No matter how careful you are, problems tend to crop up on Windows and macOS anyway — from little annoyances you can't get rid of to full-blown system-wide issues that make it hard to use your computer normally. We've got some good news for you though: You can find plenty of free apps to help at least ameliorate some of the problems, if not outright fix them.

In a recent blog post titled "Hardening macOS," Ricard Bejarano offers an extensive list of settings you can tweak to make macOS as secure as possible. It's a comprehensive list of tasks — and we love it — but it's important that you understand the "why" behind his recommendations, too. Here are a few of his top tips and explanations for why you're adjusting, installing, or modifying your Mac that way.

Dear Lifehacker, Three or four years ago, my Macbook died, and because I was an avid user of Time Machine, I was able to retrieve virtually everything I cared about from my external hard drive, except my photos. Because this tragedy happened to coincide with a software update, the updated photos couldn’t access the old photo library that was stored on the other drive.

In this week’s edition of Tech 911 — the column that addresses any and all technological troubles or questions you have — a Lifehacker reader is dealing with one of the more annoying problems you can face after building your brand-new desktop system: something not working right.

Skype announced this week that it has added a cloud-based recording feature to its video chat service, which you can now access on almost any version of Skype save for the Windows 10 version. It’ll gain the call-recording feature “in the coming weeks,” according to the Skype blog.

You've got friends coming round to watch a movie, or you need your family to watch this one really great YouTube video. Maybe you've just got a slideshow of photos to show off. Whatever the reason you'd rather put your computer's screen on the TV than have everyone huddle around your laptop.

Physically connecting a television to your computer is easy enough, even if you have to buy a new cable (or dongle) to go from your system to your television's HDMI input. Getting the two to play nicely be a bit of a headache, however.

Mac: Recently we told you how to clear off your cluttered Mac desktop. But if you just want your Mac to stop saving your screenshots to your desktop, commenter Jägs has a solution. Just enter a couple of commands into your Mac's Terminal app, and your computer will create those images in a different folder.

Mac: Some people keep their computer desktop neat. Some people are happy to keep their desktop messy. For those who want a clean desktop but have trouble maintaining it, there's Declutter.

The command line (or Terminal for you Mac fans) is a throwback to a simpler age of computing, before mouse pointers and application windows and desktop wallpaper. Back when it was just you and a window full of text. Operating systems have long since evolved beyond the humble command line interface, but there's still no better tool for quickly disseminating complex information in your operating system -- and you can actually do some other pretty cool stuff with them, too.

The login screen greets you every single time you boot up your computer, but it's often neglected when it comes to tweaking and customising your system. Here's how to make changes to the login screen on macOS Sierra or Windows 10 so it's very much your own.

Rainmeter is a powerful tool that lets you create a beautiful, information-rich heads-up display that keeps track of your system status, RSS feeds and a ton of other info. Here's how to use it to make an awesome, Iron Man-like HUD for your Windows desktop.

Windows: Rainmeter is hands-down the most popular tool for customising the look of your Windows desktop and it's hitting version 4.0 with some new skin creation tools.

Budget supermarket Aldi is selling a Medion gaming PC that costs just under $2000. It will be on sale next Wednesday, but is it worth buying? The Medion brand isn't exactly known for high quality and the price seems awfully good when other gaming PCs can cost much more than $2000. Let's look at the specs and find out.

Google is constantly improving its weather card with more information. In a recent update to the Google app, the new weather card has added hourly predictions for wind and precipitation levels in your area.

Windows: Fences, one of our favourite apps for organising your desktop, just got better with version 3. Now you can minimise fences to just their title bars so you can hide your desktop clutter while keeping everything easy to find.

Chrome: If you keep lots of tabs open in your browser window, it can be a minor pain to find one when you need it. Tab Organiser is a Chrome extension that helps you maintain them a little better.

Android: Android is a pretty versatile operating system, but it's not really ready for desktop-style uses just yet. RemixOS shows that it could be, with windowed Android apps, running on Intel-based PCs.

The traditional end-user computing strategy for organisations is to buy a bunch of desktops or notebooks and roll them out indiscriminately to workers. These machines are tightly controlled because the assumption is that users are stupid and will invariably break any machine you give them. This approach is sorely out of date and we sat down with IBRS IT advisor Dr. Joseph Sweeney to discuss why companies should revamp the way they look at end-user computing.