When any app starts misbehaving under Windows 7 then all your friends need do is click Start, type PSR and press Enter, then click Start Record. If they then work through whatever they’re doing then the Problem Steps Recorder will record every click and keypress, take screen grabs, and package everything up into a single zipped MHTML file when they’re finished, ready for emailing to you. It’s quick, easy and effective, and will save you hours of troubleshooting time.

2. Burn images
Windows 7 finally introduces a feature that other operating systems have had for years – the ability to burn ISO images to CDs or DVDs. And it couldn’t be much easier to use. Just double-click the ISO image, choose the drive with the blank disc, click Burn and watch as your disc is created.

3. Create and mount VHD files
Microsoft’s Virtual PC creates its virtual machine hard drives in VHD files, and Windows 7 can now mount these directly so you can access them in the host system. Click Start, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter, then click Action > Attach VHD and choose the file you’d like to mount. It will then appear as a virtual drive in Explorer and can be accessed, copied or written just like any other drive.

Click Action > Create VHD and you can now create a new virtual drive of your own (right-click it, select Initialise Disk, and after it’s set up right-click the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume to set this up). Again, you’ll be left with a virtual drive that behaves just like any other, where you can drag and drop files, install programs, test partitioning software or do whatever you like. But it’s actually just this VHD file on your real hard drive which you can easily back up or share with others. Right-click the disk (that’s the left-hand label that says “Disk 2″ or whatever) and select Detach VHD to remove it.

The command line DISKPART utility has also been upgraded with tools to detach a VHD file, and an EXPAND command to increase a virtual disk’s maximum size. Don’t play around with this unless you know what you’re doing, though – it’s all too easy to trash your system.

4. Troubleshoot problems
If some part of Windows 7 is behaving strangely, and you don’t know why, then click Control Panel > Find and fix problems (or ‘Troubleshooting’) to access the new troubleshooting packs. These are simple wizards that will resolve common problems, check your settings, clean up your system and more.

5. Startup repair
If you’ve downloaded Windows 7 (and even if you haven’t) it’s a good idea to create a system repair disc straight away in case you run into problems booting the OS later on. Click Start > Maintenance > Create a System Repair Disc, and let Windows 7 build a bootable emergency disc. If the worst does happen then it could be the only way to get your PC running again.

6. Take control
Tired of the kids installing dubious software or running applications you’d rather they left alone? AppLocker is a new Windows 7 feature that ensures users can only run the programs you specify. Don’t worry, that’s easier to set up than it sounds: you can create a rule to allow everything signed by a particular publisher, so choose Microsoft, say, and that one rule will let you run all signed Microsoft applications. Launch GPEDIT.MSC and go to Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Application Control Policies > AppLocker to get a feel for how this works.

7. Calculate more
At first glance the Windows 7 calculator looks just like Vista’s version, but explore the Mode menu and you’ll see powerful new Statistics and Programmer views. And if you’re clueless about bitwise manipulation, then try the Options menu instead. This offers many different unit conversions (length, weight, volume and more), date calculations (how many days between two dates?), and spreadsheet-type templates to help you calculate vehicle mileage, mortgage rates and more.

Don’t take any Windows 7 applet at face value, then – there are some very powerful new features hidden in the background. Be sure to explore every option in all Windows applets to ensure you don’t miss anything important.

CALCULATE MORE: The new Calculator is packed with useful features and functionality

8. Switch to a projector
Windows 7 now provides a standard way to switch your display from one monitor to another, or a projector – just press Win+P or run DisplaySwitch.exe and choose your preferred display. (This will have no effect if you’ve only one display connected.)

9. Get a power efficiency report
If you have a laptop, you can use the efficiency calculator to get Windows 7 to generate loads of useful information about its power consumption. Used in the right way, this can help you make huge gains in terms of battery life and performance. To do this you must open a command prompt as an administrator by typing ‘cmd’ in Start Search, and when the cmd icon appears, right-click it and choose Run as administrator.

Then at the command line, just type in ‘powercfg -energy’ (without quotes) and hit Return, and Windows 7 will scan your system looking for ways to improve power efficiency. It will then publish the results in an HTML file, usually in the System32 folder. Just follow the path it gives you to find your report.

10. Understanding System Restore
Using System Restore in previous versions of Windows has been something of a gamble. There’s no way of telling which applications or drivers it might affect – you just have to try it and see.

Windows 7 is different. Right-click Computer, select Properties > System Protection > System Restore > Next, and choose the restore point you’d like to use. Click the new button to ‘Scan for affected programs’ and Windows will tell you which (if any) programs and drivers will be deleted or recovered by selecting this restore point. 

11. Set the time zone
System administrators will appreciate the new command line tzutil.exe utility, which lets you set a PC’s time zone from scripts. If you wanted to set a PC to Greenwich Mean Time, for instance, you’d use the command

tzutil /s “gmt standard time”

The command “tzutil /g” displays the current time zone, “tzutil /l” lists all possible time zones, and “tzutil /?” displays details on how the command works.

12. Calibrate your screen
The colours you see on your screen will vary depending on your monitor, graphics cards settings, lighting and more, yet most people use the same default Windows colour profile. And that means a digital photo you think looks perfect might appear very poor to everybody else. Fortunately Windows 7 now provides a Display Colour Calibration Wizard that helps you properly set up your brightness, contrast and colour settings, and a ClearType tuner to ensure text is crisp and sharp. Click Start, type DCCW and press Enter to give it a try.

13. Clean up Live Essentials

Installing Windows Live Essentials will get you the new versions of Mail, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery and others – great. Unfortunately it also includes other components that may be unnecessary, but if you like to keep a clean system then these can be quickly removed.

If you left the default “Set your search provider” option selected during installation, for instance, Windows Live will install Choice Guard, a tool to set your browser home page and search engine, and prevent other programs from changing them. If this causes problems later, or you just decide you don’t need it, then Choice Guard may be removed by clicking Start, typing msiexec /x and pressing [Enter].

Windows Live Essentials also adds an ActiveX Control to help upload your files to Windows Live SkyDrive, as well as the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant, which makes it easier to manage and switch between multiple Windows Live accounts. If you’re sure you’ll never need either then remove them with the Control Panel “Uninstall a Program” applet.

14. Add network support

By default Windows Live MovieMaker won’t let you import files over a network, but a quick Registry tweak will change this. Run REGEDIT, browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Movie Maker, add a DWORD value called AllowNetworkFiles and set it to 1 to add network support.

15. Activate XP mode

If you’ve old but important software that no longer runs under Windows 7, then you could try using XP Mode, a virtual copy of XP that runs in a window on your Windows 7 desktop. But there’s a big potential problem, as XP Mode only works with systems that have hardware virtualisation (AMD-V or Intel VT) built-in and turned on. If you’ve a compatible CPU then this may just be a matter of enabling the option in your BIOS set-up program, however some high profile brands, including Sony Vaio, disable the setting for “security reasons”. And that blocks XP Mode from working, too.

One solution has emerged, but it’s a little risky, as essentially you’ll have to alter a byte in your laptop firmware and hope this doesn’t have any unexpected side-effects. Gulp. If you’re feeling brave then take a look at the Feature Enable Blog for the details, but don’t blame us if it goes wrong.

A safer approach might be to use VirtualBox, a virtualisation tool that doesn’t insist on hardware support, but then you will need to find a licensed copy of XP (or whatever other Windows version your software requires) for its virtual machine.

Simplifies Everyday Tasks

Works the Way Users Want

Makes New Things Possible

click here to get windows seven free legally

To Disable the Search Indexing Feature in Windows 7 

• Right Click the “Computer” Icon in the desktop and select “Manage”.
• Click “Services and Applications” in the “Computer Management” window.
• Click on “Services”.
• You can see a lot of services listed there. Look for “Windows Search” in that.
• Right Click on “Windows Search” from the list and choose “Properties”.
• The “Windows Search Properties Window” will open up. From “Startup type” click on the drop down menu and choose “Disabled”.
• Click “Apply” then “OK” and thats it. The Windows 7 Serch Indexing Feature is now disabled.

If you want to completely disable the search indexing feature in Windows 7 you can set the Search Indexing Service to Manual (See the above method about disabling unwanted services).

Even though we have tuned off the aero effects in Windows 7 still there are many unwanted visual effects that can be safely disabled to speed up windows 7 even more.

• For this right click on ” Computer” and select “Properties” from the right click menu.
• Click on ” Advanced System Settings ” from the left pane to open up the ” System Properties ” window.
• Select the “Advanced” tab from it. Then Under ” Performance ” click ” Settings “. Choose ” Custom: ” Options From it.
• Now untick all the options and select only the last four options (actually three only needed; you can untick the second option from the last four). See the screen shot if you have any doubt.
• Now just logoff your system and turn logon.

You will now notice the speed difference now.

• Right Click on your Desktop and select ” Personalize ” click the Window Color Tab.
• Uncheck the Box saying ” Enable Transparency ” and then click on ” Open classic appearance properties for more color options”.
• Then a window will open up. Apply a Standard or Basic theme from it. The Standard Windows 7 theme is more preferred.

A simple tweak will help you to decrease the boot time of windows 7. You will be benified by this tweak only if you have a multiple core processor. These days most of the computers have a dual core or quad core or something better than that CPU’s.

• Press [Win] + R or take the RUN option from the start menu.
• Now type msconfig in there and press Enter Key to open up the System Configuration Window. Click on the Boot tab in there.
  You will see a box called Time out. This is the time (in sec) which the system waits for the user to select the operating system to boot to.
• If you use only a single operating system (don’t dual boot) you can safely set the value to 0.
• But if you have more than one operating system installed then set it to 3 or more (which ever is convenient).

 

• Now after doing the above step click the ” Advanced Options ” button. The Boot Advanced Options Window will then pop up.
• Tick the check box saying “Number of Processors“. Now click on the drop down box and select the maximum number of processor cores (might be 2 or more).
• Press ” OK ” and also tick the ” No GUI Boot ” option too.
• Click ” Apply “and then on ” OK ” and thats it.

1. Right click on a empty space on the taskbar and click Toolbar / New Toolbar

2. In the Folder line,copay and paste:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

3. Click on the Select Folder button. (See screenshot above)

4. You now have a Quick Launch toolbar on the taskbar.

NOTE: Click on the arrow to see your Quick Launch shortcuts.

Step 1: ClickStart / Control Panel  / Appearance & Personalization / Folder Options

Step 2: Click “View” tab

Step 3: Tick “Show hidden files, folders & Drives” 

Click Start, enter and run recdisc.exe. Insert a blank CD/DVD in your burner, and click Create Disc.