Loki's blog

Windows 7 Secrets

14 Jan 2009
1 Response
views
Microsoft OS Technology

Yesterday, I posted my first impressions on the Windows 7 Beta. Today, I've bumped into a great informative post by Tim Sneath with his 30 favorite secrets in Windows 7. Much thanks to Tim! Back From Retirement I was happy to find among them a way to bring back the old Quick Launch Toolbar! (#13)

Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar

In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “small icons”.

Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.

I just love the Quick Launch toolbar since it provides easy access the usual programs and folders I use without much clutter on the taskbar. No Shaking Required In my previous post, I also mentioned that the Aero Shake seemed impractical for non-touch/pen input. I guess Microsoft's answer to that is the shortcut: [Win+Home]. (#3) Hide and Go Peek When on keyboard intensive tasks such as writing and coding, I hate to move my right hand and reach for the mouse. Good thing there's [Win+Space] that reveals the Destkop like Aero Peek (#17), and [Win+1], [Win+2], ...[Win+5] for quick access to the first 5 items on the taskbar (#11), and [Win+T] to shift focus to the taskbar (#21). (Note: [Win+T] works on Vista, too) Still More? These are just my favorite "secrets" from what Tim Sneath posted. I can't help but wonder what Microsoft is intentionally hiding from us, especialy after reading this from the Windows 7 Beta 1 review on TechRadar UK:

The beta is feature complete; although there are "a couple of things that we're holding back", according to general manager Mike Ybarra. ... "all of the code is in the build, just the discoverability is not." ...

Very Interesting...

First Impressions on Windows 7 Beta

12 Jan 2009
1 Response
views
Microsoft OS Technology geek

Public Beta Release Last January 9, 2009, Microsoft released the Windows 7 Beta to the public. I don't think Microsoft expected much demand since the servers were facing technical difficulties. The put down the site to ensure a better download experience. The link to the ISO was shared by some helpful users and still worked. However, potential testers (including me) couldn't get a product key that would get past the 30-day limit. Fortunately, Microsoft more than made up for their overloaded servers by extending the key distribution until January 24. If you're interested, you can download the ISO, get a key and test Windows 7 yourself until it stops working on August 1, 2009. (By this time, maybe there will be another beta version / new key distribution...) To Test or Not I tried to resist beta testing Windows 7 but in the end, Windows 7 beta won. I finished downloading the Windows 7 x64 ISO (about 3.3 GB) & just got my product key yesterday morning (Sunday) and started testing shortly after. After a day of use, here's what I noticed, plus my comments/suggestions. I've tried to link to as much screenshots that I've taken to show what I mean.

Read the rest of this post »

E3: Microsoft Press Conference = Sony Fails!

15 Jul 2008
0 Responses
views
Final Fantasy Microsoft Square Enix gaming

Guess what? Final Fantasy XIII is NOT exclusive to the PS3 after all! Wiki has been updated. Also check the bottom part of the Gamespy article referring to the conference itself. Finally, here's an article dedicated to that surprise.

Closing out the Microsoft press conference was an announcement by Square Enix President Yoichi Wada. After commenting on his company's growing relationship with Microsoft, one of the biggest announcements of the show was made. The next game in the company's blockbuster mega-franchise, Final Fantasy XIII, will be coming to the Xbox 360 as part of a simultaneous release in North America and Europe.

Now, if only MGS4.... Oh yeah, Fallout 3 looks awesome! I didn't think Bethesda could pull of a Fallout game in first/third person. After looking at the demo, I just can't wait!

The corrupt, absent or not writable

This morning, my office PC was suddenly showing the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. After 2-3 hours of tinkering, we got it back up and what I can say is that Vista is weird (We're using Windows Vista Business (64-bit) with SP1 installed). The BSOD So what was my problem? It went something like this:

The registry cannot load the (hive) file: SystemRoot/System32/config/SOFTWARE or its log or alternate. It is corrupt, absent, or not writeable. Beginning dump of physical memory. Physical memory dump complete. Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance.

or this

Stop: c0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file): \SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate

Can't remember exactly but basically it was about the hive file and that my registry was most probably dead. The Solution?!? My first instinct told me to restart in safe mode but that just proved to be worthless. So what did we do that worked

Boot the Windows Vista CD
Selected the option to Repair an existing installation (it's found in the second window when it finally loads)
Wait for it....and then done!
Restart and Vista should load!

Yay! It now boots Windows Vista! It was able to detect that I had problems booting up Windows Vista and fixed the problem itself. It's as easy as cake...if my problem ended there! (The cake is a lie!) When logging into the network, my user name and password was not being accepted! The network administrator account can't log in either using my PC. WTH, right? Now this is where Vista gets weird... Jack Out To Jack In: Logging Into a Network that Doesn't Exist Yes, you read that right. Well, it exists but the computer wasn't physically connected. Did you get that? There were no network cables that connected me to the network but I was able to log in. This was the only way both my account & the administrator accounts can connect to the "network." It defies all logic that would lead to a proper solution but hey, it works. I had to somehow log in to the computer I'm not really complaining. It's just weird. think it uses previously log-ins to check the information if the log-in information is valid. At this moment, everything seems to work fine. I can work on my local files and am connected to both the local network and the internet. The only problem is that whenever I have to authenticate/verify an action (Thanks to Vista, this is very common) I have to unplug my network cable and authenticate using the right user name & password. It's downright annoying to work under that condition so something had to be done. Welcome back! So how was I finally able to connect to the network and log in properly? It's quite easy. Get the computer out of the domain and then get back in. After that, I was able to log into the network.

Go to Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings
Click the Computer Name tab
Then somewhere near the bottom, click the Change button
In the "Member of" portion at the bottom, select the Workgroup radio button and type in a Workgroup name ("WORKGROUP" by default)
You'll be asked to restart so just do that
Repeat the same steps 1-3
Instead of selecting the Workgroup radio button, select Domain and type in the network domain.
Restart the computer.

After this, I could log on normally WHILE connected to the network! (Well, sometime later, something went wrong in the local network so. Woohoo x.x Glad everything's back to normal again. At least it seems so.)

Windows 7 Secrets

First Impressions on Windows 7 Beta

E3: Microsoft Press Conference = Sony Fails!

The corrupt, absent or not writable

About

Archive

Get Updates

Other blogs

maloki.net