I have been experiencing one slow loading folder in Windows 7 lately which took me ages to figure out why it was happening and how that folder could be fixed so that it would display its contents right away. The folder was my download folder where all downloads from the Internet where placed in. It grew to a size of roughly 250 Gigabytes of data with all file types present: videos, photos, documents, programs and music. I first assumed it was simply to big or that the many files and subfolders inside would be the cause of the loading animation in the location bar. But deleting files and folders did not fix the problem.

There were other possibilities of which I explored all but none fixed the problem. This included antivirus software, shell extensions, the view mode or thumbnail caching. Then I read an article over at Addictive Tips about speeding up Windows 7 folder loading time. The explanation given in the article did not describe my problem but the solution fixed it.

I checked the folder properties after reading the article to see how this folder was optimized in Windows 7. It was set to pictures. I changed that value to videos and placed a checkmark in the “also apply this template to all subfolders” checkbox. (it also worked changing it to general items and documents with general items probably the best choice.

The result was incredible. The folder contents where displayed right away without loading time. I reverted the settings only to experience the slow loading folder contents once again.

It is safe to assume that this is some kind of caching gone wrong. I’m not sure why it was set to pictures in first place but this is the cause for the slow loading folder.

How To Solve Slow Folders In Windows 7

I’ve tried researching on how to Install Windows 7 From Usb before and when I finally managed to do it, the whole process is so unbearably slow that I thought I would NEVER Install Windows 7 From Usb. Recently there has been many articles about installing Windows 7 from USB flash drive and I’ve decided to give it another try and see if there is any improvement on the speed. Install windows 7 from usb

Install Windows 7 From Usb has its advantage which is you don’t need to worry if the DVD drive cannot read the disc or if there is any scratches on the Windows installation DVD, and it is more convenient to carry around your USB flash drive rather than a DVD disc. Moreover, a lot of new compact small laptops or desktops doesn’t even have a CD/DVD drive. Other than that, you can even save useful software setups such as Firefox, Windows Live Messenger, 7-Zip, Orbit Downloader and etc into the USB drive so you can install them once Windows installation has been completed.

I will show you two ways (manual and automatic) on how to Install Windows 7 From Usb.

Before we start Install windows 7 from usb, make sure you have at least a 4GB USB flash drive. Windows 7 installation files takes up around 3GB of space.

The manual way to Install windows 7 from usb
1. Insert your USB flash drive.
2. Hit WIN+R, type cmd and click OK.
3. Type diskpart and hit ENTER
4. Type list disk, hit ENTER and identify the disk number for your USB flash drive. You MUST be very sure of this or else you’ll be formatting the wrong drive later on. If you have only one hard drive, then normally your USB flash drive will be disk 1.

5. Type select disk 1 and hit ENTER
6. Type clean and hit ENTER
7. Type create partition primary and hit ENTER
8. Type select partition 1 and hit ENTER
9. Type active and hit ENTER
10. Type format fs=fat32 and hit ENTER
11. Type assign and hit ENTER
12. Type exit and hit ENTER
13. Insert the Windows 7 installation DVD disc and copy everything from the DVD to your USB flash drive.
14. Boot up your computer with USB flash drive. You will need to go into your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from flash devices. If you got it right, the Windows 7 installation should load from your USB flash drive. The automatic way to Install windows 7 from usb
There is a software called WinToFlash that does everything above automatically. All you need to do is run the program, set the location of the Windows 7 installation disc and the destination of your USB flash drive.

1. Download the latest version of WinToFlash. to Install windows 7 from usb
2. Extract and run WinToFlash.exe
3. Click the big check button to start Windows setup transfer wizard.
4. Click Next
5. Specify the locations of Windows files and USB drive then click Next. The Windows files path if the drive letter of your DVD drive and the USB drive is the drive letter of your USB flash drive.
6. Select “I Accepted the terms of the license agreement” and click Continue.
7. Click OK to start formatting your USB flash drive and the files will be automatically transferred from your Windows 7 install disc to your USB flash drive. Install windows 7 from usb
8. Click Next when finished copying and boot up the computer with USB flash drive.

You will need to go into your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from flash devices. If you got it right, the Windows 7 installation should load from your USB flash drive. Your computer hardware specification plays a part on the time taken to install Windows. I managed to complete installing Windows 7 from USB flash drive with only 17 minutes and my desktop’s specification is Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz, 2GB ram, 7200RPM 160GB SATA hard drive and MSI 945P Platinum mainboard. When I time installing Windows 7 using DVD, it took 22 minutes. So on my desktop computer, it is 22% faster Install windows 7 from usb compared to DVD. Install windows 7 from usb

I am sure many users will be missing DreamScene in windows 7 but don’t worry here is way to install and Enable Dreamscene in Windows 7.The below hack requires you to install and run a patch as Administrator Privileges.

Windows 7 Dreamscene, a feature which allows a video clip, movie show, slideshow or animated image and picture to be set as the desktop background in Windows Vista has been removed in Windows 7, in favor of Desktop Slideshow wallpaper auto rotator. Although Windows 7 no longer supports Windows 7 Dreamscene, the DreamScene function can still be manually added and installed into Windows 7 with a little hack in order to turn on and enable the DreamScene support in Windows7.

In order to enable Windows 7 Dreamscene in Windows 7, the similar hack which allows Windows 7 Dreamscene to be installed on non-Ultimate edition of Windows Vista such as Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Enterprise edition is used. The Windows 7 Dreamscene installation hack has been compiled into an executable, which automatically copy the necessary Windows 7 Dreamscene files and merge require registry keys and entries.

Tip: To run Windows 7 Dreamscene in Windows 7, Windows Aero has to be turned on.

How to Install Enable Windows 7 Dreamscene in Windows 7

1. Download Windows7-dreamscene.exe, this executable patch will automatically copy the necessary DreamScene files and merge require registry keys and entries.

2. Now run Windows7-DreamScene.exe as Administrator to install and enable Windows DreamScene on Windows 7.

The Windwos7-dreamscene.exe installer will copy DreamScene.dll to %WinDir%\System32 folder, DreamScene.dll.mui to %WinDir%\System32\en-US folder and will automatically add required Registry entry.

Download Windows 7 Dreamscene .exe

Windows 7 Taskbar is completely different from Windows Vista and XP. Windows 7 taskbar also know as super barhas bigger icons, no more title text of windows, thumbnail preview, jump list, pinning option etc. Some of these features are fascinating but some do annoys users like Thumbnail Previews which displays small thumbnail preview of opened window.

Since most of the windows 7 users are not comfortable with taskbar thumbnail previews feature why not disable taskbar thumbnail preview. Here is small guide on how to enable and disable taskbar thumbnail preview.

How to Disable Taskbar Thumbnail Windows 7

1. Click on start and type on search bar gpedit.msc and press enter

2. Now navigate to User Configuration, Administrative Templates, and Start Menu and Taskbar in left pan of Group Policy Editor

3. Locate “Turn off Taskbar Thumbnails” in right pan of Group policy editor and double click on it.

4. Select Disable click apply and Press ok

How to Disable Taskbar Thumbnail Windows 7 Finished

The problem lies in the fact that Windows 7 starter edition was never meant to be a saviour for the Netbook anyway, not if Microsoft and others have their way.

Retrovo’s blog post entitled “is Microsoft trying to kill the netbook market” says it all. Retrovo analysed responses from over 1000 users and the overwhelming response is crystal clear.

More than half the users in the survey, sixty one percent in total, were unaware of the fact that they had limitations with Windows 7 starter edition that they didn’t have with Windows XP.

This figure is somewhat surprising actually as Microsoft hasn’t tried to keep that fact hidden; indeed they have openly said that Windows 7 starter edition won’t be able to do everything.

The problem seems to lie in the fact that most of the new netbooks on sale are running with the starter edition and upgrading to the more sophisticated Windows 7 Home Premium version is going to cost somewhere in the region of $80, something than many are not happy to pay.

“I think most users will feel angry with having to pay the $80 for an upgrade to get those features,” said Andrew Eisner, a director with Retrovo.

Eisner also reckons that the whole affair could cause more bad feeling towards Microsoft. One thing that Microsoft may not have anticipated if their intention was to kill off Netbooks was the possibility that their actions might turn users towards Linux, a free open sourced operating system.

Latest reports are predicting that Linux Netbooks could grab over 30 percent of the share of netbook sales in this year alone and that isn’t good news for Microsoft.

So far Microsoft haven’t commented on Retrovo’s study directly but have referred to a statement they put out nine months ago in February.

“Small notebook PCs can run any version of Windows 7. For OEMs that build lower-cost small notebook PCs, Windows 7 Starter will now be available in developed markets,” said Microsoft according to a report in PC world.

“For the most enhanced, full-functioning Windows experience on small notebook PCs, however, consumers will want to go with Windows 7 Home Premium, which lets you get the most out of your digital media and easily connect with other PCs.”

So what do you think? Is Microsoft effectively trying to crush the Netbook and if they are, will the Netbook fight back through Linux?

Here is another Windows 7 trick called as Windows 7 Circle Dock for Vista and XP. This Windows seven trick using open source Circle dock bar application to decorate vista and XP desktop with similar Windows 7 circle dock that showed on Windows 7 Pre beta version. No installation , no registry hack or no command hack requires to activate  Windows 7 circle dock bar on vista or XP

Features of Windows 7 dock bar are:

• Drag and Drop your shortcuts, files and folder to add it to the taskbar
• You can rotate the dock items with wheel or arrow keys
• Change the image show for the icon and change the skins
• Dock appears on the mouse location by pressing F1 key
• Reorder the dock items on the dock bar by drag and drop
• You can add more and any icon of your choice
• It offers a cool icon replacement mode
• Works in all Windows Vista and Windows XP
• Also work with multiple monitors
• Launch programs from a circular dock
• It can run from USB drives
• Includes support for French, English, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Hungarian, Indonesian, Serbian, Croatian, Chinese, Spanish, German, and Danish

All you need is activate Windows 7 Circle Doc bar on your present Windows and choose display option that you prefer. You can play with options of by right clicking of the circle dock bar and select settings

This will open up the Download Windows 7 Circle Dock Bar configuration window

Download Windows 7 Circle Dock Bar

Meanwhile, Windows 7 circle dock bar does not require any installation but require .net framework 2.0 to be installed to run it.

Although, many users have successfully tried different approaches to the problem such as disabling Bonjour, or bypassing the chipset, or even deleting the iPodDevices.xml file from C:\username\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\iTunes, this is still a big issue affecting many more people who don’t know how to solve it.

Microsoft sent the following statement to The Register:

“Microsoft has not seen this particular question posed in the Microsoft Answers for Windows 7 community forum, nor in any of our call centers. We reviewed the issue raised on the Apple Discussion Board and are currently investigating. If we determine this to be a problem specific to Windows 7, we will post an update on the Microsoft Answers site.”

Apple, who is said to ship its Core i5/i7 27-inch iMacs equipped with the P55 Express chipset, has not said anything regarding the matter yet. At least when the iMacs mentioned above ship, we’ll be able to determine if Mac OS X makes a difference.

When you upgrade your computer from Windows Vista to Windows 7, the upgrade process stops responding at 62% indefinitely. This problem occurs because Iphlpsvc service stops responding during upgrade. Note other services may also cause a problem in which upgrade process stops responding at 62%. Important Don’t use this resolution if upgrade stops responding at a percentage other than 62% or if log entries’re not logged. For information about how to open Seupact.log file. To resolve: 1. Restart computer, then, your computer’ll roll back to Windows Vista 2. Click start, right-click computer, and then click properties 3. on advanced tab, click environment variables 4. under system variables, click new 5. Type MIG_UPGRADE_IGNORE_PLUGINS in variable name field 6. Type IphlpsvcMigPlugin.dll in variable value field 7. click OK three times to close dialog boxes 8. start upgrade installation again

Upgrade Windows Vista to Windows 7 Hangs at 62%

Windows 7 has various new features in it, which are still not familiar to all Windows XP and Windows Vista users. These features are useful for those who have been using Windows 7 since its beta period. New users would require some time to get used to with Windows 7 operating system.

Since long time, Windows users have been using different type of taskbar, which has tab like structure for each opened program. Windows 7 taskbar is a new and improved feature in Microsoft’soperating system, but few people find it difficult to use that feature.

I have found out a simple trick to remove default Windows 7 taskbar and replace it with Windows vista taskbar. Follow the steps given below to change your taskbar.

1. Right click on Windows 7 desktop and select Properties.

2. Go to the taskbar buttons option.

3. Select ‘Never Combine’ from drop down menu.

4. Click Ok to finish the task.

Voila! Now you can use Windows Vista like taskbar in your Windows 7.

Recently, the Ubuntu 9.10 has been revealed to public and ready for download. You can now grab a copy of your Ubuntu and experience the difference from the previous versions. I read this article from ZDNet website, they’d tried to compare Ubuntu with Windows 7. Windows 7 has been release for commercially before the released of Ubuntu.

The only thing I know about this two operating system its that, first, Windows 7 is a commercial operating system from Microsoft and Ubuntu, distributed for free. I learn how to used this two software without considering each of their features but right now, as I read this article of Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet, I realized that I need to know more about it. Ubuntu 9.10 vs Windows 7

In his article, there are pros and cons with the two operating system. And you can see the difference of the two in his own perception and basis. I don’t mean to promote one of the two OS but just try to see the difference from IT Professional perspectiv. Ubuntu 9.10 vs Windows 7