Windows Tools, Help & Guides

This guide is going to show you how to restart Explorer from the Desktop Context Menu.

This is really handy if, like me, you customise Windows a lot.  If you have to restart Explorer for a Start Orb to change or for a theme to display correctly.  Whatever the need, this sure is handy to have on tap.

As this guide involves editing the registry, please see here & here before proceeding.

Read the rest of this entry »

A small annoyance in Windows 7 is the fact that it doesn’t remove old notification icons from the taskbar. After a while a lot of old icons will still be present with no obvious way to remove them.  This is easily remedied and this guide will show you how to do it, manually.

[UPDATE]-For those wishing for an automated solution, see here.

This guide does involve editing the registry, please see here before proceeding.

Read the rest of this entry »

A system image can be used to restore your machine to a defined state.  If you find yourself reinstalling Windows quite often and have to reinstall the same old software each time, this can certainly take the sting out of it.  Respectively, if you have terrible troubles with Windows, a system image can be used to roll back to a good state when nothing else will work for you.

A system Image is a clone of your hard drive, meaning everything will be backed up for later restoration, during which, items cannot be individually specified.  You cannot backup the partition or drive that you are saving the backup image to, and you can only save the backup image on a hard drive or partition that Windows 7 is not installed on.

Unfortunately only Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions have this feature.  For any other flavour, it’s best to check out 3rd party alternatives.

This guide will walk you through creating a System Image in Windows 7.

Read the rest of this entry »

Using Virtual Machines is a great way to test software without making changes to your ‘main’ machine.

To create a virtual machine in Windows 7 without using 3rd party software you’ll need to download Microsoft’s Virtual PC.  If you also want XP-mode, help yourself.  Both are available here.

Once you’ve installed Windows Virtual PC you’ll probably want to create other VM’s running other OS’s.

To do that, do the following;

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently had an issue trying to install Office 2010. To get it fixed, a system restore seemed like the proper action to take. The purpose of System Restore is to return your computer to a previous state under which it was operating as it should. This guide will walk you through restoring your system to a previous ‘good state’.

Before we start though, make sure you save any work and close all programs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Windows Guides’ Rating	Compatible with
4 out of 5

Read the rest of this entry »