Archive for January, 2010

Installing from a USB storage device

The main advantages of using flash drives instead of DVD-ROMs are becuase of their faster read speeds and ability to customize the installation image according to your needs such as, adding additional drivers! However, your computer must be able to boot from a USB device. A capacity of 4GB is required for a normal x64 installation image and about 3GB for the x86 one.

 Follow these steps to perform an installation from a USB device:

Preparing the USB device: – Read more…

The Last Known Good Configuration (Advanced)

This Advanced Boot Option is ideal in situations when you have performed some system changes and your whole computer freakes out. This utility will allow you to revert back to the previous configuration that is known to have worked fine.

System changes take place when installing new applications and drivers. New stuff may conflict with other software and cause the system to malfunction! Invoking the Last Known Good Configuration will restore registry settings and driver settings that were in effect the last time the computer worked fine! Read more…

Windows 7 Basic Installation

This procedure is dedicated to a clean installation of Windows 7 when purchasing new hardware or replacing a faulty hard drive. The installation source device is assumed to be a DVD-ROM, however, other sources exist such as, a USB drive. It is important to remember that whatever source you are using, you need to set your computer BIOS to boot from that particular device first.

1. Insert the Windows 7 Installation media into the computer’s DVD-ROM drive and turn on the computer
2. Select the language to install, time and currency format, and the keyboard layout of your computer
3. Click Next and then Click Install Now Read more…

Restoring User Profiles

Documents, library, pictures, videos, favourites, desktop icons, applications settings etc. of a computer user are known as the User Profile. When you let Windows to choose the files and folders during a backup procedure, then your profile is definetely included in the backup job. User profiles are normally big in size and can increase up to GigaBytes of data!

User Profile restore steps:

1. Open the Backup and Restore console -> Start/Search – type Backup and click Backup and Restore
2. From the Backup and Restore window click the Restore My Files button
3. From the Restore Files window click Browse For Folders button 
4. Select your username and click the Add folder button – you can add other user profiles, folders or files as well Read more…

Device Drivers Options

On the Drivers tab of a device properties dialog box you have 5 options but the most useful one, is the Roll Back Driver option. As its name implies, using this feature you can go back to the previous working device driver. The following are the available options:-

• Driver Details:- Display details about the driver files such as, provider and version
• Update Driver:- Search and install the latest driver for this device
• Roll Back Driver:- Go back to the previously installed driver – available only if a new driver was installed to replace a previous one
• Disable:- Disables the selected device such as, when diagnosing problems and you want to temporarily deactivate some devices – disabled for some system critical devices
• Uninstall:- Uninstall the driver and hence, removing the device from your system Read more…