Windows 7

It seems that the weird and strange issues always find their way into my system builds. Recently, a Windows Server build was recognizing my SSD drive as a standard hard disk drive. For some, this may not be an issue as the read/write performance is still there. However, for those that dig a little deeper, Windows will try to use the standard "Optimize" for the drive on a regular basis, something you should not do to an SSD.

If you have ever removed a hard drive from a system and installed it in another, you may have run into a situation before where you are unable to delete some of the partitions on the drive. This usually happens when you remove the hard drive from a system made by Dell, Acer, Samsung, etc. The partitions you are unable to remove are designated for system restore and the like. Well, getting rid of those partitions is easier than you think. All you need is a command line and a cup of coffee.

I can't tell you how many times I have told people how important regularly backing up your computer is. I consider this as important as wearing your seat belt, as important as a helmet while riding a motorcycle. If you are not backing up your system, you are asking for trouble. Well, the truth is that not enough people wear their seat belt and I see bikers without helmets all the time. I am willing to bet that at least 1 out of 4 of you reading this aren't backing up your computers.

For a long time I had resisted converting my DVD and Blu-Ray disks into any other format because I didn’t want to lose any quality.  I had lived by this rule for a long time, and thankfully companies like QNAP and Thecus came to my storage rescue.  However, the day has come where the cost of storing all the extra …

Clever utilities are what really get my mouse twitching.  In the age of the connected home, more of these devices are disconnected from one another.  I have a keyboard and mouse for eight PC’s in my home, 3 of which are HTPCs.  The HTCPs in my home all are capable of using a Logitech Harmony Remote control and all are …

I run a lot of different software packages on my bench system to perform analysis on hardware.  Because of this, I run into a lot of software issues that many of you face or will face.  Typically, the fixes are easy and not do difficult to find.  Recently, I received an error stating “The program can’t start because MSVCR71.DLL is …

Every person has different tastes when it comes to their installation of Windows.  Through the years that have been many things that I do right off the bat when getting my install “just right”.  In the XP days, the first thing I would do was to stretch the taskbar, enable Quick Launch, add an address bar, unlock it, then move …

Look, we all know and realize that Windows is the superior operating system to anything else out there.  With that said, I am going to detail ten reasons why this is the case and offer supporting data.  Some of this may be shocking to you if you are a user of another operating system, but please… don’t feel inferior.

Most of you have probably seen the commercials from Microsoft touting the cloud experience behind Windows 7 and Windows Live.  The thing is… many of us that have Windows 7 don’t really know how to do some of the things they show in those commercials.  In this multi-part series, we will attempt to demystify the “cloud” and show you how …

I recently created a VM for Windows 7 and proceeded to waste hours trying to figure out why the Ethernet controller was missing from the Device Manager.  Installing VMWare Tools didn’t fix the issue, tracking down the correct Ethernet driver didn’t help; other people that created the same Virtual Machine were not having problems (of course), just me.  Fixing the …