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Category: faster windows 7

  • Mind blowing things Windows 7 does that Vista doesn’t

    Mind blowing things Windows 7 does that Vista doesn’t
    Shake them away
    Ever had 10 Notepad, two Powerpoint and 50 Outlook windows open? Want to minimise all of them except the most important one? In Windows 7, you can grab the top of the window and shake it about to scare away all of the other open windows. Simple.
    A step forward in previewing
    In Vista, hovering over a minimised window on the taskbar would provide a preview of the window. In Windows 7, a similar preview pops up which also gives the option to close a window (within the preview), along with a full-size ‘peek’. You can also press Win + T to scroll along previews in the taskbar.
               A smaller preview, along with a full-size ‘peek’ with the ability to close the window
    Snap into place
    Simply drag your window to the left or right edge of the desktop to snap and resize the window to one half of the screen. Drag the window to the top to maximise it. A pretty neat idea made neater by the use of the keyboard shortcuts (Win + respective arrow keys). No longer do you have to frustratingly position the mouse at the edge of the window to resize it.
    Jumplists
    Jumplists are a new feature that give you the option to view a list of recently accessed files by application, even when the application isn’t open, by right-clicking on the application’s icon in the taskbar. It also allows you to quickly access a favourite playlist without opening your media player. Jumplists can also be found integrated into the Start Menu.
                                         The Jumplist for Windows Explorer – pretty useful
                                                 A Jumplist integrated into the Start Menu
    XP Mode
    This time, you do not have to slap your head that same way when Vista would not run an XP application. For those XP applications that do not work under Windows 7, you can download XP Mode free from the Microsoft website and run XP applications in an emulated XP environment in Windows 7. Imagine Parallels on Mac OS X without the need to fish out money on an extra OS.
    An easier and quicker way to adjust multiple displays
    Do you constantly connect your computer to different external monitors or projectors, especially at work? Try Win + P, and duplicating or extending your display to the other monitor takes just a second. Win + P presents you with an Alt + Tab style menu, which is ideal if you give a lot of presentations at work on your laptop.
    A personalised Stage for your device
    With the new ‘Device and Printers‘ button on the Start Menu, devices which are connected to your computer can have their own Stage. This Device Stage presents supported devices with a photo-realistic render and a link to the vendor’s website, along with other updates and useful information (such as firmware updates and manuals).
    Eliminate the notification area!
    What, I can even get rid of the clock and volume icons? Yes. Click the arrow that gives access to the overflow icons in the notification area and click ‘customise’. Select each icon and click ‘hide icon and notifications’ to remove it. Clean.
                                                            Stop all those notifications
    Problem Steps Recorder
    The ‘Problem Steps Recorder’ lets you record a particular problem you are having with your PC so you can send it to someone who may be able to help. Click ‘Record’, and a screenshot is taken with every mouse click, allowing comments to be added in between if required. These screenshots (and comments, if any) are placed in a well-formatted HTML document that is placed inside a zipped folder on your desktop – ideal to be attached to an email.
                                    Simple, yet so effective. Send this to friends or manufacturers
    A brand new Magnifier tool
    If you are, or someone you know, is visually impaired, then the Windows 7 Magnifier provides two options for providing a bigger display. One of which is using the traditional dock (which took up a lot of the screen) and the other being a rectangular lens that is stuck to the cursor (meaning there is no loss of workspace).
                   A sleek new magnifier that follows your cursor, without decreasing your workspace
    A new way to preview your music files
    Opening and listening to an MP3 is a lot more snappier with Windows 7 due to its new smaller preview player, presenting you with album art, basic music functionality and a link to the full-blown Windows Media Player. This is an obvious attempt to mimic the preview feature of Mac OS X, but it is very well executed.
                                                The new preview is simple – and loads up very quickly
    Homegroup Networking
    In Vista (or, frankly, any Windows OS), creating a shared folder over a network at home could be a bit of a pain. In Windows 7, using the ‘Homegroup‘ wizard, check the default folders you would like to share. This will give you a passcode that will have to be entered in another computer on the same network to share the files. Sounds too good to be true? There is a catch: only a Windows 7 computer can join a Homegroup.
    Stream Music directly to another computer
    If you do create a Homegroup, Windows Media Player allows you to stream music directly to another computer. So, instead of listening to music through your measly laptop speakers, you can wirelessly stream to the 7.1 Surround Sound Speakers of your PC in your living room, without stepping away from your laptop. Sweet.
    Action Center
    The Action Center is the new Security Center for Windows 7, along with other notifications such as updates and access to the improved troubleshooting and recovery using restore point facilities. Basically, it is everything windows usually annoys you with, rolled into one place with one icon in the notification bar. If you find the alerts irritating, you can check out this tip to make the Windows 7 Action Center less annoying.
    Pin just about anything to the new Windows Taskbar
    Imagine a blank Mac OS X Dock with the start menu, the notifications bar and the improved ‘Show Desktop’ button added to it. Drag just about anything on to it and the associated application will place itself on the translucent taskbar, with an option to open the file in the Jumplist.
    Improved Touch Navigation
    Windows 7 has much improved touch navigation. The larger taskbar with squarer icons makes it a lot easier to navigate with your fingers, and Macbook-like multi-touch gestures on various applications could change the way you interact with windows. Subtle enhancements such as a larger Start Menu appearing when Touchscreen hardware is detected also help.
    Native ISO Burner
    There are those times when you inevitably have to burn an ISO file (such as when you have to copy a downloaded Windows 7 beta or RC) to a DVD. With Windows 7 you do not need to download third-party software (some of which are pretty confusing to use). Double-clicking on an ISO file will take you to a window that allows you to change the disc burner drive. Click ‘Burn’. After a while, your disc is ready. Simple.
                                            Burning an ISO file has never been so easy
    Native calibration tools
    If you tend to hook up your computer to an HDTV or care about getting the highest quality from your monitor, then the in-built basic and easy-to-use calibration tools built into Windows 7 will please you.

  • Install Windows 7 from USB

    So you finally bought your retail box. But what if you want to install Windows 7 on a netbook or other computer without an optical drive?
    Fortunately, you’re not out of luck, because Windows 7 can be installed from a USB storage key. Not only does installing from a USB key remove the need for a DVD drive, the install time is also greatly reduced

    Here is what you will need to do:
    Note: This guide will only work within Windows Vista or 7.
    1. Format Your USB Key 
    Plug in your USB key and back up any existing data stored on it. You’ll need to format the key before you can make it a bootable device.
    Time = 1 hour
    What you need:
    • 4GB USB key
    • WinRAR Free Evaluation Copy, www.rarlab.com
    • Windows 7

    Open up a Command Prompt as an Administrator. You can do this by finding the cmd.exe in yoru Windows/System32 folder, right-clicking the executable, and selecting “Run as Administrator”. Alternatively, type CMD in the Start Menu search field and activate the Command Prompt using Ctrl + Shift + Enter.

    You should be under c:\Windows\system32 (assuming your Windows partition is the C drive). Type “diskpart” in the command line to enter the Disk Partition command line tool, which lets you format and create partitions on active disks.
    Type “list disk” to reveal a list of all your active disks, each of which is associated with a number. Make a note of which one is your USB key, based on the capacity. In our screenshot below, our USB drive is Disk 6 (8GB).

    Next, type the following commands, one at a time:
    Select Disk # (Where # is the number of your USB disk. We typed “Select Disk 6”)
    Clean (removes any existing partitions from the USB disk, including any hidden sectors)
    Create Partition Primary (Creates a new primary partition with default parameters)
    Select Partition 1 (Focus on the newly created partition)
    Active (Sets the in-focus partition to active, informing the disk firmware that this is a valid system partition)
    Format FS=NTFS (Formats the partition with the NTFS file system. This may take several minutes to complete, depending on the size of your USB key.)
    Assign (Gives the USB drive a Windows volume and next available drive letter, which you should write down. In our case, drive “L” was assigned.)
    Exit (Quits the DiskPart tool)

    2. Turn the USB Key into a Bootable Device

    Insert the Windows 7 install DVD into your drive, and view the files that it contains. Copy all of the files here to a folder on your Desktop. We put the disc contents in a folder named “Windows 7”
    Go back to your command prompt, running it as an Administrator. Using the “CD” command, find your way to the folder where you extracted the ISO files. Your command line path should look something like “C:\Users\USERNAMEHERE\Desktop\Windows 7\”.
    Type the following commands:
    CD Boot (This gets you into the “boot” directory)
    Bootsect.exe /nt60 L: (where ‘L’ is the drive letter assigned to your USB key from the previous step)
    Bootsect infuses boot manager compatible code into your USB key to make it a bootable device.
    IMPORTANT: If you’re currently running 32-bit Windows Vista or 7, Bootsect will only work if you use the files from the 32-bit Windows 7 install disc. The Bootsect executable from the 64-bit version will not run in 32-bit Vista.

    3. Load the USB Key Up with the Install Files

    Copy all of the extracted ISO files into the USB drive. You don’t need to do this from the command prompt. Just drag and drop the files from the “Windows 7” folder into the drive using Windows Explorer.
    Your USB key is now all ready to go! Plug it into your target system and make sure you enter the BIOS (typically with F2 or F12) to temporarily change the boot order to allow booting from the USB key before your primary hard drive or optical drive. On the next restart, your system should automatically begin speedily loading setup files off of the USB key and entering Windows 7 installation.