Step 1: Tune appearance and performance

Open the Start menu and type the word “adjust”. Some pointers will appear in which you can easily adjust how Windows performs and appears. Click Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows. A Performance Options dialog box would get opened, you can make Windows 7 feel a lot faster after making a few adjustments there.

On the Visual Effects tab of the Performance Options dialog box, you have two options; you can select either of them:
•    Adjust for best appearance
•    Adjust for best performance

Effects like animation, fading, or sliding of tool tips or menus may initially seem interesting but overall they are just a waste of time. Turning them off is a good option. You get a choice for Aero Peek features, which provides you with semi-transparent borders that allow you to see through and get to know what is there behind in the background windows. You can enable or disable that feature as per your requirement and convenience. You always have the option to turn it off and can and turn them back on again as and when you wish.

Step 2: Get rid of annoying UAC

Many people found UAC as being the most irritating feature of Windows Vista. UAC prompts appear while installing an application, deleting files, changing system settings, and more. The feature continues to be a part of new Operating System Window 7 installation. But, what comes as a relief is that this feature can be easily disabled. Open the Start menu, type UAC. You will get a search result called Change User Account Control Settings. Click on that and in the resulting dialog box, check Never Notify, Click OK. You would get rid of those UAC prompts once and for all.

Using this option makes the system less secure. If you are one of those who downloads and tests a lot of software, this option is not the best option for you.

Step 3: Chuck out notifications

If you do not want notifications for upgrade, backups that need to be made, Windows update, antivirus updates, and more to be a part of your computer; Windows 7 can do it for you. You can simply turn off all types of notifications appearing in the new Operating System. Open the Start menu once again, and type action. Click the Action Center suggestion that appears; the Change Action Center Settings dialog box will appear. Select from there what all notifications you wish to get

Most people are installing Windows 7 in a real hardware; a DVD should be burned from the downloaded ISO image. You will need a DVD Burner, a DVD burning software and a blank DVD-R or DVD-RW to prepare the installation disk. You can use Sony single layer DVD-R as media and used Nero 8 as the DVD burning software. But for those who don’t have Nero installed, CD Burner XP is a free Alternative. Then save the Windows7 setup at a particular destination and then run the set up to get it installed.

The developers in China has managed to install Windows 7 set up by cleaning the extra user account, run the Sysprep utility to generalize, clean and re-initialize the system to factory state, and then uses Image to capture and create Windows image (.wim file format) consisting of only Windows 7 set up installation files under WinPE environment. Then, the created install.wim file is used to replace and overwrite the same file in Windows 7 set up installation DVD image (the latest build which has setup DVD image leaks).

By running Windows7 Setup from within Windows you can upgrade Windows Vista or Windows 7 Build 7077 or later. You cannot run x64 Setup on a system running an x86 build of Windows, or vice-versa. You cannot upgrade Windows XP or any pre-7077 build of Windows 7 (unless you use the workaround I describe later in this post). You can install Windows 7 on the same volume as an existing Windows version. (I describe the best way to accomplish this in. You cannot make any changes to the layout of a disk; you must use existing partitions, and Setup will not recognize unallocated space.

If you boot from the Windows 7 DVD, you cannot upgrade an existing Windows version. Your only option is a custom install. You can delete existing partitions, create new partitions, extend an existing disk partition to unallocated space, or designate a block of unallocated space as the setup location. You can install Windows 7 on the same volume as an existing Windows version.

In addition, there’s a subtle but significant difference between the initial screens, depending on how you start Setup. If you launch Setup from within Windows, you have the option to run a compatibility check on your existing system. The online compatibility check is not online yet, but should be available soon in beta format.

DVD installation ISO image for Windows 7 set up is created based on build 6801 DVD image. However, the ISO image for Windows 7 build 6956 will actually install the new build, and the system installed will be clean, complete with full functionality ofWindows 7 (without need to hack), and has the newest boot screen. The only exception is that as the installation media is based on build 6801, thus when booting or starting up the system using the media, the bottom right corner will show version 6801; however, it does not affect the end product.

The Windows 7  setup installation ISO image can be used to install Windows 7 build version 6956.0.x86fre.winmain.081122-1150 (6956.winmain.081122-1150) on a physical PC computer by burning the image to a DVD, or simply mount into DVD-ROM drive of a virtual machine powered with VPC, Hyper-V and more to start the install. Most hard disk controller type such as IDE, SATA, SATA2 (SATA II), RAID and SCSI are supported, and also both Intel and AMD CPU. ]]> http://dificilstudio.com/windows-7-setup/feed/ 0 http://dificilstudio.com/choosing-it-consulting-company/ http://dificilstudio.com/choosing-it-consulting-company/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:49:16 +0000 giastudio http://dificilstudio.com/?p=311 If you own or run a small to medium size business, get an IT consulting firm is likely the most cost effective way to keep your company’s IT services. You should know that an outside IT consultants and management team can save personnel costs associated with employing your own full-service IT staff, such as health care costs, payroll, and space requirements.

However, choosing the right IT consulting firm for your business can be a difficult process, right? You should consider several things to select the potential IT consulting company.

The first step in selecting IT services consultancy is to assess the specific needs of your own business. You can make a list of today’s technology challenges facing your business, and how you want to handle it. One more thing, you should consider the project direction you want to drive your business in more than 5 years.It may a good idea of your company to choose one IT services company that offers flat-rate fee. This will make your business to budget your expenses accurately, and does not increase your consulting income when your system is performing poorly. Do not forget to consider every single thing in order to make a best decision for your company.

NTP server systems fall into two categories: primary reference servers and secondary reference servers. Primary reference servers use an external timing reference to provide time, such as GPS or radio clocks. Secondary reference servers synchronise with primary reference NTP servers and offer slightly reduced accuracy. Primary reference servers are designated stratum 1 servers, while secondary servers have a stratum greater than 1.

The NTP Distribution

The NTP source code is freely available from the Network Time Protocol web site. The current version available for download is 4.2.4. NTP is available for the Linux operating systems with ports available for Windows NT. Once the source code is downloaded, it should be configured, compiled and installed on the host machine. Many Linux operating systems, such as RedHat, offer NTP RPM packages.

Configuring NTP

The ‘ntp.conf’ file is main source of configuration information for a NTP server installation. Amongst other things, it contains a list of reference clocks that the installation is to synchronise. A list of NTP server references is specified with the ’server’ configuration command thus:

server time-a.nist.gov # NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland NTP server
server time-c.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov # NIST, Boulder, Colorado NTP server

Controlling the NTP Server Daemon

Once configured, the NTP daemon can be started, stopped and restarted using the commands: ‘ntpd start’; ‘ntpd stop’ and ‘ntpd restart’. The NTP server daemon can be queried using the ‘ntpq –p’ command. The ntpq command queries the NTP server for synchronisation status and provides a list of servers with synchronisation information for each server.

NTP Access Control

Access to the NTP server can be restricted using the ‘restrict’ directive in the ntp.conf file. You can restrict all access to the NTP server with:

restrict default ignore

To only allow machines on your own network to synchronize with the server use:

restrict 192.168.1.0 mask 255.255.255.0 nomodify notrap

Multiple restrict directives can be specified in the ntp.conf file to restrict access to a specified range of computers.

Authentication Options

Authentication allows a matching passwords to be specified by the NTP server and associated clients. NTP keys are stored in the ntp.keys file in the following format: Key-number M Key (The M stands for MD5 encryption), e.g.:

1 M secret
5 M RaBBit
7 M TiMeLy
10 M MYKEY

In the NTP configuration file ntp.conf, specify which of the keys specified above are trusted, i.e. are secure and you want to use. Any keys specified in the keys file but not trusted will not be used for authentication, e.g.:

trustedkey 1 7 10

The NTP server is now configured for authentication.

Client Configuration for Authentication

The client needs to be configured with similar information as the server, however, you may use a subset of the keys specified on the server. A different subset of keys can be used on different clients, e.g.:

Client A)
1 M secret
7 M TiMeLy

trustedkey 1 7

Client B)
1 M secret
5 M RaBBit
7 M TiMeLy
10 M MYKEY

trustedkey 7 10

Essentially authentication is used by the client to authenticate that the time server is who he says he is, and that no rogue server intervenes. The key is encrypted and sent to the client by the server where it is unencrypted and checked against the client keys to ensure a match.

Spyware and Adware is software made by publishers that allow them to snoop on your browsing activity, and invade your privacy, they flood you with those horrible pop-ups. If you are like most users on the internet chances are, you are probably infected with these applications or you have a good program that protects you already and your computer system is safe.

My computer was pretty badly infected and I got myself a good computer program, and ended all the Spyware and Adware attached to my computer, it was pretty easy to do and I know that my browser has no unwanted guests.If you want peace of mind and the knowledge that all your personal and sensitive material you have on your computer is safe, then, maybe this is what you are looking for. This is just one option of many out there. If your computer shows signs of being slow and you are being pestered by those horrible pop-up ads and your homepage keeps changing, then maybe it is time that you looked into protecting your computer. Just don’t leave it too late when you can so easily fix all your worries with a simple program designed to remove these bothersome Spyware and Adware attachments.