starting October 3 in the U.S., Windows 7 Family Pack will be available for purchase at participating retailers and online at the Microsoft Store. Purchasing the Windows 7 Family Pack gives you three upgrade licenses of Windows 7 Home Premium for the low price of $149.99…For those of you who don’t live in the U.S., Family Pack may be coming your way too. It goes on sale in Canada, UK, Germany, France, Australia and many other markets on or after Oct. 22
Windows Blog – Family Pack Returns in time for the Anniversary of Windows 7
Tags: Windows 7
Place to find Windows 7 Start Orbs / Buttons:
DeviantArt (narrow search to just “orb“)
Windows Seven Forums (see the “sticky” posts)
Awesome guide on how to make a start orb / button using Photoshop on YouTube: How to make start button for Windows 7
StartOrbz is a program for creating and applying start orbs. I have not used it.
I use Windows 7 Start Button Changer to change my start orb.
( See here for how to use it: http://kishan-bagaria.deviantart.com/art/Win-7-Start-Button-Changer-1-0-153001999 )
My attempt at making a start orb (no after effects (click), just hover)
It should be noted that all my desktops / taskbars are dark (black / grey) so I’ve no idea how they look on other colors:
Black Orb w/lightning (I used the Black Start Orb form here)
.
Metallica Ninja Star Start Orb ( I used the star from here)
Anyone is welcome to use them, just right-click > save as. (Please use proper credit if posting them)
If you make one and want to pass it along post it here.
I would appreciate any good links on this subject.
Tags: This Site, Windows 7
What it basically is, is an extended control panel that allows you to control various aspects of the OS that are not typically surfaced via a GUI.
Neat stuff. Check out: Thurrott – Windows 7 God Mode
(Yes, I know it isn’t a new trick, but it is a handy little trick.)
Tags: Windows 7
I have completed The Windows 7 Freeware Machine article. I will attempt to revise the XP and Vista versions in the next week.
Tags: This Site, Windows 7
Microsoft has a Christmas type theme available called “Twinkle Wish”. You can get it from the themes home page or download it. (source: Bink)
Tags: Freeware, Windows 7
My Tweaking Windows 7 guide is done (finally). I hope you find it useful.
Please help spread the word to your favorite website, friends, and family.
After so many hours of writing and editing everything tends to get a little jumbled in my mind. Please post any errors, suggestions in this post.
How long did it take to research and write? I don’t really know. More than a 100 hours, less than a 1000.
This labor of love started when Windows 7 beta was released. I am really impressed with Windows 7.
My goal of this guide was to make it a little easier to understand for the non-geek (thus it is screen-shot heavy).
It was also to ensure that the tweaks were safe and worked as advertised.
Verifying, and testing many of these tweaks required installs on laptops & desktops, 32&64-bit, UAC on & off, networked & not, etc.
Tags: Windows 7
I’m about 2/3 of the way done with writing the Windows 7 tweak guide. I’ve come across an issue that I need some help with. It applies to SSD’s. During my research I found these 2 statements:
“In Windows 7, SuperFetch is automatically enabled for disks that have a low Windows Experience Disk Score and disabled for disks that have a high score.”
Performance Testing Guide for Windows
and
“If the system disk is an SSD, and the SSD performs adequately on random reads and doesn’t have glaring performance issues with random writes or flushes, then Superfetch, boot prefetching, application launch prefetching, ReadyBoost and ReadDrive will all be disabled.” Engineering Windows 7 – Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives
One problem with the above 2 statements. I have an SSD disk (specifically the Intel X25-M Generation 2). My Windows Experience score for Primary hard disk is 7.7 (out a possible 7.9). This was a clean install to this disk, not a clone or image. According to the above statements Windows 7 should have disabled Superfetch. Windows 7 did not disable the service nor adjust the registry settings. It is visable via Task Manager (SysMain) and is actively using system resources.
I’m interested if anyone has had Windows 7 disable this as they claim.
I would also like to know what qualifies as a high “Windows Experience Disk Score” according to Microsoft. (not really expecting an answer on this)
Tags: This Site, Windows 7
Paul Thurrott has got all the workarounds for doing a clean install from Upgrade media:
Paul Thurrott – Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media
Tags: Windows 7
*IMPORTANT UPDATE
Intel has pulled the firmware update. It seems it is cause no shortage of problems for people (thankfully it didn’t bite me. yet…).
See this thread at the Intel forums.
Intel SATA SSD Firmware Update Tool v1.4
This firmware update tool provides the latest firmware for the following Intel SSDs in all capacities:
- Intel® X25-M/X18-M SATA SSD on 50nm (black case) – updates to FW version 8820
- Intel® X25-E SATA SSD on 50nm (black case) – updates to FW version 8850
- Intel® X25-M/X18-M SATA SSD on 34nm (silver case) – updates to FW version 02HA
Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox v1.1
The Intel® SSD Toolbox provides a set of applications to easily manage the health and optimize the performance of your Intel SSD. The Toolbox includes a powerful set of management, information, and diagnostic tools, and is designed to work best with 34nm Intel® High Performance SSDs.
The Intel SSD Optimizer utilizes the new ATA Data Set Management Command (Trim Attribute) to help maintain performance of the 34nm Intel® High Performance SSD at out-of-the-box levels and is specifically designed to run with Microsoft Windows 7*. Intel SSD Optimizer also works with Windows Vista* and XP* through the use of the Intel SSD Toolbox.
*edit – Anandtech has benchmarks and more info: The SSD Improv: Intel & Indilinx get TRIM, Kingston Brings Intel Down to $115
Tags: Computer Hardware, Windows 7
I’ve completed my guide on Installing Windows 7 . I hope you find it useful.
I have also begun work on the Windows 7 page. I could really use some good links for this page if you have any.
Some you have asked if I’m working on a Windows 7 Tweak Guide. Of course I am. It will be a bit different than previous tweak guides.The first reason for that is that Windows 7 needs far less performance tuning than Vista and XP (but there are some tweaks here and there). The second reason is that there are a ton of new features in Windows 7. While I will show you how to turn some of these off, I hope to explain why these features may just help you get things done faster and to tweak the features to your needs. Writing, researching, testing, and double-checking all this does take a considerable amount of time though. I do not know if it will be ready by the launch date or not (Oct. 22nd) but I’m trying.
Tags: This Site, Windows 7
