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October 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/

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  • Windows 8 Compatibility - The Weather Network

    This weather service has worked well through three operating systems, and has been my preferred weather service here in Canada. When running Windows Vista and 7, I had it piped through into a gadget called WeatherCentre and the service worked well Windows...

  • Windows 8 Media Center..

    If you want to install Windows Media Center for free into Windows 8 Pro, you have until January 31st, 2013 to get it.. Fill in your email address, type in the code and then wait. The key will be sent to you, but not immediately and maybe not for 48 hours...
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  • Windows 8 forums..

    The MS Community forum is busy..  As usual after the release of a new operating system, there are all types of failures. Why does this happen? Incompatibility, Incompatibility, Incompatibility,. What constitutes a perfectly running Windows 7 installation...
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  • Windows 8 – Living with it..

    This operating system has been designed for multiple machine types, and you will most likely use Windows 8 because it is part of the deal when you buy a new computer. After the initial setup and personalisation, this is what you will see.. This is a screenshot...
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  • Windows 8 drivers.. Graphics

    If you had no Windows 7 support, you will get no Windows 8 support. ATI have Windows 8 drivers up and ready for the HD 7000, 600o and 5000. Conspicuous by their absence are the HD 4000, 3000 and 2000. Windows 8 has basic support for these, so don’t expect...

  • Key points at the Windows 8 launch..

    Key points are like movie trailers. You get 10 minutes of good action and find that the full version includes 80 minutes of a mind state called ‘frustration’ Can we have the first slide, please? "We shunned the incremental. We boldly reimagined Windows...

  • Windows 8 – Upgrading..

    The move to Windows 8 is only the third time that I have ever thought about upgrading rather than clean installing. I was put off ‘upgrading’ years ago after it went tragically wrong and I lost everything. The second time, I tried the Windows 8 upgrade...

  • Windows 8 drivers..

    In this case, Realtek HD Audio.. The symptoms.. Some media files played ok and some didn’t. YouTube files were worst hit, even ones that I had downloaded. Was IE10 the culprit? No, because playing YouTube stuff in Opera produced the same results. The...

  • Change is a pain in the ……….

    Forums > Newsgroups > forums Microsoft technical support used to be fed through the Compuserve forums. This is where the beginnings of the Microsoft MVP program were rooted. Microsoft then set up their own newsgroup servers to boos and hisses from...

  • A decent Start menu..

    .. makes all the difference.. This is Windows 8, complete with Quick Launch, Stardock’s Start8 and the Canada theme pack. It looks and behaves just like Windows 7, apart from the lack of gadgets. The toughest learning curve so far has been the Start8...
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  • Four days to go..

    After sorting out a system image for Windows 7, I ran the Windows 8 upgrade this evening. The whole process took around an hour to complete, and I am pleased to report that almost everything is working. Hardware is all up and running and my old Canon...
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  • Hot ‘939s’..

    A hot 939 is about as welcome as a hot 940. I am of course talking about AMD CPUs. The problem with the AMD 939 is that the stock cooler is not as efficient as it could be, and because 939s only saw a year of production, there are not too many around...
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  • 0x80780119

    This is the error code produced when trying to create a system image of Windows 7 onto a backup drive, and this is what you see. " There is not enough disk space to create the volume shadow copy on storage location. Make sure that for all volume...
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  • Consumed by speed?

    Would you like your computer to boot from a standing start to Windows in five seconds or less? Sure you would, because you would not have to tap your pencil or twiddle your fingers waiting for it to reboot after the last lot of updates. OK, supposing...
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  • Can’t wait for Windows 8?

    You should be so lucky. I have it but can’t get it to run particularly well. I hooked up the Windows 8 drive today, and I knew it was 8 because that is how many minutes elapsed before it was usable. I uninstalled Start8 and installed Classic Shell in...
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  • Remember the Vista/XP problems?

    I do and only too well. If both were installed on the same machine, shadow copies and restore points would disappear daily. It is what forced me to go to Vista full time and dump XP. This time, the decision is not so clear cut because moving entirely...
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  • Windows 7 and 8 do NOT like to co-exist..

    All hard drives checkout as ok, and Windows 7 runs flawlessly, boots flawlessly, and does everything else flawlessly UNTIL Windows 8 is introduced to the system. Even when I had Windows 8 in VirtualBox, it still played up a bit but only affected itself...
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  • Windows 8 - a fresh install..

    While doing maintenance on the computer, I decided to fit the drive allocated for Windows 8, and to install a full running Windows 8. It all seemed to go well but Event Viewer told another story. I could not believe the amount of critical errors and warnings...

  • A cheap network printer..

    This is what has become of my venerable HP Deskjet 5150. Bought in 2003, it has been connected directly to my PC and shared with other network users, but no more. I have one of these.. http://www.win-star.com/eshop/goods.php?id=58 These things are half...
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  • My box so far..

    Considering the ambient temperature in this high rise, south facing condo, the fans in the case are pinning the CPU to around 33°C, which is 6 to 8°C less than it used to be. The case sits quite close to heating pipes too, the price of not having unlimited...
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