Quick Aero Glass Speed Tip

The transparent glass effect in Windows 7 looks very nice but on some computers that have underpowered video adapters users will see a performance hit when running the transparent glass effect.  Animations are slow and choppy and simple tasks like moving around windows on your screen is not very smooth. One way to speed up Windows 7 and keep the benefits of Aero, such as animations, flip 3D and taskbar thumbnails, is to disable glass transparency.This helps significantly on my Windows 7 netbook that does has a weak integrated graphics chip.

    1. Click on the desktop and select Personalize.

    2. Click Windows Color.

    3. Uncheck Enable Transparency.

    4. Click Save changes.

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Improve Sync Performance In iTunes For Windows

On my PC the longest part of the sync process in iTunes with my iPhone or iPad is the device backup. Taking up to an hour at times I can live without a backup. Especially since I jailbreak my devices which makes ever restoring a backup after an OS upgrade a bad idea.

There are two methods to disable the device backup feature. First, I'm going to show you the manual tweak.

Manual Method
Apple made it very difficult to disable the automatic device backup feature manually by burying the setting deep in a configuration file. In order to make the change you will need a good XML text editor. I suggest using the free Notepad++ that you can download here.

First, make sure iTunes is closed and create a backup of the iTunes Preferences file located in C:\Users\Your Username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\ called iTunesPrefs.xml.

Open up C:\Users\Your Username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iTunesPrefs.xml in your text editor and go to the <key>User Preferences</key> section.

Then copy and paste the code below just after the <dict> node of the User Preferences section as shown below.

<key>DeviceBackupsDisabled</key>
<data>
dHJ1ZQ==
</data>

Save the file and start iTunes. The device backup should now be skipped when syncing.

Automated Method

If you want a fully automated approach there is a free app called iPhone Backup Switch that you can download from here.

Just run the utility and when iTunes is closed click the Disable iPhone Backup in iTunes button.

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Improve SATA Hard Disk Performance (Convert From IDE to AHCI)

Every hard drive in a modern computer is connected to the system through a storage controller. This controller typically can communicate with the hard drive via a number of different interface protocols. For maximum compatibility many computers are configured in the BIOS to use the older IDE interface protocol to communicate with modern SATA hard drives. This setting is acceptable for the average computer user but IDE lacks support for new technologies such as native command queuing (NCQ) and hot-plugging hard drives (add or remove drives without restarting the computers).

Intel invented a new storage controller interface known as AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) that supports these new technologies with modern SATA hard drives. If you have a hard drive that supports NCQ, it is worth a try to see if your disk performance improves with your workload.

The main problem preventing users from changing the storage interface protocol from IDE to AHCI in the past has been blue screens that could only be cured by undoing the BIOS change or reinstalling Windows. The cause of the problem is the mass storage driver installed when Windows was first setup. Since IDE was enabled at install only the IDE storage driver was configured in Windows. With the AHCI driver missing, Windows cannot read from the hard drive and throws a BSOD with error code 0x0000005B.

Now there is an easy solution that will allow you to switch between IDE and AHCI in the bios and Windows will boot without any problems. The key is to enable the AHCI driver in Windows before you make the setting change in the BIOS.

For most users this will work:

    1. Open Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci.

    2. Right click on the Start registry DWORD and select Modify.

    3. Set the value to 0 and click OK.

    4. Now the Start setting should be set to 0.

    5. Reboot and enable the AHCI setting in your BIOS.

If you are using a RAID adapter or other interface try the following:

    1. Open up Registry Editor and naviage to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV OR HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor.

    2. Repeat the steps above.

Not all users will see a major performance improvement with AHCI and a SATA hard drive but NCQ can be very helpful under the right workload. Post your experience and setup in the comments below.

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Improve Responsiveness By Disabling Min/Max Animations

The minimize and maximize window animations that first debuted in Windows Vista were an improvement over the effect in Windows XP. While this new effect had a high “cool factor” (especially with the slow motion key) it eventually wore off and created an unnecessary delay when switching between windows. 

Disabling the effect will instantly make your computer feel more responsive and faster. Give it a try and see for yourself:

    1. Click on the Start Button and type in SystemPropertiesPerformance and hit Enter.

    2. On the Visual Effects tab locate and remove the check from Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing.

    3. Click OK.

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Improve Old Application Disk Performance

Do you have old programs that have slow disk performance on Windows Vista or Windows 7? If so, you can squeeze a little more performance out of your hard disk by enabling what I call compatibility mode for your file system.  This speeds up the performance of your hard disk by changing how write caching works. However, if your computer is not connected to a battery backup and you loose power you have a increased risk for data loss or corruption. If you have a laptop your chances are data loss or corruption are dramatically less since your laptop battery will kick on if your power source is lost. Let's get started:

    1. Click on the Start Button and key in Device Manager and hit Enter.

    2. Expand Disk Drives.

    3. Right click on your hard drive and select Properties.

    4. On the Policies tab:

        Windows Vista: Check Enable advanced performance
        Windows 7: Check Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device.

    5. Hit OK and close Device Manager.

Read about the interesting history of this feature on Windows Confidential.

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How To: Detect What Process Is Thrashing Your Hard Drive

Every once in a while you notice that your hard drive is working extra hard for what seems like no reason.  A background process has taken your hard drive hostage, forcing it to thrash loudly as it struggles to keep up with the high rate of reads and writes.  Your computer responds slowly as the process overloads the physical limitations of your drive. What are you to do?

The solution is simple, although a little tricky at times: identify and stop the process that is killing your drive.  There are two methods and tools that you can use to identify the process.

Method 1

    1. Click on the Start Button and key in perfmon.exe /res and hit Enter. This should launch the Resource Monitor on Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

    2. On the overview screen click on the Disk section down arrow to see a list of all processes and the files they are writing or reading from your drives.

    3. Click on the Read, Write or Total headings to sort all disk operations to identify which process and file is currently using the disk the most.

Method 2

    1. Visit Microsoft’s Sysinternals web site and download Process Explorer.

    2. After you have started Process Explorer, click on the View menubar item and then Select Columns.

    3. Click on the Process I/O tab and check:

        - Reads

        - Read Bytes

        - Writes

        - Write Bytes

    4. Hit OK.

    5. You will now see the new columns listed for each process. To identify what process is killing your hard drive, just look for the process with the highest number of Reads or Bytes.

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Fix Broken And Slow Tab Issues In Internet Explorer 8

Some users that upgraded to Internet Explorer 8 experience issues with tabs not working properly or taking a very long time to load.  It seems for most users the issue can be attributed to a problem with actxprxy.dll not installing properly during the upgrade.  If you have a similar problem with IE8, fixing the issue is as simple as a running one command.

Just open up an administrative level command prompt and type in regsvr32 actxprxy.dll and hit Enter. Reboot your computer and your tab issue should be resolved.

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Boost Your Performance With ReadyBoost

ReadyBoost helps your computer by giving it more high-speed memory.  If your computer is running low on RAM then it has to kick a lot of applications out of high-speed physical memory to the paging file on your hard drive.  This usually results in a big hit in performance and increased activity on your hard drive. ReadyBoost helps this situation by giving Windows an alternative to having to stick data into the slow paging file on your hard drive. Instead, ReadyBoost uses a USB storage device that is faster than a hard disk. This results in a performance boost because Windows will have a high speed alternative than using the slow paging file on your hard drive.

In order for ReadyBoost to work, it requires a USB storage device that meets minimum performance and space requirements:

    - The device must be at least 64 MB

    - The device must be USB 2.0

    - It has to be able to read at 3.5 MB/s

    - It has to be able to write at 2.5 MB/s

If you are unsure if your USB storage device meets these requirements, just give it a try anyways. To get started using ReadyBoost, follow these steps:

    1. Plug in USB storage device.

    2. Go to Computer and right click on the removable storage device and select Properties.

    3. If your device is compatible, you will see a ReadyBoost tab. Click on that.

    4. Select Use this device and select the amount of space on it you want to dedicate for the ReadyBoost system file.

    5. Click OK and you are finished.

If you have more questions about ReadyBoost, check out Tom Archer's blog.  He has a great FAQ about ReadyBoost posted.

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Analyze Energy Efficiency

Windows 7 and Server 2008 include a hidden power efficiency diagnostic report that can help make your computer more energy efficient.  The report is generated through the powercfg utility and monitors your computer for 60 seconds.  Power settings, hardware and what you computer is doing is all monitored to identify power waste.  Once completed, the report will show errors, warnings and general information about the power efficiency capabilities of your hardware and what is preventing it from operating efficiently.

Generating the report requires access to an administrative level Command Prompt. Click on the Start Button, type in cmd, hold down CTRL and SHIFT and then hit Enter.  That will start an administrative level command prompt.

Next, type in powercfg /energy and hit enter. 

After the report is generated the file is placed in c:\windows\system32\.  Before you can open the report with a browser, copy the file to your desktop first. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer seem to have issues opening files from the System32 folder. 

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Windows 7 Beta MP3 Corruption Fix

A bug in Windows 7 Beta 1 (build 7000) is known to corrupt MP3 files if you use the Windows Media Player to modify or automatically update (the default setting) MP3 file meta data.  Microsoft has released a QFE patch and the bug has been fixed in more recent builds.

If you are running Windows 7 Beta 1 Build 7000 be sure to download the patch:


Windows 7 Beta 1 32-bit Patch Download
Windows 7 Beta 1 64-bit Patch Download
Read More in KB961367

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Window Management Keyboard Tricks

Windows 7 includes many new way to manage your windows such as window snapping and cool tricks like Aero Shake. One secret that few users know about are the new keyboard shortcuts that are a big help for any power user.  The following keyboard shortcuts provide another way to use the new window management features in Windows 7.

    - Windows key + up will maximize a window to fill the screen

    - Windows key + down arrow on a maximized window will restore it to the original size.

    - Windows key + down will minimize any regular window to the task bar.

    - Windows key + M will minimize any window to the task bar.

    - Windows key + right or left arrow will snap a window to half of the screen. This is the same as dragging a window to far left or right side of the screen.

    - Windows key + home will minimize all open windows in the background except the top most active window. This is the same as shaking the window (Aero Shake).

    - Windows key + T will iterate through your task bar thumbnails of open applications.

    - Windows key + D will minimize all windows.

    - Windows key + Space bar will let you peek at the desktop.

    - If you have multiple monitors, Windows key + shift + right arrow will move the active window to your next monitor. Windows key + shift + left arrow will revert it back.

    - Good old Flip 3D is still there. Use Windows key + Tab to bring it up. While holding the Windows key hit tab to iterate through the windows. Hold down Windows key + shift and then hit tab to reverse the direction.

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Where Did All My Free Space Go?

It happens to everyone eventually. Your hard drive is suddenly full and you are left wondering where did all my free space go? Now you must begin the task of deleting old files and folders to reclaim space but where do you start? In the past I would suggest manually checking the sizes of all of your folders so you know where to begin the hunt but now there is a great utility called WinDirStat that does the work for you.  After inspecting a drive you are shown exactly how much data is in each folder, what file types are taking up the most space and even a visual representation of the files on your disk.

Now you know exactly where to target your cleanup effort.


WinDirStat Web site.
Free Download.

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What Is svchost.exe?

One of the most common questions about system processes is what is svchost.exe and why are there so many processes running? First appearing in Windows XP, svchost.exe hosts multiple services within one process.  This allows the operating system to save memory by reducing process overhead by cutting down on the number of processes that need to be running.

Every system service such as Windows Update, Event Log, Terminal Services, Audio Service, etc. runs within svchost.exe.  Depending on the access the services need, they are grouped together and are run in a number of processes which explains why you see so many in Task Manager running under different accounts such as System, Local Service and Network Service.

Identifying what services are running is different depending on the version of Windows you have.

Windows XP

In Windows XP at a command prompt run:

tasklist /svc

The tasklist utility will show you what processes are running under each svchost.exe process.

Windows Vista and Windows 7

Task manager in Windows Vista and Windows 7 has been enhanced so you can easily see what services are running inside a host process such as svchost.exe.

Click on the Start Button, type in taskmgr and hit Enter. When task manager loads, click on the Processes tab and click Show processes from all users to see all of the svchost.exe processes. Then, right click on a svchost.exe process and select Go to Service(s). You will be taken to the Services tab with all services running in that process highlighted.

All Versions of Windows

Microsoft Sysinternals has a great free utility called Process Explorer that is like a task manager on steroids.  It works on all versions of Windows and allows you to easily see services running inside of svchost.exe.  Download Process Explorer here.  Once you have it running right click on any process and select Properties. Then click on the Services tab and you will see all processes running inside the host process.

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Virtualization On Windows

Operating System virtualization on the client side has many benefits including better security and more flexibility.  Depending on the resources available on your computer you can setup an entire virtual lab running numerous operating systems for testing.  Additionally, virtualization allows you to test software and perform other activities in a sandbox environment that will not affect your primary operating system.  You can infect your VM (virtual machine) but the rest of your computer will be safe.

There big players in the client virtualzation arena are VMWare Workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC and Sun VirtualBox. All have good products but only the Microsoft and Sun products are 100% free (and just a good as VMware IMO).

I have personally used both Virutal PC and VirtualBox for many years and recommend both for your virtual environment. Virtual PC always has great support for Windows operating system while VirtualBox does Windows well and is compatible with more Linux and Unix distributions.

Depending on what operating system you run on your physical computer will determine what client virtualization software you can run.

For Windows 7 Users:

Windows Virtual PC 32-Bit
Windows Virtual PC 64-Bit
VirtualBox

For Windows Vista Users:

Virtual PC 2007
VirtualBox

For XP Users:

Virtual PC 2007
VirtualBox

Using client virtualization software is very simple.  It is just like using a physical computer but your virtual monitor is just another window on your desktop.

You can boot up from a CD/DVD in your physical optical drive or use .ISO file and install the operating system in your virtual machine. Once you have your OS installed make sure you install the VM tools/additions/integration components on the virtualized machine for best performance.

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Unlock Hidden Windows 7 Themes

There are a number of regional themes with multiple unique background images hidden from Windows 7 users.  On a Windows 7 install with United States regional settings only the United States theme is shown but there are actually four more themes hidden from view.  Below are all the regional themes included in Windows 7:

          

     

Accessing all the themes is easy to do once you know where to find them.  The trick is to navigate to the C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT directory.  The MCT directory within the Globalization directory is super hidden so it will not display even if show hidden files and folders is enabled.  Just click on the address bar of any folder and manually type in or copy and paste in C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT and hit Enter.

Once you have reached the MCT folder you will see five directories as listed below:

    - MCT-AU

    - MCT-CA

    - MCT-GB

    - MCT-US

    - MCT-ZA

To view and use the theme for each region just navigate into each MCT-Region directory, enter the Theme sub-directory and double click the theme file.

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Start Explorer In Drive View

Many users like to start explorer in drive view to directly access their data instead of the document folders. This tweak will show you how to modify the Windows Explorer shortcuts to launch directly in drive view.

Update the Start Menu Shortcut

    1. Click on the Start Button and type in Windows Explorer.

    2. Right click on the shortcut when it appears in the search results and select Properties.

    3. On the Shortcut tab, change the target to:

        %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

    4. Click Ok to save the changes.

Update the TaskBar Shortcut

    1. Right click on the Windows Explorer TaskBar icon.

    2. Then Right click on the Windows Explorer shortcut in the Jump List and select Properties.

    3. On the Shortcut tab, change the target to:

        %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

    4. Click Ok to save the changes.

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Spell Check Add-on For Internet Explorer 9

Internet Explorer 9 is big improvement over Internet Explorer 8 but it is still the only modern browser that does not include spell check as a native feature. With this release Microsoft focused more on the browser engine adding HTML 5 support and hardware acceleration. Web standards and performance are very important but the lack of a basic feature such as spell check can prevent users from making Internet Explorer 9 their default browser.

Thankfully, there are a number of free spell check add-ons available for Internet Explorer 9 that will help you modernize your browser:

    - The first option has been the unofficial Internet Explorer spell check add-on for years known as IE Spell. This free add-on allows you to check the spelling of any text box by right clicking and selecting Check Spelling.

    Click here to download IE Spell.

    - My new favorite spell check add-on for Internet Explorer 9 is called Speckie. This free add-on adds the familiar red squiggly line under misspelled words similar to other browsers or Microsoft Word.

    Click here to download Speckie.

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Share Your Screen With SharedView

Microsoft SharedView is a free utility that allows you to share your desktop, applications and documents with up to 15 people online at a time. It is perfect to hold a small meeting or to show a family member how to do something. Best of all it works well through firewalls and routers so you don’t have to worry about connection issues.

Getting Microsoft SharedView up and running requires a Microsoft Live ID, broadband connection and a short download.

Click here to download SharedView

Once downloaded and installed just start up the utility from the start menu and sign in. Then click Start a new session and send your participants the link and details provided. Finally,click the Start button to start your meeting/event.

After the meeting has started you need to share something for your participants to view.  Click the Share button on the top of the screen and select the app you want to share.  You can also select your entire desktop on the bottom of the list.

Once selected click the Start button to begin sharing.


Read more on the Microsoft SharedView site

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Search The Office 2010 Ribbon With Search Commands

While the ribbon interface in Office 2010 is a refined version included in Office 2007 it is completely new for many users that upgraded from Office 2003 directly to 2010. For new users the most popular problem is finding where settings and features are located in the redesigned ribbon menu.

Microsoft Office Labs has released the perfect add-on utility for any new Office 2010 user.  Instead of manually searching through the ribbon for what you need, simply type it in.

After installing the add-on just click on the Search Commands tab and key in what you are looking for.  Relevant buttons will appear allowing you to directly select what you need.

Click Here to download Search Commands for Office 2010.

Office Labs Search Commands home page.

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Search The Office 2007 Ribbon With Search Commands

The new interface in Office 2007 has a great new look but finding your favorite feature can be a little difficult at first. Microsoft Office Labs offers a helpful utility called Search Commands that brings search to the ribbon. Can’t find a specific feature? Just search for it!

Just download and install the Search Commands utility and you will have a new search tab in Word, Excel and Powerpoint.


Download Search Commands from Microsoft Office Labs


Visit Search Command homepage

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Restore Start Menu Internet Search

In Windows 7 the ability to search the Internet from the Start Menu was removed by default.  I'm sure that Microsoft has usage data to support their decision to remove the feature but as usual power users are disappointed. If you were a user of Internet search from the Start Menu then follow these steps to restore the feature:

    1. Click on the Start Button, type in gpedit.msc and hit Enter.

    2. One the Local Group Policy Editor has loaded navigate through User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Start Menu and Taskbar, and locate Add Search Internet link to Start Menu near the top.

    3. Right click on Add Search Internet link to Start Menu and select Edit.

    4. On the edit screen select Enabled and click OK.

    5. Close the Local Group Policy Editor.  You should now see the link restored on the Start Menu.

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