To access the icon library that holds these classic icons, follow the steps provided below:

1. Right click the icon on your desktop that you would like to change and select Properties. A program properties window will appear.
2. Select the Shortcut tab (if it does not appear automatically) and click on the Change Icon button. This will present the program’s current icon library to you.
3. In the ‘Look for icons in this file:’ address box, enter moricons.dll and press OK. (If it requires you to enter a path, the location is C:\Windows\System32\Moricons.dll)
4. Select the icon that you would like to use from the library and click OK, and then click OK on the program properties window. Your icon will then replace your previous one.

This icon library will bring up a large select of icons that you used to see back in the early developments of Windows (e.g. MS-DOS, 1-2-3, Paradox, etc.). This is a great way to theme your desktop to a classic look and feel.

If you want to revert back to your original icon(s), follow the steps above and enter the original .exe file of the program on your desktop, or try shell32.dll.

You’ve probably seen it. She’s undeniably cute, and her name is Kylie. The ad opens with Kylie introducing herself and declaring that she found “these happy words aaaall over my dad’s computer.” Kind of an odd beginning, but we continue to watch. The “seven, seven, seven, seven” which follows, depicts Kylie’s little finger smudging down the laptop screen to point out all the wonderful reviews that Windows 7 has received. “Happy words need happy pictures,” so Kylie decides to make a slideshow.

As Kylie’s little finger goes up to punch the return button on the keyboard a heart-stopping pound of drum obliterates the soft celesta and classical guitar melody into history. Now, an adrenalin-rushing brass ensemble backed by electric guitar riffs begins to blare, accompanying a slideshow featuring unicorns, kitty-cats, pigs in bowties, smiley-face flowers, butterflies, hearts, marshmallows, hat-wearing mice, fluffy white clouds in blue skies, and yellow roses. The ad closes with Kylie saying “I’m a PC and more happy is coming.”

The outpouring of responses to the ad in comment logs and blogs do not exactly fall into the category of “happy words,” so we’re not going to include them in this article. Suffice it to say that the response was not quite in tune with the warm-and-fuzzy feeling that marshmallows and kitty-cats were intended to illicit. Instead, the ad produced exactly the kind of mock material that Mac-users needed to make themselves feel better about the not-so-happy release of Snow Leopard recently.

The only positive thing about the ad is that it is not a direct attack on Mac. Windows did overkill on that technique, and got more mileage out of it than any response-ad legally should have gotten. Ok, and Mac kind of went a bit too far as well. But is this really the kind of ad introducing the best and brightest of all operating systems since the beginning of time?

One commenter summed up the sentiment pretty well when he remarked: “This is a joke, right? I mean, this can’t be an actual ad that a company paid money for and will air in public? How embarrassing.” Well, the ad does say that “more happy is coming,” and thankfully, we love Microsoft in spite of this ad.

Steve Rose, Windows Senior Community Manager, blogged about the release yesterday, writing “I get the honor of announcing the availability of a resource so many of you have been asking for—a Windows Enterprise Trial edition you can use to continue testing Windows 7 in your own environment.” While basement-dwelling computer-lovers may wish to get their hands on the software, Rose makes it clear that “This evaluation release is specifically intended for IT professionals responsible for desktop administration; consumers will be able to purchase Windows 7 on October 22, 2009.”

If the shoe fits for you, it is probably a good idea to go ahead and launch the download (and to do it soon). It gives you a risk-free, see-if-you-like-it look for three months. It allows you to analyze the cost/savings/return lineup to see if it will be worth it for your network. It also gives you a jumpstart on learning the new system, and finding your way around. That will cut out some of the lag if you actually decide to upgrade in October. However, if you’re going to act, act now. Since Microsoft has never offered a try-it-first-buy-it-later deal, many have already downloaded it. Rose states: “limited number of licenses are available, so the download will only be available while supplies last.”

You can download the trial copy of Windows 7 through Springboard Series. Click here to access the download platform. Or check out the specs and qualifying page on your way to the download.

Before you merrily rush off and download, be aware the after the three-month trial is up, you will need to make a clean sweep and reinstall of the operating system in order to have the ‘real’ version. Obviously, at that point, Microsoft will ask for your money. Although the trial does contain all the features that the actual OS will come with, you will be limited in regards to downloading. Finally, you must activate your trial version within ten days of downloading it. If you don’t, the operating system will only let you look at it for sixty minutes before shutting down.

Along with displaying the full BSOD dumpfile image, BlueScreenView will also display the files and memory addresses that are associated with the specific BSOD that you have encountered. This makes troubleshooting a lot easier!

You now may be asking yourself “How do I run this?” because your computer cannot get past the BSOD screen. You can execute BlueScreenView on another computer with the hard drive in question that has the BSOD running as a slave. All that you have to do is select the slave hard drive when the program loads, and you will be able to view the BSOD errors that are causing you trouble.

This is a great tool that every techie should download, because you never know when a BSOD will occur

The problem is that most of the time due to infrastructure costs and changes, there is not a lot they can do about it. There is something that you as a person whom loves to use the internet can do to rectify the issue when you find even Google loading like you have a 28.8 modem plugged in somewhere.

It’s called OpenDNS – it’s free and easy to set up.

Some great points to bear in mind, you will benefit from:

1. Faster loading web pages

2. Preventing phishing attempts

3. Blocking sites that you wish your children to avoid

Essentially DNS works by resolving names to ip addresses so when you open Google, what happens on a DNS server is it translates the web name address to an ip address which numerically identifies that domain. For example, google.com has an ip address of 209.85.229.104 (no need to worry about what that means if it’s alien to you!)

ISPs have their own DNS servers to allow web pages we visit to become cached on those servers for faster loading of the web pages on repeated visits. The problem occurs when you have an ISP with oversubscribed services and too many people accessing the DNS servers at one time. This racks up the loading time of web pages as the DNS server becomes increasingly busy.

Reports on improvements noticed when using OpenDNS include steaming video as on YouTube and faster loading web pages. OpenDNS allows for a faster loading browser as the server is resolving addresses faster than your ISP DNS servers. Why? It’s installed locally. The journey from the ISP DNS server to your computer has a bunch of hops across the network to get through before it reached you.

DNS servers within the ISP network will inevitably have higher latency times. It can also depend on your location to the ISP. Ping times to the OpenDNS server are still being reported as much faster.

Users are finding the server generally reliable. A report from the techie information portal Labnol referencing a piece from the Financial Press newspaper stated, ” Unlike the DNS servers of your less reliable ISP, OpenDNS servers store the ip addresses of millions of websites in their cache so it would take less time to resolve your requests.”

How does it work? When you open a web page, the fetch request goes to your local server. The DNS address of the page requested will be checked against the list and if the page is not found, a DNS request is sent to OpenDNS. If you run a home network, add the OpenDNS server addresses to your router for immediate filtering to occur.

Those addresses can be found here.

So, if you are pulling hair out of your head as your broadband speed slows to some abnormal speed, try out the OpenDNS server and see if it helps your internet browsing life.

Its great to know that a free tool is available from a company called Iobit that develops all kinds of system care tools.

If you are having trouble playing games on Vista such as low frame rates, jittery graphics, crashes and sudden shutdown to desktop issues, then give this a go. Here are the salient useful points on which Game Booster is based:

1. It’s very easy to use having just a simple point and click one button function, and it’s free to download – and that’s it.

2. No learning curve, the software tells you what can be done to improve the machine and just performs the tasks with no intervention from you, no manual setup. Originally only technical whizz kids could use this kind of software like the Norton range of tools for optimizing memory. Now, it’s just a case of clicking a button.

3. The software will defrag game directories specifically so that the games run more efficiently.

4. Enjoyment of game playing is better as fewer issues occur to spoil the experience.

5. Games run at an optimal performance rate due to the software freeing up RAM and CPU power.

6. Game Booster allows your games to avoid conflicting with other running programs by shutting them down including any memory resident services that are not needed during game play.

7. Many tools work by over clocking the CPU, this can damage the machine; Game booster makes no system changes to the hardware or the registry.

8. The software contains no spyware unlike many nefarious titles being released for free.

9. Additionally, if you leave it running outside of game play, you will notice a performance improvement in other applications like Word, Dreamweaver and 3D software for example.

In short, Game Booster closes programs and shuts down unnecessary programs and processes. So many games today have intensive high quality 3D models and some machines just can’t cope with the CPU and RAM requirements. Yet this piece of software can really help a struggling machine. The software does not compromise your internet connection either.

This is the one of the best tweaking tools for your Vista machine.

I have provided some Windows Pinball hacks below to help enhance your pinball experience:

• 1max - Enter 1max on your keyboard to gain an extra ball during game play.
• bmax - Prior to play, enter the letters bmax on your keyboard. This will automatically launch another ball after the first ball is lost.
• gmax - Start a new game and enter gmax on your keyboard. This will enable the Gravity Well. When this is enabled, very softly launch the ball so that it enters the side of the pinball table and not through the top. You will then see the ball head towards the center circle.
• r - Press the r key any time during the game to promote your game rank status.

If anyone else has any interesting pinball hacks that work for them, please feel to provide them as a comment on this post.

Many reported IE8 being very slow as compared to earlier versions, so much so that many folks just hung onto IE7. In truth, the IE8 browser is more stable and less prone to crashing but slow behavior seems to be an affliction. Firefox users have rallied against the IE8 browser by reporting loading speeds amounting to half the time it takes a web page to load in IE8.

So, what can be done to speed up your IE8 installation - now that you have it?

We all want an internet browser that displays web pages properly in a stabilized environment. People want to customize the browser to fit their personal tastes on the web. It’s not so important to boost security with IE8 as Microsoft have done a much better job here to counteract sites that contain viruses.

Though the tabs are quite slow in loading and reports have shown that there is a difference in speed as compared to Firefox. So, we can tweak the browser a bit.

1. Spybot, if you use it to detect spyware, has an immunization feature that immunizes the pc system against potential threats. It adds thousands of sites to a restricted site list which seems to be problematic in IE8. Disable the internet explorer domain from the Spybot panel and run immunization again.

2. If the tabs are loading very slowly, then re-registering a dll file can help. Open your command prompt, type regsvr32 actxprxy.dll and enter that.

3. Your add-ons may be slowing your IE8 browser. Try disabling all of them from Internet Options. Then, add them back one by one whilst running tests to see how fast web pages are loading. The Skype add-on has been reported as an issue for example. Work through your add-ons, one by one, until slow behavior returns. That way you can identify the offending add-on.

4. Download the IE8 Readiness Toolkit from Microsoft.

It provides control over the browser cleanup tasks such as browsing history, preferences and favorites – items that can slow the loading times.

5. Some browsing speed improvement is possible. Back up your registry first then apply this change:

Go to the registry from regedit in the run box. Then navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER’. Navigate through Software ->Microsoft->Windows->Current Version->Internet Settings. Change the value to 8 or 10, close the editor and reboot.

With any new browser release, we have to expect issues and usually problems revolve around slow behavior. Try the above and see if it makes a difference to your new browser life.

You are aware of the top excuse:

“I am just too busy to spend time performing a backup…”

Yes, ok. That’s the guy whom moans at the vendor when his or her PC loses data due to various reasons. Nobody can make excuses here particularly if your business depends on the accuracy and accessibility of daily computer data. That is pretty commonplace within businesses worldwide today.

Rather than interrupt even damage your business or personal life (crazy how a machine can do that!), perform these important tasks and never worry about the possibility of losing all your data permanently. Imagine all your business tax information disappearing overnight. Do you really think the IRS will care?? No chance, no excuses. Lost bookmarks? Lost Photos? Lost memories? It can be avoided.

There are several circumstances where data loss can occur:

1. For me, it was a thunderstorm a few years ago. I lost more than half my drive due to a massive spike on the machine.

2. Disk drives lose their physical usability over time.

3. Motherboard shorts and power failures can damage the hard disk.

4. Viruses can corrupt data and leave it unrecoverable.

So, to back up and automate the whole backup process on Vista, go to Control Panel -> System & Maintenance -> Backup & Restore Center. For this example, you are seeing Vista Home Premium. The business edition may have extra options from here though these ones are generic to all Vista OS versions.

The first task to do is create a restore point. Click on Create Restore Point,

From here click Create, and you can set a restore point from that point in time. Vista does this periodically so you can roll back the system to remove unwanted changes from updates, etc. Also, from here, you can select the most recent restore at any time. Follow the Recommended Restore option, the computer will restart and roll back to that restore point.

From the Backup & Restore Center, you can backup to a USB device like an external hard drive or even a DVD. Click Backup Files and you will see the option to select a backup device.

It is vital that you do this often particularly if your hard disk contains sensitive and critical data. I would say once every month, back up just folders updated often; every 2 months, backup the whole computer. I learnt why to do this task the hard way a few years ago using the ‘don’t have time’ excuse mentioned earlier. Restoring is easy if file corruption occurs and you have lost data, use the restore point or your back up via the Restore Files option.

You will also notice in the bottom left of the Restore center, a link for Windows Easy Transfer.

This is another great addition to your data backup service, you can transfer files across a network to another computer.

So, there is no excuse if you use Vista. XP has similar options for backing up data from the control panel. If you don’t back up, expect to lose data very soon as it is inevitable.

I will probably need to revamp this review when the official release arrives, though going by the RC version, I can confirm that some subtle differences are in place mainly to excite Vista lovers. Though, some consideration has been given to Über XP fans still straying away from Vista. It’s not surprising since there have been so many issues with Vista’s performance.

So, as Vista still has not convinced many XP users, which way should those users go? Maybe Vista should be purchased and XP removed to stay up to date. Or, users can take the plunge into Windows 7 in October. The system requirements stipulated by Microsoft are:

• 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

• 1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

• 16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)

Let’s look at the 2 systems and compare some prominent features that may help you. Vista users whom have grown to love the system will appreciate Windows 7 from the outset.

1. Installation was a standard process, really easy, so if you wish to test on a second unused PC – go for it. This was the 32 bit version, I can’t comment on the 64 bit version at this point.

2. As stated on the Microsoft site, “Windows 7 was designed to make your PC simpler — to be more reliable, more responsive and to make the things you do every day on your PC easier.” Documents opened much faster – so I can confirm this part. Simpler is a bit of stretch as XP users have to get used to a new visual desktop.

3. I found Windows 7 to start up a little faster though just seconds really. I installed several pieces of software that need to sit in the system tray, and on reboot, the system loaded up a little quicker than usual. Less services need to start on boot up, an on-demand routine occurs as opposed to loading all of them.

4. Homegroup helps with internet sharing for sending photos, files, etc. Creating a shared folder using Homegroup was an absolute breeze. Simply create a new Homegroup from the control panel, decide what is being shared and who gets access. You can set a password for internet sharing. This is great for home networkers whom want to link up PCs and set up a shared domain quickly.

5. Windows 7 excludes Windows Movie Maker and some others such as Windows Photo Gallery.

6. Windows 7 has an increased amount of support for different graphic card vendors.

7. The security center or Windows Action Center as it is now named contains all the necessary maintenance options and it is good to see the solutions for various issues housed in one place.

8. There is a nice feature called Aero Peek which basically is a button to the right of the clock. If you hover over it, all the open windows appear transparent. To be honest, I prefer to do this from the task bar or maybe old habits will die hard here. I found this feature most useful when maximizing windows so I could see which window sat behind the current one.

So, in conclusion, the OS:

• Accesses files quicker

• Allows my PC to boot up faster

• Runs applications faster and I can shut down hefty ones like Photoshop much quicker.

The official release is worth the wait.