Sharing in a HomeGroup

In addition to sharing out individual folders, as was possible in previous versions of Windows, HomeGroup also shares out Explorer Libraries

• Explorer libraries aggregate multiple locations on a physical file system, and present them in a logical view.
• Each scope of a library is backed by an network share
• This allows multiple SMB shares to be aggregated into one library location
• Each library is published to the network

Users can browse either shared Explorer libraries or shared folders when browsing a HomeGroup computer, which is exposed in a dedicated node in Explorer labeled as HomeGroup. In the sample screenshot below, we see a user browsing their HomeGroup from a computer named Jeremy-laptop and logged in with the user account Jeremy.

From this screenshot we can see several things:

• Even though HomeGroup is primarily a network technology, it exists as a separate node from the Network node in the Explorer navigation pane.
• The list of computers under the HomeGroup node shows the user that that shared folders and libraries belong to.
• While logged into the local computer (with the computer name Jeremy-laptop) we see that the HomeGroup list in the navigation pane shows both local entries and remote entries. Every user that shares out folders or libraries on the HomeGroup gets a unique entry in the HomeGroup, even if they are on the same computer.
• While viewing the HomeGroup computer we see that the user Jeremy on Jeremy-PC has both libraries (which are a collection of folders) and unique file folders shared out to the HomeGroup. They are all combined into the same view.

Browsing Media in a HomeGroup

Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center are both capable of browsing and consuming media that is shared on the HomeGroup. Windows Media Player will show other HomeGroup PCs under Other Libraries. These other libraries contain the same contents as the explorer library scopes. These scopes are also accessible through compatible UPnP media playback devices like the Xbox 360 and the Roku Soundbridge.

Media Center will show other HomeGroup PCs under the Shared tab.

• Media Center uses the WMP Media Sharing Service for Music, Video and Pictures.
• Recorded TV is enabled by directly accessing the network share \\\public\recorded TV.
• Media Center can play back recorded TV that is not DRM protected from another HomeGroup PC or make a copy for playback while travelling.

Sharing printers in a HomeGroup

When a user shares their printer in the HomeGroup Control Panel, all USB-connected printers that are installed on that local PC are automatically shared:

• If the printer has drivers certified by WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Lab), the printer will be silently installed on all HomeGroup PCs.
• If the printer does not drivers that have been certified , the printer will display a notification, and also show UI in the HomeGroup control panel, asking the user to elevate to install the printer driver.
  • This notification will only show once in the tray and always show in the control panel until the user has acted on it

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Several programs and features built-in with Windows, like Internet Information Services, must be turned on before they can be used. A variety of other features are turned on by default, but can be turned off if they are not used.

To turn off a feature in earlier versions of Windows, it had to be uninstalled completely from the computer.
In Windows 7, the features remain stored on the hard disk so its easy to be turned back on when needed.

If you turn off a feature in Windows 7, you really does not uninstall the feature, and it also does not reduce the amount of hard disk space used by Windows features.

Follow the steps below to turn Windows features "On" or "Off":

* Click the Start button, go to Control Panel, select Programs, and then click Turn Windows features On or Off. If prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, just type the password or provide confirmation.

*To turn a Windows feature on, select the check box next to the feature. To turn a Windows feature off, clear the check box. Hit OK.


Certain Windows features are grouped together in folders, and some folders include subfolders with extra features. If a check box is partly checked or is dimmed, then a few of the items inside the folder are turned on and some are turned off. To check the contents of the folder, just double-click it.

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DELL has recently launched the "Windows 7 Free and Easy Upgrade from Vista" program on select platforms. This promotion will enable Dell to be at par with their retail partners by letting customers purchasing a Dell PC starting October 5, 2009, to have Windows 7 installed on their PC by October 22. Below is Dell’s recent announcement:



Let Dell do the heavy lifting and upgrade your new PC to Windows 7 for you.

For those customers who are waiting for Windows 7 to arrive, Dell has a deal for you. Dell is expanding their upgrade program with a new option - the Windows 7 Free and Easy Upgrade program - which takes the hassle out of upgrading a PC to Windows 7 because Dell will do it for you. Now customers can purchase popular PCs like the Inspiron 15 or 17 laptop, Studio 15 laptop, Inspiron 546 or Studio desktop and Dell will install Windows 7 Premium on it before shipping.

As the program name implies, there are no additional charges associated with this. Dell’s goal is to make it as easy as possible for customers to order a new PC powered by Windows 7 and get on with the daily business, and around Oct. 22, or soon after the new PC will arrive. Of course for those customers who prefer a do-it-yourself, Dell is still offering the Windows 7 Technical Upgrade program, in which a customer buys a qualifying PC with Vista Home Premium, Vista Business Pro or Vista Ultimate, and registers for the Windows 7 upgrade kit, which then ships within a few weeks of October 22.

Dell is looking forward to the customer’s feedback on this new option in our upgrade program, and depending on customer response, Dell will investigate adding additional PC models as well as expanding it on a global basis. Go to http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/windows-7-easy-upgrade?&s=dhs.
For more details, head over to the Direct to Dell blog: http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/.

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As smartphones increased fame outside of the business world, a division formed among devices created for consumers (lifestyle smartphones) and those created for enterprise deployments (professional smartphones). Professional devices become more integrable into bigger systems and now provide more in the productivity department whereas lifestyle devices accommodate more to the individual's tastes as well as provide more in terms of entertainment.



Though Microsoft has plenty of consumer smartphones running Windows Mobile, the operating system has found itself on the far end of "Professional," struggling to appeal to consumers enamored with touch-based operating systems. So Microsoft has worked to make Windows Mobile 6.5 and future versions much more "finger friendly," without sacrificing their professional capabilities.

For the meantime, SPB Software has developed its own interface for earlier versions of Windows Mobile that does that very thing. At present, the company has released the most recent update to its SPB Mobile Shell, an interface for Windows Mobile Professional that has layouts for both lifestyle as well as professional users which can run either simultaneously or individually.

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Microsoft officially launched its own antivirus tool today after their Beta launch last June.

After the Redmond-based company pushed out a beta of Microsoft Security Essentials last June, enabling the software to be available to users in the United States, Israel (English only), People's Republic of China (Simplified Chinese only) and Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese only), Microsoft president for Server and Tools division Bob Muglia announced that the tool will be available for everyone today.

Previously known as Morro, Microsoft Security Essentials aims to provide basic protection from various types of malicious software, including viruses, spyware, trojans, and even rootkits. After today's launch of Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft will then completely discontinue OneCare, the company’s current security software that was released three years ago.

Even with Microsoft's offer of a free security suite that requires no registration, trial or renewal may sound like something that would threaten competitors, it seems like major rivals are completely unaffected by the product. Even when the Beta was launched, neither Symantec nor McAfee showed any sign of worry.

Symantec's Consumer division president, Janice Chaffin, explained that Morro is mainly a stripped down version of OneCare. "A full Internet security suite is what consumers require today to stay fully protected," she told Reuters when news of the software came out last summer. McAfee confirmed that it remained confident in its ability to compete with "anyone who might enter the marketplace."

You can download MSE by visiting the download page here and be sure to let me know what you think.

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If you’ve noticed your MS Outlook being excessively slow or simply just having errors, you might need to probably scan and repair your Personal Folders file for any problems. It’s kind of like a checkdisk for your email.

How to Repair Your PST File

In order to repair your PST file, you’ll need to open the Scanpst.exe utility that’s integrated by default with MS Outlook. The only problem in there is because there’s no shortcut to it so you’ll need to find it in the MS Outlook folder.

To do this, open up Windows Explorer and then browse down to the following folder for MS Outlook 2007:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12

Or one of these folders for MS Outlook 2003 and earlier:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033


Once you have opened up the utility, you’ll need to find the location of your PST file by clicking the on Browse button. If you don’t know the location, I have included a set of instructions for figuring out the location further down in this article.


Hit the Start button to start the scan.


The scanning process will take awhile and you’ll get a report at the end showing you whether you have errors in the file.


Hit on the Repair button and after it’s completed you’ll finally get the “Repair complete” message.


If you want to know what was actually repaired during the process, you’ll find a text file in the same directory as your PST file named exactly the same as your PST file.


Almost all of the information in the file is a bit cryptic so I’m not sure reading it will help you all that much.


Find Your Outlook PST File Location

If you only have a single PST file created automatically by MS Outlook, there’s a standard location under your user profile directory. Open up MS Explorer window and then paste the text below into the address bar:

%appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook


You should be able to see your PST file in the list; it’s normally named Outlook.pst at least in the later versions of MS Outlook. If you’ve created a new personal folders file, of course it might be in a different location where you’ve chosen to saved it.

Find Location of Outlook PST in Non-Standard Location

Occasionally your PST file will be in a different location for a number of reasons. For example, if you created a second PST you would have saved it somewhere.

If you can open MS Outlook, just right-click on your personal folders location and then select Properties.


Under the properties screen, hit on the Advanced button.


Now you’ll be able to see the location of the file in the Filename field. As a bonus, you can also compress the folders from here (although you shouldn’t compress it until it’s repaired first)


It’s well significant to scan your PST file every so often so you don’t lose data. You definitely should be backing up your files as well.

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People from WZOR.net have again showed up screenshots of Microsoft Office 2010 build 4417, which is the Beta 1 build of the suite. Screenshots leak of upcoming Microsoft products has turned out to be a norm now. The new Beta 1 build of Office 2010 suite provides better Back Stage view and Upload Center to carry documents online.

The Back Stage view is where information about the correspoding document is displayed in detail like that in the Office 2007. Document properties, version, statistics protection and other features are also available in the Back Stage view. New Upload Center probably gets desktop's Office 2010 documents to Office live interface in order to enable mobile and easy accessing. However, there would be loads of other known-unknown bug fixes as expected.

Below are some screenshots of the MS Office 2010 Beta 1 Build 14.0.4417.1000:

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Perhaps the most frustrating and aggravating things about troubleshooting random BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) errors is that the computer reboots before you even have a chance to take note of the error messages so you can google them up later. I can still remember watching a friend trying his luck so he could snap a picture of the error with his camera before the PC rebooted.

Instead of doing that, we just need to turn off the automatic reboot option and force the BSOD or the blue screen to stay there.
Right-click on the Computer icon and select Properties. If you’re a Windows Vista user, you will be taken to the System Properties screen. Click on Advanced system settings.


The Advanced tab should already be chosen. Click the Settings button under “Startup and Recovery”.


Now uncheck the option for Automatically restart under the System failure section.


The next time you get a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), you’ll be able to see it and write down the error message. Just manually reboot the computer after you’re done writing down the BSOD error.

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Windows Vista has a built-in support for Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives however, it does not automatically enable the advanced write caching features. You can actually speed-up your PC by enabling this mode from Device Manager.

To go quickly to Device Manager, just type “device” into the Start Menu search box. Or another way for accessing it is typing “devmgmt.msc” from the command line.

Open up the Disk drives section of the tree by clicking on the plus (+) sign next to it. Right-click on your hard drive and choose Properties.



Choose the Policies tab. You should be able to see this dialog:


Click on the checkbox for Enable advanced performance and you are done!

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You can now get Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system for 120 days without activating it with a paid-for license. Yes, that’s right – 120 days, instead of 30 days.

Microsoft confirmed that PC users could now initiate a reset command up to three times, hence adding 90 days further to the default 30-day grace period for activating the operating system with Microsoft. This came out after numerous rumors were published on the Web, including one article by Computerworld.

The extension can be done by calling up the “rearm” control that will automatically reset the countdown timer back to 30 days. The steps below will show you how it’s done:

1. Open up command line by clicking on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt (right-click and hit on Run As Administrator) – or for faster access, use the shortcut keys by pressing the Windows Key + R and typing “cmd”;

2. Enter in slmgr –rearm (only the bold letters) at the command line;
3. Restart your Windows 7.

The same procedure was also available for Windows Vista. Microsoft has confirmed that extending the grace period does not violate the Windows 7 End User License Agreement (EULA). For more details on the extension procedure, and some cautions, check out www.windowssecrets.com.

The process of product activation has been around for quite some, it started with Windows XP and later, Windows Vista. Starting 2008, if a computer was not legally activated with a license key code, it would fall down into a “reduced functionality” mode after 30 days, consequently resulting with the OS falling into a black background and flashing relentless reminders to the user to activate the product.

Retail versions of the new Microsoft OS go on sale in October of 2009.

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Definitely, one of the most annoying features of Windows Vista was the UAC (User Account Control) pop-up asking permission for almost everything. Well, Microsoft decided to let become more manageable in Windows 7. Let's take a look at how to manage it or even completely disabling it.

The main function of UAC is to inform the user when a program makes changes that require administrator rights or permissions. It is supposedly a security feature that will block malicious software from making key system changes without the user's permission.



Go to Start \ Getting Started \ Change UAC settings to manage UAC notification settings.


The default setting is set to notify you when programs try to make changes to the computer; which surprisingly already is a less annoying setting that Windows Vista was. You can now adjust the level to what you are most comfortable with. To completely turn it off, slide the lever down to Never notify.


The best setting if you're hesitant to turn it off is to just have it notify you without completely dimming the desktop and basically stopping everything you're doing just to address it.


If you turn UAC off and you are logged in as Administrator, it will no longer bother you at all. However, standard users will not be able to make any changes that require Administrator rights.


You will definitely like the idea that you can adjust UAC settings easier in Windows 7 than in Windows Vista if you're a power user who likes to make a lot of tweaks to your system.

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Microsoft is giving a select group of technology-savvy testers an early peek at its Office 2010 software, but it's keeping a key development - free web-based versions of programs such as Word and Excel - under wraps a little while longer.
Monday's launch of this "technical preview" indicates Office 2010 is still on track for release in the early part of next year.

Microsoft is updating the highly profitable desktop software package to add more ways for people to work simultaneously on documents, organise their e-mail and edit videos and photos, among other changes. And for the first time, Microsoft is adding free companion versions that run in a web browser.
Microsoft Office is by far the most popular software package worldwide for making presentations, spreadsheets and other documents, and its dominance is in no immediate danger.
But the company is trying to defend against a long-developing trend in which software is moving from the desktop to the web. Google has been pushing its own free, web-based programs for more than two years, though it has yet to gain much traction with corporations.
With Office 2010, Microsoft must decide how much software it can give away online without undermining its lucrative desktop software business. If it doesn't make the right calculation, the software maker could find itself in the same position as newspapers that gave online content away and now are struggling to replace print revenue.
In Microsoft's case, the Home and Student version of Office 2007 is listed at US$150, though it can be found on Amazon.com for US$90. Such sales deliver attractive margins - in 2008, the division responsible for Office logged US$12.4 billion in profit on nearly US$20 billion in revenue.
The Office 2010 web programs will be Microsoft's first real attempt at an online office package. In 2007, Microsoft launched something called Office Live Workspace, which let people view and comment on documents, but it lacked tools for creating and editing files.
The browser-based programs are on a different development cycle from the desktop programs, and Microsoft says the web versions' "technical preview" will be ready in August.
The web version of Office 2010 will be free to consumers, in a version supported by advertising. Microsoft will let companies with long-term Office licensing agreements install the online programs on their servers for no extra charge. Companies will also be able to buy subscriptions to access the programs through Microsoft-operated data centres.
Microsoft has not said how much Office 2010 will cost, only that it will sell five variations on the suite, two for big corporations and three available to consumers and small businesses.
Microsoft says people attending its annual partner conference this week in New Orleans will be among the tens of thousands invited to try the new software.
Shares of Microsoft gained 84 cents, or 3.8 percent, to close at US$23.23 Monday.
Reprinted from: http://www.3news.co.nz/Microsoft-offers-preview-of-Office-2010/tabid/421/articleID/112502/cat/832/Default.aspx

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When the System Restore function was introdued back in Windows ME, it has helped save some major computer fiasco on a lot of occasions. This feature is still included in the new Windows 7 OS and today we will take a look at creating a new restore point.

Creating a Restore Point

It is always recommended to create a restore point before installing new application or software or even making any major modification to your computer. More often than not, when you install new software application you’re prompted with an option to create a restore point but if not you can also do one manually.

Right-click on My Computer and go to Properties.


Click on the System Protection link.


The System Properties dialog will pop up; click on Create.


Type in a description of the restore point so you will remember the point at which it was created.


The time it takes to create the restore point depends on the amount of data, computer speed, etc.



Now you're all done! If something goes wrong with your computer, you still have the satisfaction of knowing that you can still go back in time to the point before the changes were made.

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