bit.

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Just like Windows Vista and Windows 7, Windows 8 File Explorer includes real-time search feature to let you instantly find the required files and folders from any location. It shows you search results for files, folders, apps and other items as soon you start typing in search keywords. Although it provides users with quick search feature, it also displays search suggestions while you enter the search keywords in Explorer search bar. The search suggestions belong to MRU list that is stored and managed in Windows Registry, and if you want to remove the recent search suggestions, then you need to find and remove registry keys where all search suggestions are maintained. Windows 8 Local Policy Editor offers a simple policy setting for Windows Explorer search entries. Instead of manually removing the search entries from Windows Registry, you can use Local Group Policy Editor to permanently turn off display of recent search entries in Windows Explorer. In this post, we will guide you through the process of disabling search suggestions in Windows 8 Explorer.

Before you begin, make sure that you’ve logged in as administrator or have required administrative privileges to make changes to Windows 8 local policies. First off, go to Start Screen, type gpedit.msc select Apps from right sidebar and then select gpedit from main window.

This will open Local Policy Editor. Now, navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer, and from main window, double click Turn off display of recent search entries in the Windows Explorer search box policy setting.

By default, the policy setting is set to Not Configured, which means that it saves all the search keywords you use to find files and folders in Windows Explorer. Switching to Enabled option will immediately disable search suggestion in Windows Explorer. It must be noted that it’s a system-wide level change, and all the user account holders including Administrators, Users, and Guests will not be able to view their search history while using search bar in Windows Explorer.

Once policy setting is changed, close the window. Now, open Windows Run console using Win+R hotkey combination. Enter gpupdate /force to update the changes made to Local Group Policy.

It must be noted that it doesn’t disable or remove all MRU lists from Windows Registry, and you may view search suggestions in other Windows 8 applications. The above method can only disable search suggestions in Windows Explorer.

Want to clear history of recently opened documents in Windows 8? Check out our guide here.

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The application includes a slew of features to customize email backup and restore functions. While it supports different switches to tailor the sync and restore modes, it saves all the emails from specified email account in a separate folder that can be moved to other systems for syncing and restoring emails. Apart from the full backup mode, it offers a quick sync mode that performs incremental backup operation to save only most recent mail items from your account. Additionally, Gmvault comes packed with quite a few customization options. You can even choose a set of emails that are to be backed up from a specific Gmail account. Using the custom sync mode, you can specify the date range to backup only required emails from your account.

Perhaps, the most useful feature of this utility is the ability to restore email to a different Gmail account. Once you’ve backed up your emails from one account, you can simply use the restore command to recreate the saved gmail mailboxes in any Gmail account. While restoring email to the other account, it preserves  all attributes like email labels to recreate them with each mail item.

The utility offers a straightforward usage. Once installed, double-click its desktop shell icon to run the application in console. Before you start the backup operation, it’s recommended to view the help manual to understand the usage of each command it’s to offer. Just enter gmvault –help command to view help topics. You can view help section associated with sync and restore functions by typing in gmvault sync –h and gmvault restore –help commands, respectively.

The full sync (backup) operation can be performed using the following command.

gmvault sync <email address>

Once entered, it will ask you to log into required email account in order to grant access to your Gmail account. Just press Enter and it will open Gmail app access authorization page in your default browser. Once you grant the access, move to console and press Enter again to begin the backup process.

By default, it saves all the email items from a specified account in C:\Users\<user name>\gmvault-db folder. However, you can change the backup folder by using –d DB_DIR switch with sync command. The quick sync mode lets you quickly scan and backup emails from last 2 months at default/specified location. You can use the following command to perform quick backup operation.

gmvault sync –type quick <email address>

Restoring backed up email to Gmail account is easy. All you need is to enter the following command to restore backed up email archive to specified Gmail account.

gmvault restore <email address>

This will scan the default backup location and then start restoring the backed up email archive to specified Gmail account. However, If you’ve backed up the email items at different location, then you need to specify the location with restore command to restore the email archive. The restore command also lets you specify custom label with email items and restart the restore process from last processed/saved email id via –label and –restart switches, respectively. In addition, you can choose to encrypt the emails saved in your email database (gmvault-db folder) to prevent unauthorized access.

Gmvault certainly provides an easy way to backup and restore email archive to multiple Gmail accounts. Using the restore command, you can easily copy backed up email items to any Gmail account. Furthermore, the application has the ability to automatically resolve IMAP-related issues while creating email item database. You can check out different usage scenarios and supported sync and restore commands’ switches here. As of this writing, the application is in beta testing phase and works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux OS.

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If you’re using MS Exchange account, and have already created a Public Folder, then open Outlook and create a new Contact folder in shared folder hierarchy in order to share it with your colleagues on the network. This add-on requires you to specify the shared contact folder to automatically sync the contacts from defined contact category. For instance, you can choose to sync Work Contacts category with shared contact folder, so that your co-workers can instantly access the updated version of Work Contacts list.

Once the add on is installed, you can launch it as a standalone application from desktop. The main interface provides some basic options to connect to Outlook and select contacts to share. To begin, specify the Outlook Profile, followed by Sync Slot and Contact category that you wish to share. Once done, you need to specify the contacts folders, which are to be synced. Here, first select the main contact folder and then select the public contact folder in order to sync the specified contact category.

Contact Sync allows you to schedule contact sync process. By default, it syncs contacts after every 30 minutes, but you can change the sync time interval from settings. Additionally, you can choose to enter an email address to directly send sync log. This feature may come useful in situations where you need to check the contact sync processes from remote locations.

After specifying the contacts folders, specify the location where the duplicate contacts or contacts with conflicts are to be moved. Once all settings are in place, click Sync to synchronize specified contacts category with public folder. It generates a detailed log file every time it syncs contacts with defined folder(s), and if send email option is enabled in Settings, it automatically sends the log file to specified recipient.

It’s worth mentioning here that It also works with standard Outlook version (without Exchange server configuration), and can sync defined contacts category with any contact folder. The free version supports syncing only 30 contacts with 3 network users, however, you can purchase Workgroup version (costs $249) or Corporate version (costs $999) to increase the number of users as well as, number of synced contacts. It supports Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010.

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The shutdown policy also deals with those applications, which can forcibly suspend or postpone Windows shutdown process until their tasks are running. These applications send an interference call to shutdown process, and then perform their tasks in background. When all pending tasks are finished, they send signal to Windows to shutdown/restart the system. If you disable auto-termination of applications policy setting, then both CMD and GUI applications without visible top-level windows will not be terminated, and you have to either manually end their tasks or wait until they unload their processes from the memory.

To get started, make sure that you’ve logged in as Administrator or have required administrative rights to open and change local policies. First off, go to Start Screen, type gpedit.msc, select Apps from right sidebar, and then click gpedit in main window.

This will open Local Group Policy Editor. Now, navigate to Computer Configuration—> Administrative Templates—>System—>Shutdown Options. Just double-click Turn off automatic termination of applications that block or cancel shutdown policy setting.

Now select Enabled option from the top, and then click Apply followed by OK. This will set Windows to look for applications without top-level windows at system shutdown, and suspend the system shutdown as long as their processes are running in the background.

Now, close the Local Group Policy Editor, and bring up the Windows Run console using Win+R hotkey combination. Just type gpupdate /force and hit Enter to forcibly update the local group policy.

In order to check whether Windows terminates the console/GUI applications without visible top-level window, shutdown or restart the system. If it forcibly terminates the background apps, then reboot your system, log into your user account, and then restart or shutdown the system to check if auto-termination of application feature is disabled or not.

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Like previous Windows versions, Windows 8 also saves shortcuts to all the recently used applications, documents, files, images, and folders in User Profile folder, namely Recent. These shortcuts help users easily access all the recently used items, but anyone with malicious intentions can use the shortcuts to get to the folders where your important files are saved. Although Windows 8, like Windows Vista and Windows 7, lets you permanently disable save recent documents shortcuts option, it can come useful in instances where you want to quickly view or open recently edited documents. Windows 8 MMC snap-in, known as, Local Group Policy Editor presents a simple, yet better solution for all user account holders. It allows Windows to automatically delete all the shortcuts to recently used documents as well as, Jump List items when user logs off. If this option is enabled, you no longer have to manually clear the history of recently used documents. Just log off the system, and Windows will clear shortcuts to documents created during the session.

Before you begin, make sure that you’re logged in as administrator or have required administrative privileges to make changes to Local Group Policy. First off, move to Start Screen and type gpedit.msc, select Apps from left sidebar and select gpedit from main window.

This will open Local Group Policy Editor. Now, navigate to User Configuration—>Administrative Templates—> Start Menu and Taskbar. In main window, you will find Clear history of recently opened documents on exit policy.

Just double-click this policy, select Enabled option and hit Apply. This will immediately set Windows to delete shortcuts to recently used/edited documents at system log off. Additionally, Windows will also clear start menu and taskbar pinned applications’ jump lists items when you shutdown, restart and log off the system.

Now, close the local group policy editor and bring up Windows Run console by using Win+R hotkey combination. Enter gpupdate /force to apply the policy update. Once done, restart the system to check whether Windows deletes shortcuts to recent documents, and jump lists items or not.

It’s worth mentioning here that the above mentioned method doesn’t stop saving the shortcuts to recently edited documents and used programs in Recent folder, and if you want to disable the store recent documents and applications shortcuts option, you have to manually disable it from Taskbar Properties –> Jump Lists.

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