SAN FRANCISCO – It’s been almost a year to the day since I adopted an Acer desktop replacement (i.e. a big honking laptop) as my primary PC.

It’s a powerhouse, stocked with a Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, a Blu-ray drive, and loads of other goodies. For the most part, it’s been great.

For the most part. In recent months, problems aplenty have cropped up. For one thing, it takes a solid 10 minutes of boot-up time before the hard drive stops thrashing and I can actually doing anything.

Also, for reasons I haven’t been able to pin down, when I first run Word, Excel, Outlook, or any other Office 2010 component, it takes forever to start.

And lately, when I boot the system, Windows sometimes tells me it’s “preparing my desktop,” then shows me something that looks like Windows 95 and crashes a lot.

Stuff like that.

Granted, I’m a power user. I’m on the thing all day every day, installing and testing all kinds of software. A few glitches are to be expected. But that’s no defense of Windows; the OS should be able to handle that kind of load without getting all gunked up like this.

All I’m saying is, this is what happens over time. Sometimes it takes a year, sometimes two or three, but eventually you reach the point where there’s too much sand in the machinery.

For a lot of people, that’s the point where they decide to buy a new PC. But I don’t think that’s necessary, especially if your system is just a couple years old. Instead, you can wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows. It’s a hassle, one that can consume an afternoon or even an entire weekend, but the end result is a system that runs like new. And it won’t cost you anything.

I’m not here to explain how to perform that process; for that, look to Lincoln Spector’s “Reinstall Windows Without Losing Your Data.” My goal is to help you decide when it’s time to take this drastic step.
Frankly, I think you’ll know when. If programs won’t run properly, Windows crashes often or takes more than a few minutes to boot, or you’ve got a malware issue you simply can’t overcome, that’s when you need to cut bait and start over.

I’ve reached that point with my system. So I’m making lists of all the essential programs and utilities I’ll need to reinstall, backing up all my important data (including easy-to-overlook stuff like address books and iTunes folders), and syncing as much stuff to the cloud as possible (for ease of retrieval after the system wipe).

If you feel like this is beyond your capabilities — it’s a bit like rebuilding a car engine, after all — consider hiring professional help. It’ll cost you a few bucks, but certainly less than a new PC would.

SAN FRANCISCO – Reader P.J. Schultz is attempting to reach across the great Mac/PC platform divide but has been thwarted. She writes:

I am trying to install the software for my Canon printer on to my husband’s Windows 7 PC. We have a software install CD that is compatible with Mac and Windows, however he has one of those new-fangled machines without an optical drive. We looked online for the appropriate software but couldn’t find the right combination of software and drivers that worked. So, I thought I could try to transfer or “burn” the CD to a USB thumb drive on my Mac (which still has the optical drive). No matter what I do, I have only been able to transfer the Mac specific files onto the thumb drive. Is there any way to access that Windows partition of the disc from my Mac, to be able to transfer those files to a different medium?

There is. Like so:

Insert the CD into your Mac’s media drive and then launch Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities). When Disk Utility launches you’ll see the CD listed in the left-side of the Disk Utility window. Most likely that CD will have more than one listing–the name of your media drive (SuperDrive, for example) followed by Session 1 and then the name of the CD. Select the first of these names–SuperDrive, in our example.

Click the New Image button at the top of the window and in the resulting sheet choose DVD/CD Master from the Image Format pop-up menu. In the Save As field give your image an intuitive name such as Canonprinter and click Save. Disk Utility will now create a disk image called Canonprinter.cdr.

Copy that image to your USB thumb drive, move the thumb drive to the PC, and copy the disk image to the PC. Remove the .cdr extension and replace it with .iso. (So, in our example, the disk image would now be called Canonprinter.iso.) On the PC download a copy of SlySoft’s free Virtual CloneDrive. This is a utility that allows you to mount ISO images as if they were hard drives or removable media.
Double-click on the Canonprinter.iso file and an AutoPlay window appears. Choose the Open Folder to View Files option. You should see the Windows installation files for your printer. Install them just as you would from the CD.

SAN FRANCISCO – This is an update of a post from a couple years ago. Recently I migrated to a new PC, but neglected to update the settings as described below–and suffered the same consequences. Curse you, Microsoft–again!

Show of hands if this has happened to you: You step away from the computer for a while, or even overnight, and when you come back, all your programs and documents are gone. Why? Because Windows downloaded some updates and took it upon itself to reboot without your permission.

Gah! This happened to me again just yesterday, and I almost lost some in-progress work as a result. Thankfully, Word had auto-saved my open document, and Chrome was smart enough to re-open all the tabs that I’d been viewing. Even so, I think it’s ridiculous that Windows would ever reboot without my go-ahead.

Thankfully, there continues to be an easy fix for this–provided you actually remember to take advantage of it. If you’ve been plagued by the same problem, here’s what you need to do:

1. If you’re a Windows Vista or Windows 7 user, click Start, type Windows Update, and then hit Enter. (XP users should head to the Control Panel and seek out Windows Update.)

2. Click the Change Settings option at left. (That’s where it appears in Vista and 7; not entirely sure about XP.)

3. Change the setting to Download updates but let me choose whether to install them.

4. Click OK.

That’s all there is to it. Windows may still nag you about installing updates, but at least it won’t reboot without your permission.

FRAMINGHAM – This third installment of my series “Running Windows on a Mac” doesn’t focus on performance issues or what you can expect anymore, it’s all about how to get Windows 7 running on your Mac. And since Windows 8 Developer Preview was just released a few weeks ago, it made sense to include this as well to spare you the early adopter pains I had.

Running Windows on a Mac, part 1: Lion vs. Win7 performance shootout
Running Windows on a Mac, part 2): The good, the bad and the ugly

This guide helps you to…
- Create a Windows partition
- Download the necessary Boot Camp drivers
- Install Windows 7/8 from a DVD
- Install Windows 7/8 from a USB thumb drive and install rEFIt to boot from USB
- Deal with serious driver issues on Windows 8 Developer Preview
- Configure Windows and Boot Camp 4.0 properly
- Update the most common Mac drivers
- Enable AHCI
- Backup Mac OS X + Windows partition with one tool

Step 1: Setting up your Boot Camp partition

The first step requires you to shrink the Mac OS X volume and create a separate NTFS partition for Windows. I’ll describe these steps using Lion, though the procedure in Snow Leopard doesn’t differ a lot (except for the fact that Windows XP and Vista won’t work in Lion — yeah, Apple ditched “legacy” support entirely with Boot Camp 4 and Lion).

So how does this work? First, start Mac OS X Lion and head over to Go/Utilities/Boot Camp Assistant. On a Mac with an optical drive, the first dialogue box gives you the option to download the “Windows support software” (i.e. Boot Camp 4.0, which includes all the necessary Windows drivers).

Macs without the Superdrive give you the additional choice of creating a bootable USB thumb drive from an ISO.

If you want to (or can) install Windows using your Setup-DVD, just pop it in and hit “Continue”.

If you’d rather install Windows using a USB thumb drive, read the steps below first and then move on. At any rate, make sure that “Download the Windows support software for this Mac” is checked, which starts a download assistant that puts the Boot Camp 4.0 drivers on your desktop, on a separate USB drive or burns it onto a blank CD/DVD.

On the next screen, you’re going to face a tough choice: How much disk space do you really need for each operating system?

Windows needs at least 20GB to work properly (system files, page file, hibernation file, system restore points, etc.). This is the absolute minimum. Depending on how much data you want to carry around with you and how many programs you need, you’ll likely need a lot more than that.

Choose the disk size wisely. Only a handful of disk partitioning tools are capable of handling both HFS and NTFS partitions reliably (I have personally tested Paragon CampTune, which works great, but there are a handful of alternatives).

Decided your size? Then let’s hit “Start Installation” and start the installer. Next, reboot your system and hold down the “option” key while doing so. Jump to Step 4!

Hint: Deleting the Mac OS X partition is a bad idea
I know some of you are playing with the idea of getting rid of Mac OS X entirely to save money and have a “clean” system (I get that a lot). I strongly advise against it. Mac OS X is literally the only way to get firmware updates for your Mac hardware (EFI, Bluetooth, SuperDrive, Wi-Fi, SSD, etc.) — in many cases, such updates have proven to be a live saver when it comes to performance and stability.

Step 2: Create a bootable Windows 7/8 USB thumb drive

Whether you’ve got a MacBook Air/Mini (2011) or any other Mac with an optical drive, installing Windows from a USB drive is just the more comfortable option: first, the setup is done in half the time, second, this thumb drive is also a more portable Windows Recovery Environment. It doesn’t scratch and fits easily into your travel bag — if your system gets messed up, plug it in and run the repair options. Here are a couple of ways to create a bootable key (remember, you’re going to need at least a 4GB stick):

Create a bootable Windows Setup USB using Boot Camp Assistant (MacBook Air/MacBook Mini only): Launch the Boot Camp Assistant, check “Create a Windows 7 install disk” and hit “Continue”.

Make sure that the proper USB drive is selected and hit “Continue”. Et Voilà! The ISO gets “burned” to a bootable Flash drive. Now, read the rest of the instructions given in Step 1 above (“Setting up your Boot Camp partition”).

Create a bootable Windows Setup USB using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (All Macs): The easiest way to create a bootable Windows 7/8 Setup USB Drive is with Microsoft’s own “Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool“. Download it, select an ISO and the target USB drive — and you’re done!

(Hint: If the USB thumb drive isn’t recognized by your Mac bootloader or rEFIT, try creating the installer using USB Creator — and if all fails, the manual route should definitely work).

Create a bootable Windows Setup USB using Terminal commands (All Macs): If no PC is in visible range, the USB/DVD Download Tool won’t do you much good – in that case, you’ll have to work your way to the command line:

1. Open a Terminal window and run “diskutil list”. Determine which device node matches your USB thumb drive (e.g. this could be “/dev/disk4″).

2. Unmount this disk by typing in “diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX” (where X stands for the number of your USB drive — in our example, it would be “diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4″).

3. Type in “sudo dd if=/PATH/Windows7or8.iso of=/dev/diskX bs=1m”. Make sure to replace the “/PATH/Windows7or8.iso” with the correct path of your Windows 7 or 8 ISO file and, again, replace the X with the drive number.

4. Done! Once the operation is complete, run the “diskutil eject /dev/diskX” command to eject the flash drive!

Step 3: No USB boot? Install rEFIt!

Not all Macs support booting from a Windows-formatted USB thumb drive. So if you don’t see an image like the one to the right after plugging in your Windows USB key you’re going to need to equip your Mac with rEFIt, which enhances the standard EFI with a few options such as a terminal command line or our much-needed USB boot option. And it’s not as complicated as it sounds: Just head over to http://refit.sourceforge.net/ and get the 6.5 MB DMG file. Install rEFIt and restart your machine. Note: It might take a restart or two until the rEFIT option shows up, so be patient.

Step 4: The Windows 7/8 Setup

Once you’ve booted from USB or DVD, you’ve basically survived the most “difficult” part. I won’t bore you with the details of how to install Windows on your machine — it’s the same old procedure as ever. Both Windows 7 and Windows 8′s setup steps are fairly simple — just make sure to select the “Boot Camp” drive during setup and let it run its course.

Note for Windows 8 early adopters
The Intel HD 3000 Graphics on the 2011 MacBook Airs and Mac Minis have some problems with the built-in Windows 8 drivers; which makes the lower half of the display flicker and indistinguishable right from the setup. As you might imagine, that makes it kind of hard to work with or even finish the setup! The easiest solution is to plug in an external display, which shouldn’t be affected by the glitch. If that’s not an option, you need to use your mouse and/or touchpad to guess where to click next on the Windows 8 installer.

Once you’ve gotten past that small hurdle, download the latest Intel HD 3000 Graphics drivers for Windows 7 and unzip the file, because you’re going to need to do a bit of driver tinkering in order to get your graphics to work: Open up the subfolder “Graphics” and look out for the “igdlh.inf” (32-Bit) or “igdlh64.inf” (64-Bit) file. Open it and replace the line “no install on Win8″ with the entire paragraph you see under the line “[IntelGfx.NTamd64.6.0]“.

Save it! First, run the Boot Camp 4.0 driver installer in order to install all the basic drivers (see below for more) and then run the “setup.exe” found in the Intel drivers folder — if that fails, try running it using compatibility mode and with admin rights. This should make the Intel drivers install correctly and get rid of the annoying display bug!

Step 5: The 4 Most Important Settings for Running Windows on the Mac

After installing Windows, there are a couple of necessary (and optional) steps that make the Windows on a Mac experience just better:

Install Boot Camp: Without the boot camp driver, your Mac is next to unusable — Windows doesn’t provide drivers for most of your Mac’s hardware! Here’s how to fix that. Insert the Boot Camp 4.0 CD, DVD or USB drive that you downloaded earlier and simply run “Setup.msi”. Windows 8 users, again, need to perform some tinkering (which I describe below).

Done? Reboot! Now your Wi-Fi adapter, LAN, the graphics card, Bluetooth, the iSight camera, the sound chip and the trackpad should work properly.

Make Windows your default OS: You’re going full Mac on Win? Then let’s make Windows 7 or 8 the default operating system, so you don’t need to hold down the option key on your Mac to enter Windows: Right-click on the Boot Camp icon in your tray, select “Boot Camp Control Panel” and just click on “BOOTCAMP – Windows”. Hit “Apply”.

Enable Tap to Click: If you’re using a MacBook and just can’t stand to press down on the trackpad, just select “Tap to Click” from the Boot Camp options menu. To further improve the trackpad, go back to part 2 in this series and download Trackpad++!

Sound volume: Here’s a weird bug that I’ve encountered on literally ALL my Macs under Windows and that still persists on my latest purchase, the 2011 MacBook Air. By default, the sound volume of all movies (iTunes, DVD, AVI, MKV, etc.) is way too low — both coming from the speakers and the headphone jack. The solution: Go to “Control Panel”, click on “Hardware and Sound”, head over to “Sound” and right-click on your sound chip.

Jump to the “Enhancements” tab and check “Loudness Equalization”. As weird as it sounds, this actually boosts the volume of all your movies noticeably.

Note: Installing Boot Camp 4.0 on Windows 8
The latest Boot Camp drivers won’t work properly with the Windows Developer Preview, since the built-in OS check detects that you’re running Windows 8 (NT 6.2) instead of Windows 7 (NT 6.1) — the compatibility assistant is no solution. You are stuck with “Boot Camp requires that your computer is running Windows 7″!

Here’s the solution: First, download and install Microsoft’s ORCA MSI editor. Fire up Orca and use it to pen the “BootCamp.msi” (32-Bit) or the “BootCamp64.msi” (64-Bit) installer files, which are located under the “\Drivers\Apple” folder in your Boot Camp directory (make sure to create a backup of the original file, just in case).

Under the “Tables” section, you’ll find a category called “LaunchCondition.”

Right-click on this entry and select “Drop Table”. Save the MSI file and try to launch either the BootCamp.msi/Bootcamp64.msi or — if that doesn’t work — the setup.exe found in the root folder. This should get all your Boot Camp drivers installed!

Step 6: Update your drivers!

Since Apple uses standard hardware components (mostly), you won’t have a tough time finding suitable drivers, though some of them require a bit of searching and tinkering.

This is why I only recommend hunting down and downloading (and in some cases even modifying) drivers if you’ve got problems with games running unusually slow on your graphics card or when the Wi-Fi connection starts acting up.

The list of potential drivers for all the variety of Macs (Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Mini, iMac) goes on and on, so I’ll just compile the most popular here:

Intel chipset drivers: Basic chipset drivers which include the latest IDE/SATA/AHCI drivers, sound drivers and other enhancements.

Intel HD Graphics (onboard GPU) Drivers: These drivers are updated every couple of weeks, which quickly made the Boot Camp 4.0′s drivers (dated early 2011) obsolete.

NVIDIA GeForce (discrete) Graphics Drivers: It’s likely that the official NVIDIA drivers won’t work on your NVIDIA-based Macs (though it’s worth a try), so you will likely have to resort to a bit of driver modification to get the latest drivers to work. It sounds worse than it actually is. Simply head over to the LaptopVideo2Go forums and choose the latest GeForce driver series category.

These forums host literally all Nvidia drivers that are released through various channels (e.g., OEMs, developers, etc.). If you’re getting any of these, watch out for the “MS WHQL Certificate” tag and read the forum comments carefully to avoid potentially buggy drivers. First, you need to click on “Download Driver”, download the package and extract it. Then, right-click on “INF Modified” and save the INF file under the “Display.Driver” directory found inside your driver folder.

That’s it! This will remove all hardware checks and will allow you to install NVIDIA drivers on your Mac.

Broadcom Wi-Fi Drivers: The broadcom chip is present in most recent MacBooks, iMacs and Mac Minis. Station-Drivers.com has the latest drivers. Scroll down to the “Broadcom Wireless 802.11a/b/g/n controller” section and get the latest drivers for your OS.

Realtek HD Audio: The Realtek audio chipset is also very commonly found in Macs. Unfortunately, again, the installation requires you to do some tinkering: Go to Guru3D and download the latest Realtek HD Audio drivers. Make sure not to get the MSI installer, we need the extractable ZIP/EXE format — you’ll see why. Download and extract the file. Go to “Device Manager”, double-click on “Sound, video and game controllers” and then “Realtek High Definition Audio”. Go to the “Driver” tab, click “Update Driver” and point it to your downloaded directory. Hit “OK” to install these drivers! If you don’t follow these steps and just go with the regular installer, you’ll hear no audio out of your speakers — it’s likely one of those weird little Windows on a Mac issues.

Step 7: Enable AHCI or not?

I’ve talked about the missing AHCI drivers before. Thanks to a crippled BIOS emulation and some weird decisions on Apple’s part, the storage controller runs with legacy IDE drivers instead of AHCI drivers, which makes for a noticeable loss in performance.

I’ve read pretty much everything there is to read on this issue and tested all the hacks that help you enable AHCI on your Mac or MacBook. Be warned:

• While, yes, AHCI can be enabled, it’s a dirty hack that changes the Master Boot Record. If anything goes wrong, you’ll spend a couple of hours reinstalling both Mac OS X Lion and Windows so be sure to create a complete image, before you do this.

• All hacks out there work only on Macs with Intel chipsets. Nvidia Chipsets are not supported.

• There’s a good chance that you’ll be stuck with a longer shutdown time (1-2 minutes) and with a non-functional sleep mode! Hibernation continues to work fine.

If these (possible) issues don’t bother you or are less important than the possible performance gain, I’d suggest you give it a go. Obviously, I don’t have to remind you to create an image of both your Mac OS X and Windows partition (see below) first, before you move ahead with changing the master boot record (MBR).

Start Windows 7 and fire up “regedit”. Go to the key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_ System\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci”. Double-click on “Start” and change the value from whatever it is to “0″. Repeat this step with the following keys (if present):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor

This will make Windows 7 look for the AHCI controller during the next boot! Restart your machine, hold down your option key and boot directly into Mac OS X Lion — NOT into Windows!

Download the AHCI Enabler (you have to register with the InsanelyMac forums before downloading) and start it. This tool automates the MBR edits necessary to enable AHCI under Windows and works with a variety of Intel chipsets (ICH7, ICH8, ESB63xx, ICH10, 5 Series). Next, select the appropriate volume and wait for the AHCI Enabler to detect the chipset. Then, make a backup of your MBR by clicking on “File” and “Save Backup MBR to File”, and finally click on “Modifiy”.

If you see this error, you’ll either have an NVIDIA or an unsupported Intel chipset (Sandy Bridge).

My MacBook Air 2011 has an Intel Series 6 chipset, which is not yet supported by AHCI Enabler. If all works out for you, jump directly to step 8. If it didn’t work and if you’ve got a Sandy Bridge 2011 MacBook Pro or Air, read further.

So the AHCI Enabler didn’t work out for you? Well, here comes the complicated part:

Download the patched MBR file from OCZTechnologyForums, put the “patchedboot.bin” on an external USB drive and follow the instructions given on their forums in detail. These instructions require you to boot from your OS X Lion Setup DVD (or USB key or most bootable Linux distributions such as Ubuntu or Damn Small Linux) and replace the Master Boot Record with the patchedboot.bin.

Step 8: Backup Mac OS X and Windows partitions

Creating a complete image of your Mac (both Mac OS X Lion and Windows) isn’t straightforward: Time Machine has some trouble with Windows partitions and Windows 7/8′s image feature isn’t designed to work with HFS+, either. I tried a couple of backup tools, but stuck with CloneZilla in the end, thanks to its fantastic file system support (Hint: Try out Clonezilla Live to burn a bootable CD/DVD or USB Flash disk to restore an unbootable Mac system).

Questions?

This marks the end of this series, for now! If you’re struggling with some serious Windows+Mac issues, let me know.

By Rick Broida
August 18, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO – For many years, I didn’t bother protecting my home network–even though PCWorld colleagues like Nick Mediati have some great tips on doing just that (see “How to Secure Your Home Wi-Fi Network“). Call me crazy, but I didn’t see the need.
All my neighbors have their own networks–all of them password-protected, of course. So why would I deal with the hassles of WPA2 passkeys and all that? Not long ago, my router died, and when I set up the replacement, I figured it was time for me to get smart and set up some encryption–just in case some cheapskate neighbor decided to start freeloading off my pricey cable Internet service. And you know what? Hassle city. I’m tired of entering a lengthy password every time I add a new device to the network (which is often). Plus, I have a couple wireless printers causing me major grief with the new WPA2 setup.

So I’m about ready to ditch it and go back to my unprotected ways. And when I do, I’m going to follow the clever advice I gleaned over at Digital Inspiration: I’m going to give my network a scary name.
Specifically, by choosing an unappealing or intimidating SSID (network name), I may well discourage non-tech-savvy neighbors (which, no offense, folks, is most of them) to steer clear. The author’s example: c:\virus.exe. I like that, but what about something vaguely threatening like FBI-Watchdog? Or thievesbeware? Actually, think I’ll go with this: iwillhackyou. That should be enough to keep the pilferers at bay.

Okay, maybe this is a bit silly. The smarter move is simply to not broadcast the SSID at all, meaning your network will stay invisible to outsiders while remaining available to you–as Nick suggested in his article. That’s the route I’m planning to take–but I still like the idea of a scary name for my network.

A Better Way to Switch Between Open Windows

There are several ways to switch between open windows. Many users reach for the mouse, point to the Taskbar, and then click the button for the window they want to bring to the foreground. That’s about the slowest, least convenient method.

If you’re a fan of keyboard shortcuts, like I am, you probably use Alt-Tab to cycle between open windows. That’s a better method, but Windows uses such tiny thumbnails, I often find myself squinting to see if the selected window is the one I’m after–and sometimes I actually end up with the wrong one.

Windows Vista and 7 users can also press Win-Tab to engage Flip View, a kind of Rolodex-style window selector. This should be the best option, as it uses much larger, easier-to-view thumbnails (a term that really doesn’t apply here). But for whatever reason, I don’t like it.

No, for my money, the fastest and most effective way to cycle between open windows is by tapping Alt-Esc. Doing so instantly switches you to the next open window, then the next after that, and so on. There’s no interim step, no thumbnail view to squint at or cycle through. Tap once and bam: the next window appears. Not the one you want? Tap again and bam: next window.

(If you’re a total newbie when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, make sure you hold down the Alt key, then tap Esc again and again until you land on the window you want. Then you can release Alt.)

This works especially well if you have just two windows open; Alt-Esc functions like a toggle switch, instantly hopping back and forth between them.

Create a Keyboard Shortcut for Your Favorite Folder

Reader Jim has a documents folder that he uses regularly, and wants to know if there’s a way to pin it to the Taskbar for fast and easy access. (He also notes that he loves Hassle-Free PC, indicating he’s an especially smart individual.)

Alas, while Windows 7 lets you pin programs and individual files to the Taskbar, it doesn’t let you pin folders. However, there’s another lightning-fast way to access a favorite folder, and that’s by setting up a keyboard shortcut. Here’s how:

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the folder in question. Let’s say it’s called “Client Files” (which is exactly the name of the folder Jim’s after). Right-click the folder and choose Send to, Desktop (create shortcut). Now minimize all open windows and find the newly created shortcut icon on your desktop. It’ll be labeled Client Files – Shortcut. Right-click that shortcut and choose Properties. Within the Shortcut tab, click inside the Shortcut key field. Now you have to decide what keyboard shortcut you want. It could be something like Ctrl-Shift-F or Ctrl-Alt-Q. I recommend using some combination of Ctrl-Shift, Ctrl-Alt, or Shift-Alt, just to avoid conflicts with other programs (which are more likely to use just one of those keys). For sake of argument, let’s go with Ctrl-Shift-F. Press that combination, and you’ll see it appear in the Shortcut key field. Click OK to complete the process.

Now, whenever you press Ctrl-Shift-F, even when you’re using another program, your Client Files folder will magically appear. By the way, you can use this method to quick-launch favorite apps as well; just right-click a desktop shortcut and repeat the process.

FRAMINGHAM – By now, you’ve heard that ARIN has (more or less) run out of IPv4 addresses and the time has come for mass migration to IPv6. If you are a Windows shop, the good news is that Microsoft has been preparing for IPv6 for years and almost all of the latest Microsoft wares support it. Some, such as Windows Server 2008 R2, depend heavily on it for certain features.

But that doesn’t mean firing up IPv6 in a Windows environment will be effortless. For now, most organizations will need to build a dual-protocol network that will support both Internet Protocols, old and new, at least until the time when most of the world moves to support IPv6, likely a couple of years away.

Register for Insider Content here. ]]> http://pcworld.com.ph/how-to-implement-ipv6-in-a-windows-environment-a-guide/feed/ 0 http://pcworld.com.ph/iphone-android-windows-and-linux-microsoft-now-manages-them-all/ http://pcworld.com.ph/iphone-android-windows-and-linux-microsoft-now-manages-them-all/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:00:10 +0000 Fei http://pcworld.com.ph/?p=11448

By Jon Brodkin
March 25, 2011

FRAMINGHAM – Microsoft hates when customers buy products that weren’t built in Redmond, but Steve Ballmer and crew aren’t going to miss a moneymaking opportunity, even if that means managing iPhones, iPads, Androids and, yes, even Linux computers.

“When are you going to manage devices other than Windows?” is one of the most frequent questions Brad Anderson, Microsoft corporate vice president for management and security, gets from customers, he said at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas Wednesday.

Enemies of Redmond: Microsoft’s top 12 rivals

That’s why Microsoft said it has added support for iPhones, iPads, Android and Symbian devices (in addition to Windows Phone 7) to the second beta of System Center Configuration Manager 2012, which was made available online Wednesday. There was no mention of BlackBerry, with Microsoft perhaps figuring that Research in Motion has the market cornered in managing its own mobile platform.

Adding support for non-Windows phones will make it easier for IT managers to set policies on passwords and wipe phones when they’re lost, although Microsoft still doesn’t have the ability to manage personal and corporate data separately on the same phone. (See also: “At Microsoft, don’t forget your password or your phone gets wiped.”)

To be sure, Microsoft doesn’t extend all of its management capabilities to non-Microsoft devices and software. Microsoft’s Windows Intune Web-based desktop management system went live on Wednesday, but seems to be focused on Windows PCs only. The System Center management suite, additionally, can manage the Windows Azure cloud service but not competing clouds such as Amazon EC2.

But System Center is extensible enough that Microsoft can manage Amazon EC2 later on if it chooses, and the on-premises management suite already can handle both Windows and Linux. In an interview, Anderson said Microsoft works with Novell to ensure support of Novell’s enterprise SUSE Linux distribution. Microsoft is also able to manage Red Hat Linux, even though it doesn’t cooperate with Red Hat itself. “Several partners” have helped Microsoft add support for Red Hat servers and clients into System Center, Anderson said. System Center’s supported platforms also include Solaris, HP-UX and IBM AIX, according to Microsoft. Debian is not on the list.

On the virtualization front, System Center has been able to manage VMware’s hypervisor for several years, even though VMware is a competitor to Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization platform. Just this week, Microsoft announced System Center Virtual Machine Manager support for Citrix’s XenServer, making the product capable of managing all three major hypervisors, Hyper-V, VMware and XenServer.

On the other hand, a new ability to virtualize server applications, while it works with multiple hypervisors, only applies to Windows Server applications, and not Linux. (See also: “Next level of virtualization unlocks Server OS, applications.”)

Anderson acknowledges there are limits to Microsoft’s management of competing products, but says Redmond genuinely wants to provide parity between Microsoft and non-Microsoft software.

In the case of Hyper-V, “there are certain things we build inside System Center that are specific to Hyper-V, just like VMware builds vSphere that manages their underlying hypervisor,” Anderson said. But “if you believe most customers are going to be hybrid in using multiple clouds and using multiple hypervisors, your strategy has to be that they’re all first class citizens,” he said.

Anderson boasts that two-thirds of enterprises with at least 500 PCs use System Center, and says Microsoft manages more Windows servers than any other vendor, even the ones in the Big Four.

But he also says nearly 20% of customers who use System Center Operations Manager to oversee Windows implementations are also using it to manage non-Windows servers, predominantly Linux.

“If we’re going to come in and were going to deliver value on a platform, we want to deliver the same amount of value on that platform as we do on Windows,” he said.

Target, a Microsoft customer that uses Hyper-V to virtualize Windows and also has a small SUSE Linux deployment, says it’s relieved that Microsoft is ramping up support for multiple operating systems.

“They now seem to really understand that their customers have very heterogeneous implementations, different operating systems, and they are changing System Center to be able to manage endpoints that are running non-Windows operating systems,” said Target’s Brad Thompson, director of IT infrastructure engineering. “It’s nice to know that over time, as our footprint of devices in the stores evolve and there’s the potential to have non-Windows operating systems, that our management suite is extensible enough to manage those as well.”

But while Anderson noted that customers are using “multiple clouds,” so far System Center manages only Azure, although it does so in a way that lets customers manage internal Windows Server deployments side by side with cloud-based Azure deployments.

Anderson says Microsoft is “not seeing the demand” for support of Amazon EC2, but System Center, however, is “architected in a way that we can literally plug in a provider for any cloud. It’s just a matter of prioritization.”

Clouds that use VMware on the back end can easily slide into System Center, he also said. “VMware’s working with Google and Salesforce on public clouds,” Anderson notes. “The majority of the work we’ve done to incorporate VMware into System Center will be applicable to those environments.”

SAN FRANCISCO – Windows can do all sorts of amazing things, some of which you might actually want it to do. Unfortunately, the things you don’t want it to do can slow it down. By turning off unnecessary programs, processes, and services, you can unburden Windows and help it live up to its full potential.

Some of the following suggestions may not produce a noticeable improvement in performance individually. But their cumulative effect can be to speed up your system significantly.

You don’t have to turn off all of these features, mind you. Most of them are useful–or at least aesthetically pleasing–to some people, but pointless to others. I’ve tried to provide enough information to enable you to make an informed decision about which ones to keep.

To help you follow my suggestions more easily, I’ve organized the questionable features in my list by the Windows location where you must go to turn them off. That way, you won’t have to visit the Windows Features dialog box, or Services, more than once.

The System Properties Dialog Box

You’ve almost certainly been here before. This is where you change your network ID, manage System Restore, and launch Device Manager. You can also shut off some unnecessary features here.

To get to the System Properties dialog box in Vista or Windows 7, click Start, right-click Computer, and select Properties. Then click one of three links–Remote settings, System protection, or Advanced system settings–in the left pane.

Alternatively, click Start, type sysdm.cpl, and press Enter.

In XP, click Start, right-click My Computer, and select Properties. Or click Start, Run, type sysdm.cpl, and press Enter.

Unnecessary Cosmetic Features: XP, Vista, Windows 7

Windows doesn’t have to look as pretty as it does to do its job. And some aesthetic compromises can free up precious processor clock cycles for real work.

To see your options for turning off these extras, click the System Properties dialog box’s Advanced tab, and then click the Settings button inside the Performance box.

This brings up another dialog box, where you can select which visual effects to keep and which to lose. Select Adjust for best performance to turn off all of them, or individually uncheck the ones you don’t care for.

Error Reporting: Windows XP

You’ve probably noticed that both Windows and the programs that run on it occasionally make mistakes. When that happens, the operating system attempts to send a report back to Microsoft. In theory, your report helps the company find bugs and improve future versions.

Whether that reporting system really helps is open to debate. It certainly doesn’t help you in the short run.

If you’d rather get on with your work after something goes wrong, you can disable error reporting. To do so in XP, click the System Properties dialog box’s Advanced tab, click the Error Reporting button in the lower-right corner, and select Disable error reporting. I recommend keeping ‘But notify me when critical errors occur’ checked.

You can also turn off error reporting in Vista and Windows 7, but not from this dialog box. I explain how to proceed in the Services section.

Remote Assistance: XP, Vista, Windows 7

If you’re not providing or receiving long-distance support, or if you use a third-party tool to provide that support, there’s no reason to leave the Remote Assistance feature on.
To turn it off, click the System Properties dialog box’s Remote tab. Uncheck Allow Remote Assistance connections to this computer (in Vista or Windows 7) or Allow Remote Assistance invitations to be sent from this computer (in XP).

Windows Features Dialog Box

This handy box, semi-hidden in Vista and Windows 7, gives you on/off control over a multitude of features. You can control what games are available, turn on RIP Listener (which isn’t nearly as macabre as it sounds), and turn off some resource-wasting services.

XP users can skip this section, entirely–this dialog box was added with Vista.

To open the Windows Features dialog box, click Start, type programs and features, and press Enter. Once the ‘Uninstall or change a program’ application comes up, click Turn Windows features on or off in the left pane.

Windows 7 users can take a quicker alternative route: Click Start, type windows features, and select Turn Windows features on or off.

One warning: This dialog box takes a long time to load; and when you’re done with it and click OK, it takes an even longer time to close. Then it usually reboots the PC. Consequently it’s best to make all of these changes at one time.

Internet Printing Client: Vista, Windows 7

Do you ever print documents over the Internet? If not, you’re unlikely to miss Windows’ Internet Printing Client. To turn it off, first find and expand the Windows Features dialog box’s Print Services (or Print and Document Services) listing. Then uncheck Internet Printing Client.

Windows Meeting Space: Vista

If you’re working on collaborative projects with other Vista users, Meeting Space is a handy program to have around. It lets you share files across a network while editing them with a remote colleague. A lot of people were disappointed with Microsoft dropped Meeting Space from Windows 7.

But, if you’re not working on collaborative projects with other Vista users, Meeting Space is just a waste of resources. To disable it, simply uncheck Windows Meeting Space in the Windows Features dialog box.

Tablet PC Extras, Part 1: Vista, Windows 7

In the long-ago days before the iPad, a tablet PC was a laptop with a touchscreen that could rotate 180 degrees and fold down over the keyboard. With those rather bulky and heavy tablets in mind, Windows offers some very good tools for touchscreen interfaces.
I’m actually writing this article on such a computer, and though I seldom fold it down into tablet mode, I wouldn’t dream of turning off those enhancements. However, if your computer lacks a touchscreen, you have no reason to leave them on.

This is a two-step process that starts in the Windows Features dialog box. Start by unchecking Tablet PC Optional Components (Vista) or Tablet PC Components (Windows 7).

Services

The first time you look at the Services window, you may feel that you’re getting deeper into geekdom than you ever wanted to go. But calm down–it’s really not that difficult.

To enter Services in Vista or Windows 7, click Start, type services, and press Enter.

In XP, select Start, choose Run, type services.msc, and press Enter.

The window that comes up can seem intimidating. It lists a great many services (nearly 200 on my PC) that various programs need to help them do their job. The problem is that some of the services that are running in the background could just as well be sleeping.

Double-click a service and up comes its Properties dialog box. One option on the General tab, ‘Startup type’, controls how the service starts. Select Automatic, and it loads when Windows boots. Select Manual, and it loads when a program needs it. Select Disabled, and it won’t load at all.

Tablet PC Extras, Part 2: Vista, Windows 7

I’ve already discussed why you should or should not turn this set of features off, and I’ve described how to do the first part of the job. Now comes the second part. In Services, find and double-click the Tablet PC Input Service. In the ‘Startup type’ drop-down menu, select Disabled, and then click OK.

ReadyBoost: Vista

In theory, plugging a flash drive into your PC and letting ReadyBoost take control of it will speed up your PC. I have my doubts.

But if you aren’t using ReadyBoost to speed up Windows, the feature is slowing it down. In that case, you’ll be happier turning ReadyBoost off entirely.

In Services, find and double-click ReadyBoost. In the ‘Startup type’ drop-down menu, select Disabled, and then click OK.

XP doesn’t have ReadyBoost, and Windows 7 doesn’t allow you to turn it off.

Search Indexing: XP, Vista, Windows 7

Indexing speeds up Windows’ searches considerably, especially in Vista and Windows 7: An indexed search can take seconds, while a nonindexed search can take minutes. But when you’re not searching, indexing drags down performance.

If you almost never search for files, or if you use a third-party search tool like Copernic Desktop or Google Desktop, consider turning off search indexing. Otherwise, leave it on.
The service you want to turn off is called Windows Search in Vista and Windows 7, and Indexing Service in XP. To turn it off, select Disabled.

Error Reporting: Vista, Windows 7

I’ve already discussed how to do disable this feature in XP. To switch it off in Vista or Windows 7, you’ll need to disable it in a different location.

Windows reports errors back to Microsoft, in order to gain information for later bug fixes. The trouble is that this reporting operation slows down your PC at the moment when you’re most annoyed by it.

If you’d rather speed up your PC than help Microsoft debug software that it has already sold to you, find and double-click the Windows Error Reporting Service. In the ‘Startup type’ drop-down menu, select Disabled.

Fast User Switching: XP

No, I’m not suggesting that anyone switch you with a faster user.

This service helps Windows keep two or more users logged on and active at a time. That’s useful and convenient…provided you’re sharing the PC with another person.

If the PC is all yours, find and double-click the Fast User Switching Compatibility service, and set the Startup type to Disabled.

Help and Support: XP

You shouldn’t turn this one off entirely. After all, if you need help for an XP component, the last thing you want is to get an error message instead.

But unless you constantly use Help, you won’t want it to be running until you need it. So in Services, find and double-click Help and Support, and select the Startup type Manual. That way, Help and Support won’t load until you ask for it.

Offline Files: Vista and Windows 7 (Business and Ultimate Editions Only)

If you work on files stored on a server whose availability you can’t depend on, Offline Files makes your life easier by copying the files to your hard drive and keeping them synced.

But if you don’t work on such files, there’s no point in keeping the feature activated. Find and double-click the service Offline Files. In the ‘Startup type’ drop-down menu, select Disabled, and then click OK.

This feature isn’t available in any of the Home editions of Vista or Windows 7.

The Desktop

The features that you can disable here are the easiest ones to turn off–and switching them off is likely to yield the biggest improvements in performance, too.

Aero: Vista, Windows 7

With Vista, Microsoft gave Windows an attractive, transparent look that it dubbed Aero. With Aero on, the headers at the top of each window are slightly transparent. You can’t see what’s behind them clearly enough to read them, but it gives the desktop a nice, three-dimensional look.

But that look eats clock cycles, and depending on the speed of your PC and your willingness to trade performance for aesthetics, you might want to turn Aero off.

If you’re using Vista, right-click the Windows desktop and select Personalize, Window Color and Appearance. Click the Open classic appearance properties for more color options link (if you don’t see the link, Aero is already off).

In Windows 7, right-click the Windows desktop and select Personalize. Select one of the themes that are displayed under the ‘Basic and High Contrast Themes’ heading.

The Sidebar: Vista

That bar full of widgets on the right side of the Vista desktop must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Who wouldn’t want a feature that distracts you when you need to concentrate, steals precious screen space, and slows system performance like an anvil chained to a swimmer’s leg?

Someone must have complained, because Microsoft didn’t include the Sidebar in Windows 7.

Unlike the other features in this article, this one has no possible redeeming value. I’m not suggesting that you consider turning this feature off; I’m urging you to turn it off without further consideration.

To remove the Sidebar, Right-click a blank space on the Sidebar and select Properties. Uncheck Start Sidebar when Windows starts.