Windows To Go is a new feature of Windows 8 that allows a full featured version of Windows to boot from a USB drive. 

To begin you will need the following:

• 32 GB or larger USB Drive (It can be a USB Hard Drive)
• A Windows 8 PC to build the USB drive on.
• Windows 8 DVD ISO.
• A copy of Imagex.exe from the Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit installed on Windows 7 or XP. ImageX can be found in C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64 or C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86.

Creating the Windows 8 To Go USB Device:

1. Run Diskpart
2. List Disk
3. Select Disk 1 (Replace 1 with number reflecting your USB Drive)
4. Clean 

5. Create partition primary

6. Active

7. format fs=ntfs quick

8. Assign

Exit Diskpart by typing Exit.

1. Now double click the Windows 8 ISO you downloaded to mount it in Windows 8.  Browse to the ISO files in Windows Explorer and copy \sources\install.wim to the same folder as you copied Imagex.exe.

Identify the drive letter assigned to your USB drive by Windows Explorer and run the following command from the folder that contains Imagex.exe and install.wim:

1. imagex.exe /apply install.wim 1 d:\

2. Replace d with the drive letter of your USB drive.)

3. Once the image has applied you need to setup the boot record on the USB Drive. At the administrative level command prompt run:

   bcdboot.exe d:\windows /s d: /f ALL

   (Replace d with the drive letter of your USB drive.)

After the command has completed running you are ready to use your new Windows To Go USB device.

How to change the default search provider in Firefox

Step1: Load Firefox

Step2: Type “about: config” in the address bar and press enter

Step 3:  Ignore the warning and click “I will be careful, I promise!”

Step 4: In the filter text box at the top of screen type “keyword.url”

Step 5: Double Click on the keyword.URL. It will open a pop up window asking you to “Enter String Value” . You can also right click on keyword.URL and click Modify

Step 6: To display search results, you need to replace the String with one of the following strings as per your favourite search engine.

Google: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=

Google Search (I’m feeling Lucky): http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=

Yahoo: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=

Bing: http://www.bing.com/search?q=

Ask: http://www.ask.com/web?q=

AltaVista: http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=

AOL Search: http://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_it=searchbox.webhome&q=

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?fulltext=Search&search=

Step 7: Click OK when you are done.

Start typing with a keyboard in the Start screen to quickly search and launch applications. Find additional applications (e.g. accessories) can be found in the application list by clicking on the “Search” charm.

New shell keyboard shortcuts:
WIN+Q for application search
WIN+W for settings search
WIN+F for files search
WIN+I for “settings” charm
WIN+O for rotation lock
WIN+C to bring up simple “Start menu” and time/date

Most old shell keyboard shortcuts also work: e.g. WIN+D activates desktop, WIN+R opens “Run”, WIN+L locks user. WIN+E opens Explorer.
In mouse mode, activate the options/charms by moving the mouse to the bottom left edge (where the Windows button used to be).
In mouse mode, right clicking activates in-app options.
With a keyboard, you can use the arrow keys and page up/down to select tiles. Enter launches them. The “menu” button (the key with a drop down) selects them.

Make sure to check the “settings” charm in applications to reveal app-specific settings. Enable the “high contrast” mode in Control Panel > Ease of Access to see a dark themed Start screen (above)

To get back the old start menu, open regedit, go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

change value of RPEnabled from “1″ to “0″

Using the mklink Command in Windows

The command that you need to use is mklink, which you’ll use from the command line. Just type it on the command line to see the options:
C:\Users\Jas>mklink
Creates a symbolic link.

MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target

        /D      Creates a directory symbolic link.  Default is a file
                symbolic link.
        /H      Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
        /J      Creates a Directory Junction.
        Link    specifies the new symbolic link name.
        Target  specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link
                refers to.

For instance, if you wanted to make the folder C:\Users\Jas\Test available from C:\Test as well, you could use the following command.

C:\mklink /D C:\Test C:\Users\Jas\Test
symbolic link created for C:\Test <<===>> C:\Users\Jas\Test

Now if you look in C:\Test directory, you’ll see whatever files were in the other directory.

Understanding the Options.

MKLINK link target

Using the command without any extra options creates a soft link to a file.

/D creates a symbolic link, or a soft link.

This essentially acts like a shortcut to a folder in prior versions of Windows, except you don’t have to use an actual shortcut.

/H creates a hard link, which points directly to the file.

This option can’t be used for folders directly for some reason, you’ll have to use the next option.

/J creates a “Directory Junction”

A Directory Junction is actually just a hard link to a directory. This is a feature that existed prior to Vista as well. If you are trying to symlink to a directory using a hard link, then you should use this option.
Understanding Hard vs Soft Links

Hard Link

A hard link directly points to the file, and acts to the operating system as if it is the file itself. You’ll want to use this option the majority of the time if you are trying to fake an application’s directory.

Soft Link

A soft link is essentially a shortcut to a file or folder – if you are using Windows explorer, you’ll be redirected to the directory if you double-click on a shortcut, it won’t pretend its part of the filesystem. You can still directly reference or open a file with the symlinked path, and it mostly works.
Using Symlinks from a Network Share

One of the things that’s been extensively discussed is that you cannot use the Vista symlinks from another operating system (not surprising), but you cannot use them from a network share either. This is troublesome if you expect to use this feature on a web server or a file server.
Deleting Symlinks

To delete a symlink, you can just delete the link. Just make sure you don’t delete the original file.

Via Paul Boag

1. You will need to locate the OS X Lion installation package on your Mac. The easiest way to do this is to Option + click its icon on your dock and choose Options>Show in Finder.
2. Once you’ve located the package, Option + click it and choose Show Package Contents.
3. Open the folder titled ‘SharedSupport’ and find a file called ‘InstallESD.dmg’. This file contains everything you need to boot up a computer and install OS X Lion. Drag this file out to your desktop or another easy to find location.
4. At this point, if you just want to make a DVD, open up Disk Utility on your Mac, find this image in the list on the left, Option + Click on it and click ‘Burn’. You’ll have a bootable DVD.
5. Now prepare a USB thumb drive at least 8GB in size by opening up the Disk Utility application on your Mac, plugging it in and choosing to Partition it in a 1 Partition scheme. Note that this process will erase your thumb drive, so make sure you’ve backed it up.
6. Highlight the single partition and use the pull-down menu to select ‘GUID Partition Table’ as the type and click ok.
7. Name the USB drive anything that you would like, make sure that the Format option is set to ‘Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) and click the Apply button.
8. Now, click on your new partition and click on the Restore tab at the top right. In the Source section, click on Image and choose the ‘InstallESD.dmg’ file from step 3.
9. Make sure that the Destination field displays the name of your USB drive and click Restore. You will be prompted to enter the password for your Administrator account. Once you’ve done so the copying process will begin.
10. Once the process is complete, you can verify the bootable status of your drive by selecting it and clicking Info in Disk Utility. Bootable status should show ‘Yes’.

Now that you have a bootable USB drive (or DVD) that contains OS X Lion, you can boot from it by plugging it in to any Mac and holding down the Option key while its booting. Once the screen appears that asks you which volume to boot from, choose the bootable OS X Lion drive. This will enable you to install OS X Lion on any compatible Mac without using the standard upgrade procedure. If you’re the kind of user who likes to perform a clean install instead of an upgrade, this is a great option for you.

(via The Next Web)

Windows 8’s new tablet UI, coming in 2012! I so can’t wait….

Firefox have just updated their nightly builds to 7.0a1 and if you want to continue to use your existing Addons, you will be aware that some gentle browser hacking is required.

However, the usual Firefox hack involving extensions.checkCompatability.x now fails. I tried the following entries and the Nightly build ignored them

However, a great post from Daniel, discusses how to solve the problem.

To get your Addons working under Nightly 7.0a1:

1. Open a new tab.
2. Type about:config in the address bar.
3. Right click anywhere on the page and click on Boolean under New.
4. Enter this as the preference name: extensions.checkCompatibility.nightly
5. Click OK.
6. Choose false and then click OK again.
7. Restart your browser and all your add-ons should be runnable again.

Ctrl + T (Open A New Tab) – Instead of right clicking and selecting or clicking the New Tab option, using the Ctrl + T keyboard shortcut will help you open a new tab in the current window.

Ctrl + W (Close the Current Tab) – Like Opening a New Tab in your browser, this will help you to Close the Current Tab you are working with.

Ctrl + N (Open A New Window) – This will help you to open up a new window in your browser.

Ctrl + D (Bookmark Current Website) – Bookmark your useful websites using this easy shortcut.

F5 ((Refresh)) – Refresh the Current Open Tab.

Ctrl + F5 (Hard Refresh) – Clear the cache of the current stored webpage and stores a fresh new copy. That’s what a hard refresh is for. Helpful when just posted comments don’t appear etc.

Ctrl + H (Show History) – You know it! Show the history of previously visited webpages.

Ctrl + L or Alt + D or F6 (Not For Opera) (Highlight Search Bar) – No need to move your mouse and click on the address bar to type a websites address in your browser again. Just use this quick shortcut.

Ctrl + E (Highlight Search Bar) – This will move the cursor to the search bar. Save the time you move your mouse over to the search bar!

Ctrl + (+/-) (Zoom In/Out) – Zoom in or Zoom out the current pages.

Ctrl + F (Find) – Instantly find a particular text on the current page.

Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V (Copy/Paste) – I bet you already know this!

Home / End (Top / Bottom) – These will help you to go to the Top or Bottom of a Page

CTRL + Click (Not for Opera) (Open Link in Background) – Open a link in a Background Tab without interfering your work.

CTRL + U (Source) – View the source code of the current website.

CTRL + left Click (Save Images (Opera Only)) – In fact this is a really a very handy shortcut that will save time. Why need to right click on an image and select the Save Image… option? Just Hold down the Ctrl key and click the left mouse button.

CTRL + Shift + T or (CTRL + Z also works in Opera) (Restore Tab) – This will help you to quickly reopen or recover previously closed Tab easily.

Some Additional Time Saver Keyboard Shortcuts

In fact these are some really useful shortcuts to save your time and energy.

You can save a lot of time by excluding the www., .com , .org, .net etc. There are simple keyboard shortcuts that can do these jobs very easily. We actually need to enter the name of the website only in the address bar of the browser.

Enter name of the website in the address bar and press CTRL + ENTER to auto-complete http://www. and the .com/ parts automatically.

Likewise SHIFT+ENTER will auto-complete the .net domains and CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER auto-completes the .org

This post lists a number of applications that I’m running on my Ubuntu laptop. I will add/remove applications over time, so this post is likely to be updated. I hope you find it useful.

Essentials

1. Install the Latest Updates

As with most modern operating systems, applying the latest updates should be top of the agenda list after installing Ubuntu.  This can be achieved in two ways, either click on System > Administration > Update Manager. Alternatively, launch a Terminal window and the choose  Applications > Accessories > Terminal.

Next enter in the following command:

 sudo apt-get update

Enter your password if prompted. After the $ prompt, enter the following:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Enter Y if prompted to proceed.

2. Install Restricted Extras

Restricted updates contain a number of key enhancement to the system that Ubuntu are unable to ship as part of the distribution. However, there are key bits of software here including Adobe Flash Player, Java Runtime Environment (JRE) (sun-java-jre) with Firefox plug-ins (icedtea), a set of Microsoft Fonts (msttcorefonts), multimedia codecs (w32codecs or w64codecs), MP3-compatible encoding (lame), FFMpeg, extra Gstreamer codecs, the package for DVD decoding.

Enter the following Terminal command to install these extras:

  sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras  

Again, enter your system password if prompted. You may need to do this going forward after running each sudo command!

3. Elementary Nautilus

Elementary-Nautilus is a cleaner and better looking version of nautilus. It also has a few extra features like embedded terminal, cover flow etc.

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:am-monkeyd/nautilus-elementary-ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

4. GIMP

GIMP it a great app if you want to touch up some photos, edit some images etc.

Install it with:

sudo apt-get install gimp

5. Ubuntu Tweak

Ubuntu Tweak is a must have application for Ubuntu, it provides many useful desktop and system options that the default desktop environment doesn’t provide.

Using Ubuntu Tweak you can install all needed applications with a simple click, you can change the window buttons from Left to right…etc.

Open terminal and enter the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tualatrix/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

Bonus! Also try Ailurus:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ailurus/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ailurus

Security

6. Install a Firewall

Ubuntu isn’t prone to attacks as some other operating systems. However, I think it is worth installing nevertheless.

Enter the following Terminal command to install the firewall.

sudo apt-get install gufw

The firewall can be configured by navigating to System > Administration > Firewall Configuration

7. Antivirus

Generally speaking, Ubuntu users do not need install antivirus software. However, you can install the ClamTK Virus Scanner.

Enter the following Terminal command to install the client:

sudo apt-get install clamtk

8. Install Backup Software

Use the following Terminal command to install backup software

sudo apt-get install backintime-gnome

Media Players and Codecs

9. Media Player – VLC

Simply the best open source media player there is. It will play virtually any kind of media you can throw at it.

Enter the following Terminal command to install VLC

sudo apt-get install vlc

10. Arista Transcoder

Arista Transcoder makes it easy to convert your media files for use on all your devices. You just choose the device you have first and the file type.

sudo apt-get install arista

11. MPlayer

Another great media player worth installing is MPlayer

sudo apt-get install mplayer smplayer

12. AmaroK

AmaroK integrates with Wikipedia, lyrics and album cover look-ups! It should also sync with your iPod too

sudo apt-get install amarok

13. DVD Playback

Most commercial DVDs are encrypted with Content Scrambling System (CSS), which attempts to restrict the software that can play a DVD. You’ll need to install libdvdcss if you want to play them. Type the following Terminal command:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

Then enter:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

14. K9copy

K9copy is a free open source DVD backup, copying, compression, and authoring utility that requires libdvdcss.  You can easily create MPEG-2. MPEG-4, or DVD videos with this utility. To install it type:

sudo apt-get install k9copy

15. DVD::RIP

DVD::Rip is a DVD backup/copy program, written in GTK-based perl, that uses the transcode video/audio processing and conversion tools. To install it type:

sudo apt-get install dvdrip rar

MSN Messenger Client

16. Emesene

Emesene is an MSN messenger client that uses a simplified interface similar to the original messenger client.  To install it type:

sudo apt-get install emesene

FTP Clients

17. Filezilla

Filezilla is the ubiquitous free open-source FTP client and server for all platforms.

sudo apt-get install filezilla

Utilities

18. Webcam

Cheese is an Apple Photobooth inspired application for taking pictures and videos from a webcam.

sudo apt-get install cheese

19. Compiz Fusion

Compiz Fusion allows you to use interesting desktop effects such as a rotating cube desktop.

Run Applications > System Tools > Compiz Fusion Icon. A blue icon will appear in the tray. From here you can configure Compiz-Fusion.

20. Conky

Conky is a light-weight system monitor for X, that displays any information on your desktop.

sudo apt-get install conky

21. Screenlets

Screenlets are small applications that are laying on your desktop. Eye c

sudo apt-get install compiz compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-main\
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra emerald librsvg2-common fusion-icon

andy stuff and useful in many ways. Just type:

sudo apt-get install screenlets

Go to Applications > Accessories > Screenlets and choose the screenlet that you want click launch/add.

Additional screenlets can be downloaded from www.gnome-look.org or fromhttp://screenlets.org/index.php/Category:UserScreenlets

Web Browsers

22. Chromium

To add the repository, open the source list :

sudo gedit  /etc/apt/sources.list

Add these 2 lines at the end of the sources.list

For Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat :

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu maverick main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu maverick main

Open the terminal and add the GPG key

sudo  sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xfbef0d696de1c72ba5a835fe5a9bf3bb4e5e17b5

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

Utilities

23. ntfs-3g

ntfs-3g allows you to read and write data to NTFS formatted drives and can be installing with the following command:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-config

Then type the following command:

gksu ntfs-config

24. Mount Windows Hard Drives on Startup

Mount your Windows HDD ‘s on Ubuntu startup with PySdm. You can install Pysdm with Ubuntu Software Center or with your terminal:

sudo apt-get install pysdm

Next run the app with

sudo pysdm

On the partition list you can found all of your hard drives. Click on the drive you want to mount, then on general preferences tab click Mount and apply. If the disks are not mounted on startup, start your Pysdm again and select Mount on startup options then apply. Be careful, don’t play with the rest options if you are not experienced user because you can damage yourUbuntu system.

25. Unrar

sudo apt-get -y install unrar

26. Beagle

Similar to Google Desktop Search and Mac OS Spotlight, Beagle offers a great desktop search tool for Ubuntu, and can be installed with the following command:

sudo apt-get install -y beagle

27. Gnome Deskbar Applet

The Gnome Deskbar Applet is a cross between Spotlight and Quicksilver. Basically it’s a great app launcher and then some, with plugins designed to integrate more search options than you can shake a stick at, from live Google searches to integration with Beagle.

To use the Deskbar Applet, right-click the top panel and select Add to Panel… and find Deskbar Applet (incidentally, there are a lot of other great tools in the Add to Panel… dialog worth checking out). It’s no Quicksilver, but it’s better than any app launcher/search tool available on Windows.

apt-get install deskbar-applet

28. UNetbootin

Unetbootin allows you to install Ubuntu from a USB Drive. Install the app with the following command:

sudo apt-get install unetbootin

29. Search App Explanation

apt-cache search xxxxx     

(Where xxxxx is the name of app that you wish to learn more about).

30. Skype

sudo apt-get install skype

31. Clipboard

sudo apt-get install parcellite

32. Add/Remove App

The Add/Remove app is a great app for installing and removing applications. It can be easily installed, by following the instructions below:

Applications  > Ubuntu Software Center then search for “Add/Remove”without quotes. Double click on Add/Remove Applications and hit install

33. Wine (Windows Compatibility Layer)

sudo apt-get install wine1.2

Blogging Clients

34. Lekhonee – A WordPress Client

sudo apt-get install lekhonee-gnome

ScreenSavers

35. Cool ScreenSavers

sudo apt-get install stellarium

Bittorrent

36. Bitorrent Client

sudo apt-get install deluge

Sun Java

37. Java Client

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin

Email Readers

38. Thunderbird

Thunderbird from Mozilla is one of the best email client applications available, it can be installed with the following command:

sudo apt-get install thunderbird

Tagged as: Tips, Ubuntu