Windows 7

Everybody who upgrades to Windows 7, be it from XP or Vista, will have a good reason for doing so.  I thought I’d look at a few of these, examine whether Windows 7 is likely to meet expectations, and ask you why you’re going to get it. Continue reading »

If you got your hands on a copy of Windows 7 (pre-beta or beta) you should have also received a Windows 7 product key with it to test the new operating system extensively. If you did install it without entering the product key you might have noticed by now that the operating system can only be tested for a period of 30 days before it requires registration. Continue reading »

We managed to get our hands on specific details on what features each SKU will have for Windows 7. Despite much criticism, Microsoft is sticking to the 3 concurrent program limit for Windows 7 Starter. Major differences between Home Premium and Professional include the ability to join a domain, host a remote desktop session, encrypt files, and do an advanced backup. Windows 7 Ultimate will basically be Windows 7 Enterprise but for personal use. Continue reading »

Language packs or MUI packs are used to change the default language of Windows 7 to a language of your choice. For example, download and installing the French language pack will translate all the menus and options in Windows 7 into French. Continue reading »

Today is customise Windows XP day.  First off we told you how to add Windows 7 Desktop properties to Windows XP, now we’ve found a way to add Aero Glass Window Borders to Windows XP. Continue reading »

So, the question arises: how do I add a VHD of Windows 7 to the Vista bootloader? Put simply, Vista’s bootloader, not Vista, does not support booting from a VHD. Nonetheless, the bootloader can be replaced with Windows 7’s bootloader, and then we can boot from either a hard install of Vista or a VHD of Windows 7. Continue reading »

Windows 7’s Action Center does a great job of compressing all of Windows’ update/alert/whatever notifications into one icon, but it takes some tweaking to make it show what you want, or disable it entirely.At the How-To Geek’s home away from Lifehacker, his partner in serious Windows customization, Mysticgeek, details the process of defining exactly which kind of system message get displayed through the Action Center’s little white flag icon. It’s all done through the Control Panel and right-click options, no registry hacking required, but the process might not be apparent to Windows 7 newcomers. And for those who don’t want their system to bother them at all, there’s a simple fix for disabling the Action Center for real. Hit the link for a walkthrough full of explanatory screenshots. Continue reading »

The Tech-Recipes tutorial blog writes up a quick guide on docking the Recycle Bin icon as a separate item on the Windows 7 taskbar, instead of underneath Windows Explorer.Following the guide is simple enough—just create a new shortcut to explorer.exe with shell:RecycleBinFolder as an argument, assign the Recycle Bin icon in the properties, and then choose Pin to Taskbar on the context menu. Once you are finished, you’ll have a separate recycle icon on the taskbar—useful for quick access to deleted files without having to hunt down an icon on your desktop, especially since Windows 7 doesn’t natively include the ability to pin the Recycle Bin to the taskbar.