If you have been toying with the idea of cutting your users over to Vista as part of a PC refresh, you may want to hold that thought. In less than a year, windows 7 will likely be available.
The word on the blogosphere is that windows 7 should be released to manufacturing in October 22 2009 with general availability by November. Blogger Long Zheng has come to this release-date conclusion and says that he's been given the nod by an unnamed source at Microsoft who validated his guess. Zheng sites two sources for his guess. Today the WinHEC 2008 site boldly says that Windows 7 will be released before the next annual WinHEC. ("WinHEC is the only chance for you to engage with the team at this level - there is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released," it says). Also ASUS CEO Jerry Shen said in an interview with Laptop magazine that Eee PCs should be running Windows 7 by the second half of next year.
What is Windows 7?
Windows 7 is the easiest, fastest, and most engaging version of Windows yet. Better ways to find and manage files, like jump lists and improved taskbar previews, help you speed through everyday tasks. Faster and more reliable performance means your PC just works the way you want it to. And great features like Windows Media Center and Windows Touch make new things possible. Get to know Windows 7, and see how it can simplify just about everything you do with your PC.
Features
Make the things you do every day easier with improved desktop navigation.
Start programs faster and more easily, and quickly find the documents you use most often.
Make your web experience faster, easier and safer than ever with Internet Explorer 8.
Watch, pause, rewind, and record TV on your PC.
Easily create a home network and connect your PCs to a printer with HomeGroup.
Run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode.
Connect to company networks easily and more securely with Domain Join.
It's designed to sleep and resume quicker, be less memory hungry, and spot USB devices faster.
Windows 7 makes the most of powerful 64-bit PCs, the new desktop standard.
New power-saving features are designed to help laptops run longer.
Windows 7 gets you online quicker, so you can work anywhere.
Watch, record, and pause live TV (additional hardware required).
With Windows 7 and a touch-sensitive screen (additional hardware required), you don't always need a keyboard or mouse.
A quick (and fun) new way to resize and compare windows on your desktop.
Must-have software for your PC—free! Get Mail, Photo Gallery, and other favorites.
At last, searching your PC is as simple as searching the web.
Introducing improved taskbar previews, bigger icons, pinning, and creative ways to
personalize.
Takes the headache out of home networking, so it's easier to share files and printers.
Speedy access to your favorite pictures, songs, websites, and documents.
Recover your data easily with automatic backup to your home and business network.
Help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or theft with BitLocker.
Work in the language of your choice and switch between any of 35 languages.
How to fasten up Windows XP..??
1. DISABLE INDEXING SERVICES:-
Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:
1. Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click Control Panel
4. Double-click Add/Remove Programs
5. Click the Add/Remove Window Components
6. Uncheck the Indexing services
7. Click Next
2. OPTIMISE DISPLAY SETTINGS
Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:
1.Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click Control Panel
4. Click System
5. Click Advanced tab
6. In the Performance tab click Settings
7. Leave only the following ticked:
- Show shadows under menus
- Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Show translucent selection rectangle
- Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons
3. SPEEDUP FOLDER BROWSING:-
You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:
1. Open My Computer
2. Click on Tools menu
3. Click on Folder Options
4. Click on the View tab.
5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
6. Click Apply
7. Click Ok
8. Reboot your computer
4. IMPROVE MEMORY USAGE:-
Cacheman Improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings.
NOTE: This program is shareware and some features require activation.
Once Installed:
1.Go to Show Wizard and select All
2.Run all the wizards by selecting Next or Finished until you are back to the main menu. Use the defaults unless you know exactly what you are doing.
3.Exit and Save Cacheman
4.Restart Windows
5. OPTIMISE YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION:-
There are lots of ways to do this but by far the easiest is to run TCP/IP Optimizer.
1. Download and install
2. Click the General Settings tab and select your Connection Speed (Kbps)
3. Click Network Adapter and choose the interface you use to connect to the Internet
4. Check Optimal Settings then Apply
5. Reboot
6. OPTIMISE YOUR PAGEFILE:-
If you give your pagefile a fixed size it saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file.
1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties
2. Select the Advanced tab
3. Under Performance choose the Settings button
4. Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
5. Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.
Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.
7. SPEEDUP FOLDER ACCESS - DISABLE LAST ACCESS UPDATE:-
If you have a lot of folders and subdirectories on your computer, when you access a directory XP wastes a lot of time updating the time stamp showing the last access time for that directory and for ALL sub directories. To stop XP doing this you need to edit the registry. If you are uncomfortable doing this then please do not attempt.
1. Go to Start and then Run and type “regedit”
2. Click through the file system until you get to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSys
tem”
3. Right-click in a blank area of the window on the right and select ‘DWORD Value’
4. Create a new DWORD Value called ‘NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate’
5. Then Right click on the new value and select ‘Modify’
6. Change the Value Data to ‘1′
7. Click ‘OK’
8. MAKE YOUR MENUS LOAD FASTER:-
This is one of my favourite tweaks as it makes a huge difference to how fast your machine will ‘feel’. What this tweak does is remove the slight delay between clicking on a menu and XP displaying the menu.
1. Go to Start then Run
2. Type ‘Regedit’ then click ‘Ok’
3. Find “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\”
4. Select “MenuShowDelay”
5. Right click and select “Modify’
6. Reduce the number to around “100″
7. This is the delay time before a menu is opened. You can set it to “0″ but it can make windows really hard to use as menus will open if you just look at them - well move your mouse over them anyway. I tend to go for anywhere between 50-150 depending on my mood.
9. IMPROVE XP SHUTDOWN SPEED:-
This tweak reduces the time XP waits before automatically closing any running programs when you give it the command to shutdown.
1. Go to Start then select Run
2. Type ‘Regedit’ and click ok
3. Find ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\Desktop\’
4. Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
5. Right click and select ‘Modify’
6. Change the value to ‘1000′
7. Click ‘OK’
8. Now select ‘HungAppTimeout’
9. Right click and select ‘Modify’
10. Change the value to ‘1000′
11. Click ‘OK’
12. Now find ‘HKEY_USERS\ .DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop’
13. Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
14. Right click and select ‘Modify’
15. Change the value to ‘1000′
16. Click ‘OK’
17. Now find ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\CurrentControlSet\Control\’
18. Select ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’
19. Right click and select ‘Modify’
20. Change the value to ‘1000′
21. Click ‘OK’
10. IMPROVE SWAPFILE PERFORMANCE:-
If you have more than 256MB of RAM this tweak will considerably improve your performance. It basically makes sure that your PC uses every last drop of memory (faster than swap file) before it starts using the swap file.
1. Go to Start then Run
2. Type “msconfig.exe” then ok
3. Click on the System.ini tab
4. Expand the 386enh tab by clicking on the plus sign
5. Click on new then in the blank box type”ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1″
6. Click OK
7. Restart PC
11. ENSURE XP IS USING DMA MODE:-
XP enables DMA for Hard-Drives and CD-Roms by default on most ATA or ATAPI (IDE) devices. However, sometimes computers switch to PIO mode which is slower for data transfer - a typical reason is because of a virus. To ensure that your machine is using DMA:
1. Open ‘Device Manager’
2. Double-click ‘IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers’
3. Right-click ‘Primary Channel’ and select ‘Properties’ and then ‘Advanced Settings’
4. In the ‘Current Transfer Mode’ drop-down box, select ‘DMA if Available’ if the current setting is ‘PIO Only’
How to bypass CD DRM Encryption??
DRM is an encryption manifest file which dissallows an individual who's purchased a CD which contains the DRM directly written into the actual Audio Disk. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management.
What's the cause for DRM Encryption?
DRM(Digital Rights Management) is to control the internets piracy of Audio files, mp3s for example.. on P2P (Peer To Peer) Clients, (A famous one is KaZaA) for non-3rd party use. Which this means that You can rip the audio to your computer, and listen to them only at your computer and nowhere else. Now there usually is an internal ripper provided by the CD itself, for you to burn the audio to another CD-R or whatever, but if you follow my howto it'll make things a lot simpler.
-What you need-
1: 6-ft. (182m)* Shielded Audio Cable, 1/8/11th's stereo miniplug, to 1/8/11th's stereo miniplug. Radio shack item # (42-2387A)
2: A CD Player.
3: The CD which has the DRM encryption.
4: A Computer with working Microphone input, and soundcard output.
5: An Audio editor such as Sonic Foundry Sound forge 6.0 or something like it.
Now, take the Audio chord and plug it into your CD player where you'd put your headphones, then take the other end and plug it directly into your CPU's microphone input.
Once that's done, open up your Audio Editor... click on File>New> Once the new layout has opened, click "Record" now once it has started to record, click Play on your CD Diskman. (Make sure you have your Sound on the Diskman to MAX output)
Now thats pretty much it... once the disk has been fully played and upstreamed to your audio editor... you can disect the Tracks and the name them on New Sound layouts, name the track... and save it as mp3. Becuase by default all audio editors save upstreamed tracks as .WAV format, and wav format is a relativelly enormus size as far as bytes are concerned. Remember, it's our right to do what we want with what we buy.
Removing Multiple Boot Screens
If you are getting unwanted multiple boot screen
Then Follow these Steps.
1> Right Click on My Computer
2>Select Properties
3>Select Advanced Tab
4>Select Settings In the Startup & Recovery Section(3rd grp)
5>Select the operating system which u want.
6>And Click OK.
7>Further again press the setting and click on Edit.
8>It will open boot.ini File.
9>Now u can delete those o/s which you don't want to be displayed.
Note: For deleting operating systems from boot.ini file, keep it mind that you can'tdelete that o/s which is selected by default there. Beforemaking any changes make a copy of boot.ini file.
How to have a safer and faster XP..??
To disable unneeded startup services for a safer, faster XP, use the "Services" Admin Tool (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services). If you are a single user of a non-networked machine, you can disable the following items, with no ill effect.
Alerter
Clipbook
Computer Browser
Fast User Switching
Human Interface Access Devices
Indexing Service (Slows the hard drive down)
Messenger
Net Logon (unnecessary unless networked on a Domain)
Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing (disabled for extra security)
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager (disabled for extra security)
Remote Procedure Call Locator
Remote Registry (disabled for extra security)
Routing & Remote Access (disabled for extra security)
Server
SSDP Discovery Service (this is for the utterly pointless "Universal P'n'P", & leaves TCP Port 5000 wide open)
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Telnet (disabled for extra security)
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Upload Manager
Windows Time
Wireless Zero Configuration (for wireless networks)
Workstation
Getting an Older Program to Run on Windows XP
1.Right–click the executable or the program shortcut to the executable, and then click Properties.
2.Select the Run this program in compatibility mode check box.
3.From the list, select an operating system that the program runs in comfortably.
If necessary, also change the display settings and/or resolution, or disable the Windows XP visual themes.
Run the program again when you’re finished changing the settings. Adjust the compatibility settings again if the program is still not running smoothly: a program that’s unhappy on Windows 2000 may flourish on Windows 98.
Getting an Older Program to Run on Windows XP
1.Right–click the executable or the program shortcut to the executable, and then click Properties.
2.Select the Run this program in compatibility mode check box.
3.From the list, select an operating system that the program runs in comfortably.
If necessary, also change the display settings and/or resolution, or disable the Windows XP visual themes.
Run the program again when you’re finished changing the settings. Adjust the compatibility settings again if the program is still not running smoothly: a program that’s unhappy on Windows 2000 may flourish on Windows 98.