Four Ways to Super Power the Windows Taskbar

The Windows taskbar is at the very heart of the user experience for Microsoft’s operating system. The taskbar is that thin strip at the bottom of your display where the Start button exists and program icons appear when a window is open. We’ve seen before that the taskbar is quite malleable. You can relocate it to a different side of your screen and change taskbar properties, for example.

Now, we’ll look at some less “mission critical” niceties that you can add to the taskbar to make your daily use just that little bit better.

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How to Turn Off Mouse Acceleration in Windows 10

Sometimes a mouse pointer can hang on the screen or move erratically and create frustration. This problem can happen in Windows 10 due to mouse acceleration issues.

In this article, you’ll learn:

  • How to turn off automatic mouse acceleration
  • What the Enhance Pointer Precision feature is
  • How that feature creates problems
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How to Fix ‘No Battery Is Detected’ on Your Laptop

The battery is one of the most-vital parts of the computer, as it allows us to take our tech on the road and work anywhere we like. If you get a “no battery is detected” error, don’t panic. There are a number of potential solutions to this laptop issue and getting one of these error notifications doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll need to buy a replacement battery or buy a new laptop.

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What Is the sppextcomobjpatcher.exe Process and What Does It Do?

Sppextcomobjpatcher.exe is a Windows 10 process that is involved with the registration key you used to activate your copy of Windows. It’s not a nefarious piece of software, so if you see it running in Task Manager, you don’t necessarily need to panic that your system has been infected. But if it appears in an anti-malware scan from a tool like Malwarebytes Antimalware, then it may warrant taking a closer look at.

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How to Delete System Error Memory Dump Files

Whenever your computer crashes, and you encounter something like the blue screen of death (BSOD), the Windows operating system performs a memory dump to a location on your hard drive. Every now and then, it’s good to know how to delete system error memory dump files to keep these files from consuming too much disk space.

What Is a System Error Memory Dump File?

If a BSOD error occurs, the Windows dumps all of the RAM memory into a file on the hard drive. This means if your system is using 8 GB of RAM at the time of the crash, the memory dump file will be 8 GB.

In other cases, Windows may take a “kernel” dump file, which only includes memory allocated to the Windows kernel for things like drivers and active applications. This memory dump file will be significantly smaller than a full system memory dump. This is the default size of a memory dump when you’ve set up your system to conduct an automatic memory dump.

The Windows team or software developers have tools to open and analyze this file for troubleshooting purposes. To check your memory dump setting:

  1. Type “sysdm.cpl” into Windows search, then press Enter to open System Properties.

  2. Select the Advanced tab. On this tab, select Settings under Startup and Recovery.

    Screenshot of Startup and Recovery in System Properties

  3. Observe the drop-down setting under Write degugging information. You can see which dump file setting is enabled, as well as the location of the memory dump file on your system.

    Screenshot of Write degugging information settings in Windows

  4. Select the drop-down and select Automatic memory dump. This will ensure that the each time a memory dump is performed, it only backs up the kernel and will conserve hard drive memory.

  5. Select Overwrite any existing file as well. This will ensure the dump file doesn’t continue to grow over time.

  6. Select OK to save your changes.

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