Tag: system
January 12, 2010 by
Jason
Windows 7 RTM can eat up some of the desktop shortcuts created by end users, Microsoft explained. Customers running the latest iteration of the Windows client have reported that in certain scenarios shortcuts that they placed on the desktop disappeared altogether. According to the Redmond company, this is expected, by design, behavior in Windows 7. At fault is the System Maintenance troubleshooter that will delete all shortcuts from the desktop as long as they are considered broken.
“The System Maintenance troubleshooter performs a weekly maintenance of the operating system. The System Maintenance troubleshooter either fixes problems automatically or reports problems through Action Center. When there are more than four broken shortcuts on the desktop, the System Maintenance troubleshooter automatically removes all broken shortcuts from the desktop,” Microsoft stated.
According to the software giant, the System Maintenance troubleshooter has a certain limit that triggers it to delete broken shortcuts. Microsoft informs that keeping the number of broken shortcuts on the desktop to no more than four ensures that they won’t be touched. But place five broken shortcuts on the Windows 7 desktop and they will be deleted. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | 1 Comment »
December 27, 2009 by
Jason While the worldwide economy is showing signs of recovery from the financial crisis of the past years, fact is that cost is a key fact to consider when it comes down to the adoption of new technology. Windows 7 makes no exception to this rule, with the operating system bound to have businesses that are upgrading pay for more than just the price tag. Microsoft is now offering a free tool designed to permit corporate customers to calculate just how much will embracing the latest iteration of the Windows client cost them.
In this regard, Windows 7 ROI Tool Lite is advertised as a resource capable of showing companies just how much they stand to save by upgrading to Windows 7. Unlike end users, corporate customers need to take into consideration the Total Cost of Ownership for new technology, as well as get estimates on their Return on Investment.
Windows 7 ROI Tool Lite “helps organizations assess their current PC total cost of ownership and the potential benefits from implementing Windows 7 to help lower costs, improve service levels and drive business productivity. Enter requested information, indicated in yellow. Default research metrics provided regarding current opportunities and potential savings based on Microsoft studies of first deployments, and Alinean research – 2009,” reads the description of the tool. Read More»
Posted in Software, Windows 7 | 1 Comment »
December 21, 2009 by
Jason A simple change made into Windows 7’s registry can cause the operating system to cut access for end users to the settings of the User Account Control feature. According to the Redmond company, the Office 97 has been identified as the source of the problem. Microsoft explains that the issue only occurs in scenarios in which end users attempt to install Office 97. It is the very installation of Office 97 that is responsible for the registry change which cuts off access to the settings of UAC in Windows 7.
“In the Windows 7 “System and Security” control panel category, the Action Center lets you change User Account Control (UAC) settings. In the User Account Control Settings dialog box, you move the slide bar control for notifications, and then you click the OK button. In this scenario, the dialog box does not close, and no change is made. When the mouse pointer is positioned on the OK button, and you press ENTER, the dialog box still does not close, and no change is made,” Microsoft revealed.
Microsoft doesn’t offer a hotfix or an update designed to resolve this specific issue as of yet. However, the Redmond company does have a manual fix in place. Users will be required to essentially mend the problems created with the installation of Office 97 on top of Windows 7. Essentially, users need to put together a file that will modify the Windows 7 registry. For this, they will need nothing more than Notepad. They will need to create a file with the name UAC.reg and place it on the desktop. Next, they will have to copy and paste the following text in the UAC.reg file, save it and close the text editor. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
December 15, 2009 by
Jason
Users that have experience glitches in scenarios involving the burning of DVDs from Windows 7 might find a resolve with Microsoft, provided that the issues were generated by Udfs.sys. Microsoft has made available an update designed to take care of three problems associated with the Universal Disk Format (UDF) file system driver (Udfs.sys). The refresh in question is available for both Windows 7 RTM and Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM.
Microsoft described the first problem that Windows 7 users are likely to come across: “You try to back up some large files to a DVD-RW by using Windows Backup in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2. However, the backup operation fails and you receive an error message that resembles the following: “Logical Block Address Out of Range (SCSI_ADSENSE_ILLEGAL_BLOCK).” Additionally, the Eject function does not work.”
The Udfs.sys update for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is currently up for grabs from Microsoft. However, in this sense the refresh is designed more like a hotfix. Microsoft is not serving the fix through Windows Update and had not posted the bits on the Microsoft Download Center. Instead the hotfix can be downloaded from Microsoft Support. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
November 15, 2009 by
Jason System tray icon has been taken quite seriously in windows 7, the windows 7 taskbar has been designed keeping in mind that system tray icons of the various third party applications should not occupy the task bar space. So, by default any program which has a system tray icon is hidden by default in windows 7 system tray.
In order to show a system tray icon in the task bar, here is how you can set it to show. Take your mouse over the arrow pointing vertically upwards, you can see the text saying show hidden icons
click the arrow pointing upwards on the windows 7 taskbar, and click the customize text.
After clicking customize it will open up action center where you can show the icon and notifications of a program [ as shown in the image below ]
Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | 2 Comments »
October 02, 2009 by
Jason Firefox 4.0 is the flavor of Mozilla’s web browser that is expected to come to the market sometimes in the second half of next year, while delivering to users a series of visual changes that will start to appear as soon as Firefox 3.7 is pushed out. We already had a glimpse at how the 3.7 version of Firefox might look like, and at the visual improvements it might bring to Windows-based computers, and we should also have a look at how 4.0 should continue the improvements.
According to Mozilla Wiki, the UI of Firefox 4.0 is mainly expected to deliver refinements to the changes that are to come with 3.7, and should include some major additions and changes. Among them, we can count the possibility that the LocationBar and SearchBar are to be merged, the Stop/Refresh/Go are to become One Button, a Tab-on-Top Option could appear, as well as App Tabs, the Home Tab functionality is to be enhanced, the Bookmarks Bar hidden and the Status Bar removed.
Here’s what Mozilla says when it comes to the merging of the LocationBar and SearchBar: “The AwesomeBar already has a lot of search functionality, even though it is currently only local. These fields have a convergent function: finding things. Merging these and including something like Taskfox will put search in a unified location with added utility. It will also reduce toolbar complexity/clutter by merging functionality.” Read More»
Posted in Firefox | 1 Comment »
September 19, 2009 by
Jason Windows 7’s evolution compared to Windows Vista is undeniable, and the lucky few that so far have had access to the RTM bits of the latest Windows client can confirm this. But fact of the matter is that even in Beta Build 7000 development stage, Windows 7 bested Vista, and the boot time performance drag race is an illustrative example in this regard. However, Windows 7 startup speeds manage to leave its precursor in the dust. Some of you might remember reading about the 11-second boot Windows 7 delivered in a demonstration courtesy of Ruston Panabaker, Microsoft’s principal program manager of strategic silicon partnering. (via PCMag and Beyond Binary)
Yes, Windows 7 booting in just 11 seconds. My first question was, what kind of computer was Panabaker running, for obvious, and geeky, reasons. So I went ahead, and shot an email to Microsoft asking for details about the hardware configuration of the 11-second Windows 7 boot machine. Here is the answer a company spokesperson provided me: “This was ran on a Quad-core 1.7 GHz Nehalem [Core i7] processor on a Calpella chipset, 2GB of memory, 80 GB Intel X25-M SSD (1st gen). In the set up, the log-in screen was turned off in the user control panel.”
However, the Microsoft representative noted that the 11-second boot represented just the startup time for Windows 7. “Note: BIOS post is in addition to this,” the company spokesperson added. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | 1 Comment »
It’s always a bit tricky to beta test a new operating system. Most of us don’t have an abundance of extra hardware just sitting around, and it can be both time consuming and risky to rebuild your production machine with a pre-release version of the next OS.
But with Windows 7, it’s pretty easy to beta test on the machine you’ve already got. Hard drives have gotten much larger and much less expensive, and if you’re running Windows Vista, you already have built-in functionality to help you create a separate partition for testing.
To get started, open the Disk Management section of the Computer Management console on your Windows Vista machine. You can access this by clicking Start | Run and entering compmgmt.msc. Right-click your current system partition, likely labeled C:, and select Shrink Volume. Windows will query the disk for the amount of available space. You’ll probably want at least 20-30gigs of free space so you’ll have enough room for the Windows 7 beta installation, some data, and a few applications. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7, Windows Vista | No Comments »
Putting the Windows 7 installation on a USB thumb drive has a few advantages—a small USB key is much more convenient for carrying around than a DVD, the OS will actually install much faster, and you can use a USB key to install Windows 7 on systems that do not have a DVD drive, such as a netbook. In fact, you can even install Windows 7 on netbooks that have fairly modest hardware. Dennis Chung, an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft recently posted a video demonstrating how easy it is to prepare your thumb drive and use it to install Windows 7. Here’s a quick look at the process:
* First, you’ll need the DiskPart utility on the system you will use to prep the thumb drive. This is a free disk partitioning utility that is likely already installed on your Windows system. If not, you can download DiskPart here
* Launch the DiskPart utility by typing diskpart at the Start Menu.
* Then run the list disk command to check the status of your drive.
* Now run select disk 1 where the “1″ is actually the corresponding number of your USB drive. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
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