April 2012 - 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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Event Viewer fun and games..

Every now and again, I like to go into Event Viewer to see what Windows is throwing out of the cart. You can always rely on having some errors, warnings etc. and sure enough, I had some. One was a PMEM error. This was simple enough. I removed the vestiges...

Published Sun, Apr 29 2012 12:30 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7, Event Viewer
Windows 7 vs. Windows 8

There will be a mini-deluge of comparisons in a bid to make Windows 8 look better, and the most popular topic will be speed. This is the boot time result from Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’ tests recently.. taken from here.. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware...

Published Fri, Apr 27 2012 10:33 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7, Windows 8
Consumers are left out in the cold..

I was answering a query today about the transition from XP/Office XP to Windows 7/Office 2010. The OP asked why home users never get the chance to voice concerns re features that are going to appear in the latest and greatest Microsoft software. A good...

Published Tue, Apr 24 2012 15:16 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows, Consumers
Free Skydrive upgrade..

I was an early adopter, well maybe just an early subscriber, but this offer is too good to miss.. A free upgrade from the original 7gb storage to 25gb.. http://vasudevg.blogspot.ca/2012/04/how-to-upgrade-existing-skydrive.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium...

Published Tue, Apr 24 2012 6:56 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7, Windows 8, Skydrive
Star struck for Windows 8

I am by no means a full time astronomer but when I am out on my balcony at night, puffing away on my cigarette brand of choice, I like to look at the night sky. Living on the edge of a city, I can’t see too many stars, but it is nice to be able to find...

Published Sun, Apr 22 2012 8:01 by Mike Hall

Filed under: software, Windows 8
No Media Center?

So will Windows 8 be able to handle movies? Not with Media Center, it won’t. The Home version doesn’t appear to be getting it, and users with 8 Pro will maybe have to pay for it. It is certainly no great loss for me. I have only ever watched one movie...

Published Fri, Apr 20 2012 21:47 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 8
So, what is ‘trending’ today?

The ‘dock’ Yes, that nasty popup thing that gets in the way of everything. Even if you set it to ‘autohide’ it still pops up like a crazed gopher each time that you go near to it.. http://www.techrepublic.com/photos/five-free-docks-to-enhance-your-windows...

Published Tue, Apr 17 2012 8:39 by Mike Hall

Filed under: My Opinion
CoolerMaster CM690 II - Revised fixing point for the ground cable..

Well, I have now made a better and more permanent fixing point for the ground/earth cable. Using a 3/32 twist bit, I sank a hole roughly below the power switch. This ensured that the cable would not be a problem to tighten down and that , in the event...

Published Sat, Apr 14 2012 14:35 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware
That’s a lot of Windows support, eh

XP gets support until 2014 As of 10 April 2012, Vista gets a reprieve and will now get security updates up to April 2017 Windows 7 gets support until 2020 Windows 8 will be most likely be out later this year and will get support until 2022/3 If Windows...

Published Fri, Apr 13 2012 20:05 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Vista, XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows XP
AHCI can be a real pain

Did you know that an ISA video card, e.g. the old Trident cards from the early days, can put up a display on a screen which enables you to recover from a corrupted BIOS. The only problem is the complete and utter lack of an ISA slot in today’s PCs. And...

Published Sun, Apr 8 2012 23:07 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Vista, drivers, Windows 7, Windows 8, Device drivers, AHCI
Windows 8 CP Sunday

It’s back, resurrected from a DVD-RW after the slightly unfortunate removal while building a bootable Vista flash drive installation a while back. So far, I have just run the basic installation. After I have finished here, I will go back into it and set...

Published Sun, Apr 8 2012 8:28 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 8
Seven hundred and thirty..

The number of days that Windows XP has left before support dries up completely.. If you are still using it and intend to use it right up to the bitter end, you are going to have one tough time getting used to whatever OS is current at the time....

Published Sat, Apr 7 2012 15:39 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows XP
Networx Network Monitor - an important setting

It wasn’t too far back in time that I wrote a small piece on the Networx Network Monitor. Well, it works out of the box, but there is a setting which is very easy to miss, and you might initially panic. By default, Networx assumes that the month starts...

Published Thu, Apr 5 2012 16:53 by Mike Hall

Filed under: networks, Utility

April 2012 - 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

Event Viewer fun and games..

Windows 7 vs. Windows 8

Consumers are left out in the cold..

Free Skydrive upgrade..

Star struck for Windows 8

No Media Center?

So, what is ‘trending’ today?

CoolerMaster CM690 II - Revised fixing point for the ground cable..

That’s a lot of Windows support, eh

AHCI can be a real pain

Windows 8 CP Sunday

Seven hundred and thirty..

Networx Network Monitor - an important setting