Windows 7 Onboard
Yesterday my Windows 7 upgrade disc finally arrived from Amazon. (I’m not complaining. I had opted for the slow shipping method because I’m “frugal”.) 20 minutes later, I was running Windows 7 Home Premium on my HP Pavilion dual-core desktop.
I wrote in my earlier articles on the Win 7 betas that the install process was the fastest and easiest Windows installs I had ever experienced, so I was not surprised that the “official release” retained this wonderful ability.
Once I had my Desktop, the first thing I did was visited Windows Update, even though Win7 goes out and looks for updates during the install process. There were 7 regular updates and 7 “optional” updates available for me.
These updates are important, and the sooner you get them onboard the better, so I recommend that everyone click Start > Windows Update as one of your first moves.
Doing so had the side-effect of launching IE 8 for the first time, and so it wanted to be “configured”. I almost clicked on the “quick configure” (as I had on the beta versions) but at the last moment I noticed that the “Default search provider” has been changed to Bing.
No thanks.
Next up was to get an antivirus onboard. Since I installed a 64-bit version, and since Windows 7 is so new, I though maybe my number of choices might not be too many.. but I clicked on the “Action Center” flag and saw I had two “notices”, one of which was “no antivirus detected”. So I clicked that, and then I clicked on “Help me find a solution“.
Pretty simple.
A page opened which showed the various vendors who had products compatible for my system. I was glad to see that pretty much all (all?) the reputable vendors were listed. As I plan to test several anti-Spywares in the near future, I simply installed Microsoft Security Essentials for now.
64-bit Windows 7 is inherently already quite secure. (And you may want it for that reason alone.)
So far (and I haven’t been running long.. mere hours) I haven’t seen any difference between this “official version” and the RC 64-bit. Which I have already described in prior articles. You can be assured will write more in the future.
Related links: to see my reviews of Windows 7, and other Win7-related writings, click here.
Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.
post to jaanix
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Enable ShadowCopy On Home Editions / XP
From time to time Vista creates ’snapshot’ copies of your files with a service called “Shadow Copy”. This allows you to retrieve older versions of files you accidentally delete or alter.
To go back to a prior version of your file/document, you simply right-click on the file and select “Restore previous versions”, which can get you out of some nasty jams. (For more on recovering deleted files, click here.)
Shadow Copy is enabled on all versions of Vista, but Microsoft grants user access to these copies only in the Ultimate, Business, and Enterprise editions. (Clearly as a method to try to sell more copies of the pricier Ultimate Edition.)
Tip of the day: Users of the “Home” editions of Vista can use Shadow Copy too.
The odds are pretty good that if you bought a new computer, and it came with Vista, it came with Vista Home Premium. I say that because if you walk into a store selling computers, I dare you to find the one that has Ultimate Edition on it. It seems to me that they all come with Home Premium!
Remember how I said Shadow Copy was “enabled” on all versions? Yes? Well, for owners of Vista Home Premium and Vista Home Basic, the service is running, but you need a way to “interface” with it (sometimes called a “front end”). To do that, download and install ShadowExplorer, and gain some of Ultimate Edition’s functionality. This cool piece of software is free, but donations are accepted.
Today’s free link: People who are using Windows 2000 or XP can get an almost identical file functionality with FileHamster from Mogware. This program is designed for people whose talents lie in the Creative Arts, so you don’t ave to be a geek to use it. There’s helpful user forums, too.
Please note: This ability is by no means a substitute for regular system backups. This is for small “oopsies”, not recovery/restoration.
Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
Note: You are responsible for using this blog and its content. I am in no way liable for any losses caused by user error, viruses and/or other malware, hardware or software failure, or any other conceivable reason.
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