Archive for July, 2008

Windows SteadyState

Windows SteadyState is a new free utility from Microsoft which I believe is the most important product from MS since Windows XP Service pack 2. It has long been my view that no one should be running Windows XP as an administrator but MS makes it very difficult. It’s almost impossible with XP Home. It can be done in XP Professional using the Group Policy Editor but it takes a lot of ability and effort. SteadState makes setting user access easy.

SteadyState clears any changes a user has made. This is ideal for libraries, school and computer labs. but it is a slightly tricky with home users because WSS deletes any data on a user profile so a user has to save there data to an separate partition or drive not My Documents on the user profile.

If you have multiple users install SteadyState today.

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July 15th, 2008 by Mark

Great App On Ultimate Boot CD

In an earlier post I told you about the “Ultimate Boot CD” and all its great utilities but I had not used it. I was at a customer’s house yesterday and his computer would not boot. It said that it could not find some necessary system files. To attempt to fix this you usually have to boot from the Windows CD, start the “Recovery Console” then do a whole series of DOS commands. After doing this you reboot and maybe Windows will start maybe it won’t. It usually won’t! Yesterday I booted to the UBCD not even knowing what tool I might use. I looked through the menu and found “File Recovery”. This is the description… “Data recovery for damaged files and erased partitions”. I started the tool. After a very shore time it was finished. I restarted Windows booted with no problem. This was a real time saver and it really made me look good in the customers eyes. Big thanks to the UBCD people.

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July 9th, 2008 by Mark

PC User Groups

I’ve been doing this computer thing for quit sometime. I’ve only just recently learned that there are groups out there that share our interest in computers. They are called PC User Group. I only just found my local PC User Group in my home town. I’m sure you have one near you. Please don’t do this alone. Computer knowledge is much more fun when shared with other and others can share with you.

Find A PC User group Near You

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July 7th, 2008 by Mark