February 2011 - Mike's Window

Mike's Window

A commonly held 'view.. '

"Well, it worked in Windows 95!"

MVP Award years

2005 - 2006 - 2007

2008 - 2009 - 2010

2011 - 2012 - 2013

The original MVP logo

My Favourite Utilities

Speedfan is a great hardware monitor which can automatically control fan speeds, warn when temperatures are rising in the case, and do a SMART scan of your hard drives. A 'must have'.. http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

Piriform Speccy tells you what is inside the box and with great accuracy.. http://www.piriform.com/speccy

Networx shows download/upload bandwidth used.. http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/

Piriform Recuva is probably the best file recovery utility around and is free too.. http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Treesize shows you what you have got, where it is, and how much space it is all using.. http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

Windows 8 alternative start menus.. Classic Shell.. http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

Stardock Start8.. http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

EaseUS Partition Manager is the best free utility of its type.. http://www.partition-tool.com/download.htm

YoWindow, a weather utility which appears to work with the Windows 8 desktop.. http://yowindow.com/

My Favourite Gadgets - Windows 7 and Vista only..

Gas Buddy.. http://www.londongasprices.com/VistaGadget.aspx

NetMeter.. http://addgadget.com/

Network Monitor.. http://samwtucker.com/

Asst'd gadgets.. http://gallery.djinngo.com/gallery/index.html

Weather fun.. http://yowindow.com/

Syndication

Blog Archive List

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Lost restore points.. It really was Diskeeper

After years of running Diskeeper, it is no longer on my system. All gone. After reading that Diskeeper could be the culprit, I just couldn’t get my head around it. However, I did disable auto defragging on the boot drive, and guess what? Restore points...

Published Sat, Feb 26 2011 22:35 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware, software, Windows 7, Miantenance
Windows 7 SP1 – Slipstreaming the Service Pack

Now you have your original installation DVD and a service pack ISO. Oh joy. And if you have an old machine like I do, the prospect of maybe re-installing Windows 7 in the future and then having to wait nearly three hours for the service pack simply palls...

Published Fri, Feb 25 2011 17:15 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7, Service Packs
Windows 7 SP1 – Install now or wait?

So you regularly do your Windows updates and all is as it should be. Why install a service pack which only amounts to a rollup? Sooner or later, there will be an update which will require that SP1 is in place, so why not do it now? If the PC is in good...

Published Wed, Feb 23 2011 21:49 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7, Service Packs
Windows 7 Service Pack - Final installation

I set it going on the Celeron powered Conroe 1333 at 09:45hrs today and I have no idea how long it took because I was out until 14:00hrs. Suffice to say, all went well and SP1 is now installed and running well..

Published Fri, Feb 18 2011 15:16 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7, Service Packs
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is now installed..

.. and the computer came out of hibernation this morning without a squawk. First time since the last round of updates. I stopped the first attempt to install the pack when I noticed WinPatrol intercepting it. The computer had been sitting appearing to...

Published Thu, Feb 17 2011 10:04 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7, Service Packs
Windows 7 SP1 Service Pack..

.. is on it’s way. February 22nd is the release day for the general public, and today is the release date to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Here is the public link.. http://windows.microsoft.com/installwindows7sp1 Presently, the page shows the MS...

Published Wed, Feb 16 2011 17:04 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7
Internet Explorer 9..

.. is now at the release candidate stage. Ed Bott has done a nice review.. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/ie9-release-candidate-review-will-microsofts-big-browser-bet-pay-off/2954?tag=nl.e539 What’s new in photos.. http://www.zdnet.com/photos/internet...

Published Thu, Feb 10 2011 17:32 by Mike Hall

Filed under: IE 9
nVidia graphics drivers..

The latest 266.58 graphics drivers are working well, no twitching or conflicts with Ultramon 3.1.0. All is well, and the drivers can be found here. I use the nVidia scan service, but you can play with the selection boxes if you have nothing better to...

Published Wed, Feb 9 2011 11:40 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware, Device drivers
D-Link Shareport update

After almost a month of trouble-free operation, D-link’s Shareport software has let the side down yet again. I have contacted D-link re the problem, and so far have received an e-mail confirming the contact. No hint of an answer as yet. However, Silex...

Published Sat, Feb 5 2011 21:18 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware, Windows 7
Intel Sandy Bridge 6 series issues

If you are in the process of building a computer with a Intel 6 series support chip, or have a computer with one of these, you have a problem. Fortunately, the affected motherboards have only been shipping since the beginning of January, and computer...

Published Fri, Feb 4 2011 10:31 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware, Windows 7
System restore points update

I have no idea what is going on with these. I check before defragging and again afterwards. Some days, they are there, and some days they are not. All rhyme and reason appears to have gone to the wall. One thing I do know is that System Restore on this...

Published Thu, Feb 3 2011 10:00 by Mike Hall
Counterfeit software – How to tell

The link will take you to the Microsoft pages on counterfeit Windows and Office http://www.microsoft.com/howtotell/content.aspx?displaylang=en&pg=prepurchase The counterfeit gallery is particularly interesting. A quick glance at the COA sticker clearly...

Published Thu, Feb 3 2011 9:47 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Scamware

February 2011 - Mike's Window

A commonly held 'view.. '

MVP Award years

The original MVP logo

My Favourite Utilities

My Favourite Gadgets - Windows 7 and Vista only..

Links

Syndication

Recent Posts

Tags

Archives

Blog Archive List

Lost restore points.. It really was Diskeeper

Windows 7 SP1 – Slipstreaming the Service Pack

Windows 7 SP1 – Install now or wait?

Windows 7 Service Pack - Final installation

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is now installed..

Windows 7 SP1 Service Pack..

Internet Explorer 9..

nVidia graphics drivers..

D-Link Shareport update

Intel Sandy Bridge 6 series issues

System restore points update

Counterfeit software – How to tell