Tag Archive: Windows 7

Jul
26

Lifetime PC User Buys a Mac

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For all my life I’ve been loyal to PC. It’s been a pretty good relationship, certainly with its ups and downs like in any relationship. It started back in 1992 with my dad’s i486-based computer, and after that there was no stopping us. Fast forward to today, and I’ve been through more than a dozen machines and numerous rebuilds. I’ve even built a couple of water cooled rigs just for the hell of it.

I’ve been a steadfast supporter of the PC platform and what it stands for. I’ve regularly argued against Apple whenever they’ve done bad things, such as locking down pretty much everything they make to suit their business models, or enforcing unfair censorship of publishers’ content – all the while pointing fingers at other. So, I hope my point is made clear: understand that it would take a lot to make me buy an Apple product.

Just a few days ago in July of 2011, however, I decided to do just that. Continue reading “Lifetime PC User Buys a Mac” »

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May
22

SSD Not Available During Windows 7 Setup

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Intel X25-V SSD - Still Not Getting The Daily TRIM

Intel X25 SSD: Sometimes not showing up to the party

There’s a lot of people who have had issues with their SSD not showing up in the list of available hard drives when installing Windows 7, and today I got to be one of them. I wanted to do a fresh install of Windows 7 on an Intel X25-V SSD (40GB), but the disk just wouldn’t show up.

This particular disk was used as a swap disk in a different system, so I figured it might have some problems related to formatting. Changing from IDE mode to ACHI mode did not do anything. (For Intel SSDs, IDE mode is required for the Intel software to work).

After looking around for a solution on the interwebs, I found two possible solutions, listed by “ease of use”. The second one worked for me, as I happened to have a bootable USB with GParted on hand, but the first one should work too.

Continue reading “SSD Not Available During Windows 7 Setup” »

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Aug
11

Multithreaded File Copies with Robocopy in Windows 7

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Robocopy is included in Windows 7 and features a new multi-threaded copy option. To perform a multi-threaded copy, you use the new /MT[:n] switch, where n indicates the number of threads to be used. By default, n is 8 when you use the /MT option, and can be any value from 1 to 128.
Note that the multi-threaded option is not compatible with the /IPG and /EFSRAW options.

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Apr
15

System Crash: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power

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“The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.”

This error can be triggered by many different things, but in general they’re all related to something to do with power management.

I just went through three motherboards, different VGA cards and harddisks, basically changing out everything except for the CPU, only to eventually find that the computer crashes were triggered by Windows 7 trying to manage the power state on my Intel Core i5 750 CPU. As soon as I disabled all C-States, it stopped crashing.

I found out about this workaround from the Technet forum threads “Periodic server core BSOD/Reboot, need help with bugcheck report” and “Iam having Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power crashes“.

The problem with this workaround, is that the new CPUs are supposed to save you energy by enabling the latest operating systems such as Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 to manage them more effeciently. By disabling all of the C-States, you’re basically forcing the CPU to run at full steam. This is most severe if you’ve invested in the latest Xeon processors mainly because of these features, as mentioned somewhere further down in the first forum thread I linked to.

If this is a fault with the new Windows core, I really hope Microsoft comes out with a hotfix soon. It cost me a lot of time and frustration to find the source of – and workaround to – the problem.

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Mar
30

How To: Disable Thumbnail Preview In Windows 7

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On my Media Center PC, after reinstalling some video codecs, my MKV* video files made Windows Explorer crash regularly when opening a folder with one of these files in it. To solve this problem, I had to disable automatic thumbnail generation in Vista or Windows 7. Disabling thumbnail preview in Windows Explorer can make Vista/Windows 7 perform notably faster in any case, as Explorer will no longer be generating thumbnails for every video and image file in every folder you open. This is especially useful when browsing back and forth between multiple folders. Follow these steps to disable the automatic thumbnail generation:

  1. Press and hold the Windows key on your keyboard, then press E to open Windows Explorer (alternatively click Start > Accessories > Windows Explorer).
  2. In the Windows Explorer window, click on the Organize button on the menu/shortcut bar.
  3. In the pull down menu, click on Folder and Search Options.
  4. The Folder Options dialog window will appear. Click on the View tab.
  5. Under the Files and Folders tree heading, check (tick) the box next to Always show icons, never thumbnails option.
  6. Click the OK button and you’re good to go!

* MKV is a common container format for video, audio and subtitles, often used to distribute standard and high definition video, audio and associated subtitles in one single file, with support for multiple audio and subtitle tracks, just like on a DVD.

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May
13

How To: Enable Automatic Logon in Windows 7

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To be able to access administrative shares and shut it down remotely, I added another user to my media center computer (HTPC) matching my usual username and password. Upon next boot, I discovered that instead of being logged on automatically, I was now presented with a logon screen, where I had to choose between the default (passwordless) user and my newly created “remote control” account.

“There’s got to be a way to get the automatic logon back”, I thought. Of course there is! Following is the simple solution to configure automatic logon in Windows 7 or Vista. (Please bare with me, and pretend that the Norwegian screenshots are in English for now.)

Continue reading “How To: Enable Automatic Logon in Windows 7” »

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