Windows 8 comes with a number of tools for system maintenance and repair. Here’s a quick way to access many of these tools and to troubleshoot problems.
- Open the Charms bar. One way is with the keyboard shortcut Winkey+C
- Click “Settings”
- Click “Power”
- In the menu that opens, Click “Restart” while holding down the left Shift key
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The screen shown below will open
- Choose “Troubleshoot”
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The screen shown next will open. Among the choices are refreshing or resetting or a number of advanced options.
- Choose the option you wish to use
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Advanced options includes a number of choices as shown in the figure below
More information from Microsoft: How to restore, refresh, or reset your PC
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Comments
"Click “Restart” while holding down the left Shift key" - this doesn't work for me - should it be a different key, or is it dependent on which type of computer/keyboard layout?
It is standard PS/2 keyboard enhanced (101- or 102-key)with English (UK) layout so you are probably right.
I think it affects the touch-pad as well - I saw a recent article on touch-pad gestures which said that swiping from the left of the pad opens the current programs (left-hand) side bar, but in my case it switches directly between the desktop and the last visited win8 app or vice-versa.