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This How To guide is going to show you how to customise or completely change the backgrounds in the Windows Card Games (Solitaire, FreeCell, Hearts & Spider Solitaire).

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Change the Start-Up Sound in Windows 7 [How To]

Posted by Stu On August - 1 - 2010

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One of the things Microsoft forgot to properly think about when making Windows 7, was the start-up sound.  With every new version of Windows should come a new start-up sound, however they chose to keep it the same as Vista.

If you’d like to change the start-up sound (the sound played when you get to your login screen) then this is the guide for you.  My favourite start-up sound comes from Windows 95 and I’ll be using its start-up sound for this guide.

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Windows 7 Resource Monitor IconOperating systems have become more complex over time. For an every-day user, it’s really a hard task to find what programs are slowing down their machine and for what reasons.

The most common performance problems are related with physical memory.

As I wrote in a comment answering a reader, Ben, in another post:

5 Things You Should Know About Microsoft Security Essentials

Programs use more RAM (another name for physical memory) if there is more available. Thus, you cannot associate high memory usage with bad memory usage. If your machine has resources (one of these resources is RAM), there is no problem using them if they’re available for use. But what about when you hit the limits of your physical memory?

What can an every-day user do to find out if their machine is using all of it’s current physical memory and, therefore, needs more RAM?

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Trillian Astra – Multi-IM Client

Posted by DarkNovaGamer On March - 30 - 2010

Trillian Astra, a full featured, multi-IM client developed by Cerulean Studios. Most of its features are simple ones, such as offline messaging, group chats, file transfer with proxying (for those with restrictive firewalls), etc.

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Start Menu 7 Overhauls your Windows Start Menu

Posted by Stu On March - 30 - 2010
Windows Guides’ Rating Compatible with
1 Star1 Star1 Star1 StarHalf Star3.5 out of 5 Windows 7Windows VistaWindows XP

PROS: A simple to use Start Menu alternative. A small choice of Skins. Low resource usage. Better function & flexibility of Power Options such as a timer. Text magnifier. The ability to move the Start Menu to any location on screen and resize to your liking. Easy to remember keyboard shortcuts and easy additions to the sidebar also make this very handy.  x64 support.

CONS: Slightly buggy Aero Skin. Reboot required after uninstallation (even though the dev blurb states no changes are made to the system). Start Menu sometimes displays unknown items. No major updates from Vista Start Menu (same dev). Search results erratic and slow.

VERDICT: A decent alternative to the native Windows Start Menu, though don’t expect much Windows 7 integration or frequent updates. The ability to move and resize the menu to your liking will make many users happy. A Pro version is available that brings additional features.

The developer Dennis Nazarenko has kindly donated 3 Pro licences to our community.

The competition is now live in the forums, head over for a chance to win a copy of Start Menu 7 Pro.

PRICE: Free.

VERSION REVIEWED: 3.6

DOWNLOAD: Start Menu 7 (Freeware)

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Customize the Start Button (“Orb”) in Windows 7 [How To]

Posted by Rich On February - 6 - 2010

Recently RSVR85 showed you how to manually customize the start button in Windows 7. If the thought of resource hacking makes you a little queezy, you can use a tool, created by Windows Forums member Kishan.

In this guide, I’ll show you where to get the tool and how to use it.

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