Category: microsoft

How to Configure UAC to Require a Password for Administrator

Information

While the UAC prompts seen when using a standard account may require a password, this is not the case while using an admin account.

Once logged into the Admin account, a user can change anything only by clicking Yes on a user account control box. Some security measure. By requiring a password on each UAC prompt you can add security to your administrator account(s).

This article works for Windows 7 and Windows Vista but is not applicable for Windows XP.

Here’s How:

First, be sure that UAC (User Account Control) is enabled. Open the control panel, navigate to the User Accounts & Family Safety section, click on User Accounts, then click on Change User Account Control Settings. Be sure that the sliding bar is not on the lowest setting.

Now that you’ve confirmed that UAC is enabled, you can enhance it.

Open the start menu and go to the search box.

Type in Local Security Policy, now hit enter.

Once this program is open, navigate to Local Policies, then Security Options.

Now scroll down until you see User Account Control in the name of the policies.

Once you see them, find the two that say User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for…. Right click on them and click modify. Change the values to Prompt for Credentials. Exit the program.

Now you will be greeted by a password prompt any time you do something that user account control deems a security action.

This may happen more of less often depending on what level you set your UAC to. Personally, I have mine set to the top level, however that’s mostly due to the fact that I download a lot of “questionable” files from many different sometimes non reputable sources.

If you wish to be able to adjust Windows settings without being prompted, then the two settings below the top will do. Use the second down if you wish to have the UAC dim your desktop, use the third down if you don’t.

To confirm that you’re being prompted for a password, just set your UAC to the highest level and then attempt to access UAC settings again.

This article works for Windows 7 and Windows Vista but is not applicable for Windows XP.

January 11, 2011
How to Restore the Windows 7 MBR (Master Boot Record)

Information

If you have been dual booting with Linux, then you probably know one of the Linux boot managers like Grub or LILO has been installed in the MBR of your hard drive. What can you do when you no longer want Linux on that hard drive?

This tutorial will show you how to use your 7 DVD and BOOTSECT.EXE to restore the “bootsector code” of the MBR and allow you to begin booting to Windows 7 again.

This article works for Windows 7 and Windows Vista but will not work for Windows XP.

Tip

You can use this method to update the bootsector code for Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000 or switch between Bootmgr and NTLDR. Just check the Microsoft TechNet site for the correct command.

Here’s How:

1. Boot your computer to the Windows 7 DVD (or to a “Repair CD”). At this screen choose to install now.

2. Select your language and click next.

3. Click the button for “Use recovery tools”.

4. Then select “Command Prompt”.

5. When open, the command prompt will look like this:

6. The command we will use, bootsect.exe, is in a folder (named boot) on the DVD.

We need to know what drive letter has been assigned the DVD drive to access the folder.

Code:

Type: diskpart

and press Enter

Type: select disk 0 (zero)

and press Enter

type: list volume

and press Enter

In this screen shot, the 7 DVD is letter: G



7. Use your DVD drive letter and

Code:

Type: exit

and press Enter

to close Diskpart

Type: G: (use the letter of your DVD drive)

and press Enter

Type: cd boot

and press Enter

Type: dir

and press Enter

to verify that bootcect.exe is there (if you really need to)



8. To restore the “bootsector code”:

Code:

TYPE: bootsect /nt60 SYS /mbr

and press Enter



NOTE:

If this method fails to restore the MBR, you can try the bootrec command as it is also a tool for repairing the MBR.

9. When completed successfully,

Code:

Type: exit

and press Enter

This will close the command prompt window.

10. Now select Shut Down or Restart



11. Then you can reboot your computer into Windows.

This article works for Windows 7 and Windows Vista but will not work for Windows XP.

January 10, 2011
How to Use Private Character Editor in Windows 7

The Private Character Editor is the lesser-known companion to Character Map. The program allows you to insert characters of your own design into text that you write. They can be linked to all fonts, a selected number of fonts, or just a single font.

This article is applicable to Windows 7 and may or may not work for Windows XP.

Here’s how:

Begin by clicking on the start button and typing Private Character Editor into the search box and press enter/return. You will need to enter administrative credentials to continue. The following screen will appear:

Click on OK. If you wish to design your own characters, you can do so in the grid shown below. When you have finished your design, proceed to the Save Character section.

Click Edit and then click Copy Character…

Choose the character you wish to copy, click on it to select it, and click OK.

Click Edit and then click Save Character (alternatively, use the Ctrl + S shortcut).

If you wish to create/copy further characters, click on View and then click Next Code (or use the Ctrl + N shortcut). The Prev Code (Ctrl + P shortcut) will then become available. You can copy/create further characters or edit existing ones.

When you have finished copying/creating/editing characters, you need to link them so that you can access and use them. To do this, click on File and then click Font Links…

For the default option of Link with All Fonts, simply click on OK. You may now close the Private Character Editor.

To explicitly link with one or more font(s), click on Link with Selected Fonts, browse to the required font and then click Save As… Give the character an appropriate name and click Save. Repeat for all fonts that you want to link with. When you have finished, click on OK and then close the Private Character Editor.

This article is applicable to Windows 7 and may or may not work for Windows XP.

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January 10, 2011
BitLocker feature in Windows 7

If you’ve got information on your PC that you need to protect, you can help prevent theft or loss by using BitLocker data encryption to put a virtual lock on your files.

How can you help protect your data from loss, theft, or hackers? The answer: BitLocker. If you’ve got information on your PC that you need to protect, you can help prevent theft or loss by using BitLocker data encryption to put a virtual lock on your files.

Improved for Windows 7 and available in the Ultimate edition, BitLocker helps keep everything from documents to passwords safer by encrypting the entire drive that Windows and your data reside on. Once BitLocker is turned on, any file you save on that drive is encrypted automatically.

BitLocker To Go—a new feature of Windows 7—gives the lockdown treatment to easily-misplaced portable storage devices like USB flash drives and external hard drives.

January 8, 2011
How to Setup Media Center Movie Library in Windows 7

Information

This tutorial will show how to manage your movie library in Media Center, including poster images & full synopsis information.

This Article will work on Windows 7 and Vista but not on Windows XP.

Examples:

With & without poster information.

Before you start:

Before we start we will need to create a batch file:

Open a notepad

Copy and paste the following code as it is:

@echo off

for %%a in (*.*) do (

md “%%~na” 2>nul

move “%%a” “%%~na”

)

Save the file as “folder creation.bat” without the cotes inside your movie folder.

It will give you a warning regarding change of the file type, ignore it.

Run the file which will create directories based on the movie file name (e.g. Babylon A.D.avi will have the directory Babylon A.D created) and the movie file moved to the directory.

Search for & download a file for the movie you would like as a poster and save it in the movie folder and name it folder.jpg. Do this for each movie.

Warning

I would advise at least 2GB of memory as due to the size of the folder.jpg files there is a lot of memory used. You could (like me) resize all folder.jpg files to a width of 300 pixels & maintain aspect ratio.

Here’s How:

1. Run Media Center and navigate to Movies

2. Open movie library, you should notice no movies shown

3. Right-Click within the inner (empty area) and select Manage Library, you will be shown the ‘Add folders’ wizard. Select ‘Add folders to the library’ and click next

4. Select the location where your drive with the videos is stored, and click on next.

5. Navigate to the folder where your videos are stored (e.g. G:\MOVIES), and click next.

6. On the final screen select ‘Yes, use these locations’ and click finish

Now your folder is added, Media Center will show the Video folders (with posters if you downloaded an image file for each movie).

This Article will work on Windows 7 and Vista but not on Windows XP.

January 7, 2011
How to Reset the Windows Experience Index (WEI) in Windows 7

Information

This article will show you how to reset the Windows Experience Index (WEI) as unrated in Windows 7 or Vista. This way you can rate your computer WEI score again with a clean slate.

EXAMPLE:

Windows Experience Index (WEI) with a Score

EXAMPLE:

Windows Experience Index (WEI) Reset to Unrated

OPTION ONE

Through Advanced Tools

NOTE:

To completely reset WEI, you should do either Option Two or Option Three below since they delete all of the .xml files so you can start fresh again.

1. Open the Control Panel (icons view), then click on Performance and Information Tools.

2. In the left pane, click on the Advanced Tools link. (see screenshot below)

3. Click on the Clear all Windows Experience Index scores and re-rate system link. (see screenshot below)

4. If prompted by UAC, click on Yes if administrator or enter the administrator’s password if standard user.

5. The WEI score will now be reset, and the WEI tests will now run automatically to rate this computer for a new WEI score.

OPTION TWO

Through a Elevated Command Prompt

1. Open a elevated command prompt.

2. In the elevated command prompt, copy and paste (or type) the command below and press enter. (see screenshot below)

Code:

del /f %SYSTEMROOT%\Performance\WinSat\DataStore\*.xml

3. WEI has now been reset. You can now update your WEI score.

OPTION THREE

Manually Through Windows Explorer

1. Open Windows Explorer, and navigate to the location below.

NOTE:

You can also “copy and paste” this location in the Start Menu search box and press enter to open directly to it.

Code:

C:\Windows\Performance\WinSat\DataStore

2. In the Data Store folder, select all of the listed .xml files and delete them. (see screenshot below)

3. Close Windows Explorer.

4. WEI has now been reset. You can now update your WEI score.

January 7, 2011
How to Delete a Partition or Volume in Windows 7

Information

This article will show you how to delete a hard disk partition or volume using Disk Management or Diskpart in Windows 7 to create empty unallocated space that you can use to create new partitions with.

Note

If your hard disk is currently set up as a single partition, then you can’t delete it unless you do it from Drive options (advanced) during a Windows 7 installation.

You also can’t delete the system partition, boot partition, or any partition that contains the virtual memory paging file, because Windows needs this information to start correctly.

Warning

You must be logged on in an administrator account to be able to do this tutorial.

When you delete a partition, all data on the partition is erased.

If you disable the Disk Defragmenter service, then you will get the error below when you try to do anything in Disk Management. If you get this error, then make sure that the Disk Defragmenter service is set to only manual.

METHOD ONE

Using Disk Management

1. Open the Control Panel (All Items view), and click on the Administrative Tools icon.

2. Click on Computer Management in Administrative Tools.

3. In the left pane under Storage, click on Disk Management. (See screenshot below)

4. In the middle pane, right click on the partition that you want to delete and click on Delete Volume. (See screenshot above)

NOTE:

If the partition is a logical partition, then you will need to delete the free space again to have it as unallocated space.

5. Click on Yes to confirm deletion. (See screenshot below)

6. The selected partition (step 4) is now deleted and is now unallocated space on the disk.

NOTE:

You can use this unallocated space to create a new partition with, or extend another partition on that same hard disk into it.

7. Close the Computer Management window. (See screenshot above)

METHOD TWO

Using Diskpart in a Elevated Command Prompt

1. Open a elevated command prompt, or a command prompt at boot.

2. In the elevated command prompt, type diskpart and press Enter. (See screenshot below)

3. In the elevated command prompt, type list volume and press Enter. (See screenshot below)

NOTE:

This will give you a list of volume numbers to select from to delete.

4. In the elevated command prompt, type select volume # and press Enter. (See screenshot below)

NOTE:

You would substitute # for the volume number listed that you want to delete. For example, I want to delete the listed volume 3, so I would type select volume 3 and press Enter.

5. In the elevated command prompt, type delete volume and press Enter. (See screenshot below)

NOTE:

If it fails to delete, then use type delete volume override and press enter instead.

6. In the elevated command prompt, type exit and press Enter. (See screenshot below)

7. Close the elevated command prompt.

8. The selected partition (step 4) is now deleted and is now unallocated space on the disk.

NOTE:

You can use this unallocated space to create a new partition with, or extend another partition on that same hard disk into it.

January 6, 2011
How to Transfer your Complete Windows 7 Installation to a New Computer

Information

Windows 7 System Preparation Tool is a powerful, native Windows tool. When for instance used in Audit Mode, it lets you to freely configure Windows 7 to be then deployed to other computers as hardware independent image.

In this tutorial we use System Preparation Tool (sysprep) to prepare your Windows 7 installation to be moved to a new computer, keeping all your installed applications, program settings and user profiles intact. You can use this method when you buy a new PC and want to transfer your existing setup completely, without the need to reinstall everything, or when you want to make major hardware changes like change the motherboard or GPU, which would usually cause Windows to stop booting normally.

Warning

Using this method causes Windows 7 to lose all activation information, and it needs to be reactivated afterwards. If your Windows 7 is an OEM version, you might not be able to reactivate afterwards, at least not without phone activation option.

With today’s hardware evolution, most of us are upgrading the hardware more often than operating system. Upgrading hardware can be painfully slow process if we need to reinstall the operating system and all our installed applications, plus transfer program settings and user profiles.

Using sysprep makes this easy. Changing the mother board or an old GPU to a new GPU quite often causes Windows 7 boot issues. This fact is usually painful, because you will then have to reinstall the OS and all applications and transfers user profiles from a backup location.

Same issue arises when you buy a new computer with completely different hardware setup compared to the old one, or when you try to restore a system image to different hardware setup. Normally this would include a complete re installation of Windows 7 and all applications.

Why not use sysprep to avoid reinstalling? Here are the different scenarios where you can use it.

METHOD ONE

Changing hardware components but keeping old hard disk(s)

1.   Before installing new hardware, boot Windows 7 normally

2.   Run Command Prompt as administrator

3.   Type to Command Prompt: C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\Sysprep.exe, and hit Enter

4.   In sysprep dialog that opens, choose System Cleanup Action as Enter System Out-of-Box-Experience (OOBE), select Generalize, and select Shutdown Options Shutdown. Click OK

5.   Sysprep generalizes now your Windows 7 setup and shuts down your computer. Do not run any other programs during this phase!

6.   Switch the main power of your PC off and install the new hardware OR dismount the hard disk(s) and mount it (them) to a new computer

7.   Boot the PC from sysprep generalized hard disk. You will notice Windows booting as if it was the first boot after installation, installing default drivers and updating registry. One or two reboots are needed, depending on your system specifications

8.   When Windows finally boots up, you will need to enter all information as if this really was a new, fresh installation

9.   Because your old user profiles already exist, Windows does not accept your normal username, but instead you have to create a new temporary user. I use username Test for this purpose

10. When login screen appears, choose your old user account to login

11. Windows boots now to default OOBE first boot desktop, with default 800*600 resolutions and default theme. All your installed applications are there, as well as your old user profiles and folders. Windows has installed the default drivers for your setup; you can update them if needed

12. Go to Control Panel > User Accounts and delete the temporary user account (in this case Test) that you just created

METHOD TWO

Change the hard disk(s) or move Windows 7 setup to a new computer using third party imaging software

1.   Follow steps 1 through 5 above (method 1)

2.   Boot PC with an imaging CD/DVD (Paragon, Macrium etc.)

3.   Create an image of your system

4.   Turn PC off, change the hard disk(s) and reboot with imaging application, restoring the image OR boot the new computer with imaging software and restore the image

5.   Continue from step 7 above (method 1)

METHOD THREE

Change the hard disk(s) or move Windows 7 setup to a new computer using Windows Seven’s native Backup and Restore

1.   Follow steps 1 through 5 above (method 1)

2.   Change the hardware components you want to, letting the old Hard Disk be still mounted as system disk OR if transferring to a new computer, mount the old HD to the new computer as system (boot) disk

3.   Boot computer normally, continuing from step 7 above (method 1)

4.   Launch Windows Seven Backup and Restore create a complete system image. This tutorial shows you how: Backup Complete Computer – Create an Image Backup

5.   Shut down the computer, dismount the HD and mount the new one

6.   Boot from Windows 7 installation DVD, choosing Repair > Restore an image, using the image you created in previous step. This tutorial shows you how (from Step Two / 7): System Image Recovery

7.   When image is restored, boot your computer normally

January 6, 2011
How to Turn Windows 7 Features On or Off

Information

Some programs and features included with Windows 7 must be turned on before you can use them. Certain other features are turned on by default. This will show you how to turn the features you select on or off.

This process can be used on Windows 7, Vista and Windows XP.

Note

New Windows Features to Turn On or Off in Windows 7:

Games – Internet Games

Internet Explorer 8

Internet Information Services – FTP Server

Internet Information Services Hostable Web Core

Media Features

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.51

Services for NFS (Network File System)

Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications

TIFF IFilter

Windows Gadget Platform

Windows Search

XPS Services

XPS Viewer

Tip

A blue box indicates that you have the main feature selected and turned on, but not all of the sub features under the expanded main feature are checked.

If the box is checked for the main feature, then it means that all of the sub features under the expanded main feature are checked and turned on as well.

Warning

Turning off a feature does not uninstall the feature, and it does not reduce the amount of hard disk space used by the Windows 7 feature. The features remain stored on your hard disk so you can turn them back on if you want to later.

Here’s How:

1. Open the Control Panel (All Items view), and click on the Programs and Features icon.

2. In the left pane, click on the Turn Windows features on or off link. (See screenshot below)

3. If prompted by UAC, click on Yes to approve.

4. Close the Programs and Features window. (See screenshot above)

5. To Turn On a Windows Feature –

A) Check the selected feature. (See screenshots below step 7)

NOTE:

Some Windows features are grouped together in folders, and some folders contain subfolders with additional features. If a check box is partially checked or is dimmed, then some of the items inside the folder are turned on and some are turned off. To expand and view the contents of a folder, double-click it. Hovering the mouse pointer over a folder will give you a pop-up desciption of the feature.

6. To Turn Off a Windows Feature –

A) Uncheck the selected feature. (See screenshots below step 7)

7. When done, click on OK. (See screenshots below)

NOTE:

These are the default settings in Windows Features.

8. After turning on or off a feature, you may be prompted to restart the computer.

This process can be used on Windows 7, Vista and Windows XP.

January 6, 2011
How to Change the Default Program a File Type Opens With in Windows 7

Information

A default program is the program that Windows 7 uses when you open a particular type of file extension. This will show you how to change a file type to open with a different default program for just this one time or always using the context menu in Windows 7.

This process may or may not work on Windows Xp or Vista.

Here’s How:

1. Right click on the file type (ex: .txt file) that you want to change the default program for, then click on Open with. (see screenshot below)

Note

If you do not have Open with in the context menu, then this means this file does not have a program associated to open it with.

·         Instead, click on Open, select (dot) Select a program from a list of installed programs, and click on OK.

·         Go to step 3.

2. To Select a Program that is Already Listed in Context Menu

A) After you have expanded Open with, select a listed program (ex: Notepad or Outlook) that you want to open the file with for just this one time. (see screenshot below)

B) Go to step 4.

3. To Select a Program that is Not Listed in Context Menu

NOTE:

This option will allow you to select to have the file type to always open with the selected program by default if you like.

A) After you have expanded Open with, select Choose default program. (see screenshot below step 1)

B) Under Other Programs, click on the drop down arrow to the far right to see more programs to select from. (See screenshot below)

C) Select the program that you want to open the file with. (See screenshot above)

NOTE:

If the program is not listed, then click on the Browse button and navigate to the program’s exe file. Select it, and click on the Open button to add it for now only.

D) To Always Open this File Type with the Selected Program

·         Check the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file box. (See screenshot below step 3B)

·         Go to step 3F.

E) To Open this File Type with the Selected Program for Just this One Time

un check the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file box. (See screenshot below step 3B)

F) Click on OK. (See screenshot below step 3B)

4. The file will now be opened by the selected program.

This process may or may not work on Windows Xp or Vista.

January 5, 2011