Posts in category Windows

How to disable real-time protection in Microsoft Security Essentials

Sep30
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

Microsoft has just released their new free anti-virus product called Microsoft Security Essentials, it has been in public beta for a while now but just been released to the masses, I’ve only just installed it on the whole it seems as good as an anti-virus program from the makers of your operating system would be. One feature that I couldn’t easily find was how to disable the real-time protection on the fly which would be handy for when I want to play games without any interference from the real-time scanning. Currently the only way to do this is listed below:

  1. Open the main program window by either double clicking on the taskbar icon or running the Microsoft Security Essentials shortcut on your desktop.

    Microsoft Security Essentials - Home

  2. Click on the Settings tab and then click Real-time protection in the box on the left, to disable the real-time protection untick the tick box in the panel on the right and then click the Save changes button. It has now been disabled.

    Microsoft Security Essentials - Settings

  3. Just in case you weren’t sure this was a bad thing the Home tab has now been changed to warn you that you are at risk, to turn real-time protection back on it is as simple as clicking the giant red Turn on button once you are ready.

    Microsoft Security Essentials - At Risk

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Arrange windows side-by-side in Windows 7

Sep29
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

Thanks to a new feature in Windows 7 you can now arrange two windows side-by-side which can be helpful when comparing documents or moving files from one folder to another.

windows_7_snap

  1. Drag the title bar of a window to the left or right side of the screen until an outline of the window appears.
  2. Release the mouse to move the window to that side of the screen.
  3. Repeat the steps 1 and 2 for the other window but with the opposite side of the screen.
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Burn ISO images in Windows 7

Sep28
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

A new feature in Windows 7 is the ability to burn ISO images directly from Windows without the need for any third party software, its as simple as double clicking on the ISO file which will bring up the Windows Disc Image Burner application. Then it’s as simple as selecting the drive to burn to and clicking ‘Burn’.

Windows 7 Image Burner

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Windows 7 shortcut keys

Sep24
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

In a follow up to my previous post about restoring the standard right-click menu options on a window below are a list of further Windows 7 shortcut keys.

General

Windows Key + Up Maximise window
Windows Key + Down Restore window if maximised, otherwise minimise window
Windows Key + Left Snap window to left
Windows Key + Right Snap window to right
Windows Key + Shift + Left Jump to left monitor
Windows Key + Shift + Right Jump to right monitor
Windows Key + Home Minimise or restore all other windows
Windows Key + T Focus on first taskbar entry, multiple presses cycles each taskbar entry
Windows Key + Shift + T Focus on first taskbar entry, multiple presses cycles each taskbar entry in reverse
Windows Key + Space Aero Peek, peek at desktop
Windows Key + G Bring gadgets to the front
Windows Key + P External display options
Windows Key + <number> Launch the taskbar program at position <number>
Windows Key + Plus Zoom in
Windows Key + Minus Zoom out

Explorer

Alt + P Toggles display of preview pane

Taskbar

Shift + Left-click Open a new instance
Middle-click Open a new instance
Ctrl + Shift + Left-click Open a new instance with administrator privileges
Shift + Right-click Show window menu
NB: Used to be standard right-click on previous versions of Windows
Ctrl + Left-click <on grouped icons> Cycles through each window in that group
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How to restore ‘Minimize all windows’ in Windows 7

Sep22
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

As great as Windows 7 is it does have a few annoyances one of which is the changed taskbar, I’m getting used to the taskbar but one I am missing is the ability to minimise multiple windows grouped by the program. Apparently this has been removed by default due to the implementation of Aero Shake and Aero Peek. After a bit of research I did find that you can restore the options by holding Shift and right-clicking on the button, this should display the menu with the old options of Cascade, Show windows stacked, Show windows side by side, Restore all windows, Minimize all windows and Close all windows.

Cascade, Show windows stacked, Show windows side by side, Restore all windows, Minimize all windows and Close all windows taskbar options

As an extra I also found that if you hold down Shift and left-click then it will open a new instance of the icon you clicked on, very handy.

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Installing Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7

Sep17
2009 1 Comment Written by Stuart Clark

When recently upgrading my work PC to Windows 7 Enterprise I was told that I needed to uninstall Virtual PC 2007 before installation. I did this but as I use it for website compatibility testing I needed to reinstall it afterwards. I found that Virtual PC 2007 has been superseded by Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 so I installed that instead, the only problem is my work PC does not support hardware virtualisation and as such I could not use it. I then tried to reinstall Virtual PC 2007 but kept getting the following error:

Virtual PC 2007 Installation Message

Read the rest of the article in order to see how to get around this.

Continue reading “Installing Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7” »

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Fix Windows Update error code 80240025

May18
2009 1 Comment Written by Stuart Clark

Disclaimer: Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any potential liability for the contents of this document. Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely at your own risk.

Please note that this fix was tested on Windows Vista but should work on other versions of Windows.

Recently I was experiencing some issues with a Windows Vista machine not updating from Windows Update correctly, eventually it was tracked down to a single registry key in the following location:

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\WindowsUpdate

If you set the DisableWindowsUpdateAccess flag to 0 then it should now work, if you do not want to do this manually you can also download a fix below:

Windows Update Error - Code 80240025 Fix
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Default Microsoft Outlook PST location

Mar19
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

When email is downloaded by Microsoft Outlook (external link) it is stored locally in a special file format with the extension PST, the default location of your PST file varies by which version of Microsoft Windows you have installed.

For Windows 2000/XP (external link) the default location is:

C:Documents and Settings<user_id>Local SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftOutlook

For Windows Vista (external link) the default location is:

C:Users<user_id>AppDataLocalMicrosoftOutlook

This is because Microsoft changed the LOCALAPPDATA location when they created Vista, yours can be found by opening a Command Prompt window (Run > cmd.exe) and then running set.exe, this will display a list of special strings that have been setup for your current login. If you search through them you should find the LOCALAPPDATA string, this is then used to build the default location by adding MicrosoftOutlook onto the end.

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