Method One:

• Click Start
• Type autorun and hit Enter
• Uncheck Use AutoPlay for all media and devices
• Click Save

Note: This method will have the side effect of disabling autorun system wide.

Method Two:

• Open My Computer
• Look for the second Magic Jack drive (labeled Phone) and Open it
• Right Click autorun.inf and ensure Read Only is unchecked
• Rename autorun.inf to autorun.inf.bak
• Close the drive

Now when you want to launch the software just double click the icon for the first Magic Jack drive in your My Computer or make a shortcut to it on your desktop.

Windows has blocked access to these files to help protect your computer

Puzzled, I tried again, and got the same error. I knew it wasn’t a virus scanner blocking it, since the zip I was trying to extract was the virus scanning utility that I was trying to install. I found this very ironic, despite how frustrating it was. After a few minutes of research I discovered that it was a very simple fix.

• Right Click the file in question
• Click Properties
• Click Unblock

Problem solved!

Go to the task bar and right click on it. This will reveal several of options and you will want to select the Tool Bar menu. Once you do this, you will have the option of clicking on New Tool Bar. Upon doing this, the next step will entail locating the particular folder you are most interested in. Obviously, in this case, you would be looking towards the My Computer icon. When you find it, select it and then click on the Select Folder option.

As soon as you do this, you will immediate see the My Computer folder directly in the task bar. As soon as it is in the taskbar, you can access with little more than a simple click. From this, you can then access all the many different subfolders in your computer with relative ease. Why fish around for your My Computer folder when you can just locate it on the task bar? Again, the process is easy and worth taking the time out to perform.

Desktop Preview is a new feature in Windows 7 which is otherwise also known as AeroPeak (Desktop Preview is a feature enabled by Aero Peek desktop enhancement function). Desktop Preview allows user to temporarily minimize all open windows and make open windows transparent in order to preview what is on desktop when user place the mouse pointer to mouse over the “Show Desktop” bar on the far right end of the taskbar.

Illustration above shows the effect of Desktop Preview, where user mouse over the Show Desktop (without actually clicking on it) on the far end of the Windows Taskbar.

• Right click on the Start button and click on Properties
• Select the Taskbar tab
• Uncheck the Use Desktop Preview checkbox
• Click OK

Desktop Preview is now disabled. If you would like to re-enable it, simply follow the same steps again making sure to check the Desktop Preview option this time.

• Click Start
• Type regedit and hit Enter
• Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->Policies->Microsoft->Windows->Explorer
• Right click Explorer and select New -> DWORD Value
• Name it DisableSearchBoxSuggestions with a value of 1
• Close the Registry Editor

Your search history in Windows Explorer will no longer be saved or displayed.

Several months later I found myself still very happy with that decision, however after all the Windows 7 hype I decided to install the RTM and give it a try.  So I downloaded a copy of the 64 bit image and went to work.  I had decided that I would give it a full 7 days before I let myself boot back into Ubuntu.

My Specs

Athlon Quad Core Phenom 9950

Asus M3N78-VM Motherboard w/ Onboard Video, LAN and Sound (disabled)
6gb DDR2 RAM @ 800 MHz
SoundBlaster Live! Value (ancient, I know)
750gb SATA2 HDD
1tb SATA 2 HDD
And several ATA100 HDDs as well

Installation

I was hopeful when it came to the installation process.  I had heard that Microsoft shifted towards an unattended installer which would ask the questions either up front or at the end rather than require you to sit there for an hour answering them as it installed.   That part turned out to be true, but the install process was not quite as hassle free as I had hoped.

I ran into a road block at the first step.  I selected the first partition of my SATA drive and told it to delete the Windows Vista install and create a new partition.  I was presented with a rather vague error:

Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition

It then directed me to read the error log, which I could never locate.  So I was a little frustrated but figured I could solve it.  So I booted into Linux and deleted the partition with GParted and left it as unformatted.  The installer gave me the same error. Next I went into my BIOS and disabled my IDE controller leaving only my SATA drive visible.  This did the trick and I was on my way with the install process.  From there on it was it was a pleasent experience, and I was successfully logged into Windows 7 only a short while later.

And then I encountered my next set of road blocks.  Much like Vista, I was presented with an abundance of unknown hardware.  I put in my motherboard’s driver CD and found it only offered working drivers for 2 devices.  Windows Update took care of a few more.  In the end I was stuck with 3 unknown devices, my sound card, a PCI Input Device and the Mass Storage Controller.

Since I dont use the game port on my sound card I disabled PCI Input Device and moved on to the sound card drivers.  They werent too hard to find, about 10 minutes of Googling found me 64 bit Vista drivers that did the job.  From there it was the unpleasent task of finding drivers for my ATA Controller Card.  I considered plugging the drives directly into my motherboard but the whole reason I was using the controller card was because I couldnt find Linux drivers for the onboard controller.  Since  I wanted to keep the hardware consistant on my dual boot I was forced to spend hours trying to find drivers.  It took about 2-3 hours but eventually I found some Promise ATA 100 drivers for 64 bit Vista.  After that I had all my drives available and was able to start exploring what was new with Windows 7.

Whats New

The Superbar

Having almost entirely skipped over Vista I found it hard to determine what what was actually new in Windows 7 and not something that was implimented in Windows Vista.  That being said, there was one new feature that was overwhelmingly obvoius — the superbar.  This is something I had heard about beforehand and had expected to hate it.  Whenever I use Windows XP the first thing I do with my account is set it to use the classic start menu (as it was in Windows 98).  Seeing how I was never a fan of the XP or Vista start menu changes I only assumed that I would despise the new superbar.  Oh how wrong I was.

The truth is, the superbar is incredibly intuitive and useful.  It eliminates the clutter and still allows me to quickly access my running programs.  Plus the ability to see the progress of a download just from the icon is quite handy as well.  That being said, it still has some quirks. For example, it shows an extra entry for some programs, such as MSN Messenger and CamStudio. One other gripe is that there is no way to enable another bar for my second monitor. But I’m confident they will have these issues resolved before it is launched.

In case you have seen or heard about the superbar and what makes it different, here’s a video I dug up on YouTube:

As you can see, the taskbar entries have been reduced to their icons (though the text can be enabled if you prefer it).  The icons are grouped much like they could be in XP if your bar filled up, but now you can hover over them and see a preview of each entry and jump to them quickly.  You can also “pin” an entry to the bar so if it is not currently running it becomes a shortcut, so in effect the quick launch bar has been merged with the regular task bar.

Libraries

Such a simple yet powerful addition. I can’t believe we didn’t have these sooner. On XP I always remapped the My Documents, My Music and My Pictures folders to another drive. That way when it was time to reformat you didn’t have to work about backing all that data up, it was already safe on another drive. With Windows 7 these special folders have been replaced by Libraries which can be mapped to different parts of your file system, whether it’s in one folder or many doesn’t matter.

An example of how this would be useful is if you had several programs installed that each put music in different folders, so you’d tell the Library to look in iTunes’ default directory as well as eMule and BitTorrent’s download directories as well. So now when you open your My Music library you see the results from all of these other folders as if they were in one folder.

Instant Search

Although this was first introduced in Vista, it has been greatly improved with Windows 7. As someone who frequently use the run dialog in Windows XP in or to save time, Instant Search felt very natural to me. Just hit the Windows button and start typing what you want, unlike with the run command you don’t need to type the whole name or even know where it is, it will filter the results as you type and break them up into different categories. I very rarely find myself browsing through the menu for an application, it’s much faster to just use Instant Search or just pin it to the superbar if you’re going to be using it often.

Aero Shake

This is a bit of a strange one which I find myself forgetting about frequently. Just grab the title bar of window and give it a shake and all of the other windows will minimize automatically. It’s great for getting rid of the clutter of windows on your screen.

Aero Snap

An especially useful feature if you have a wide screen monitor. Just drag a window to the far edge of the screen and it will snap to it, taking up exactly half of the screen. Great for when you’re writing a document and need another document or website open for reference. I personally find this feature annoying more than I do useful, but that is likely the result of the way I use my computer and the fact that I always have a dual monitor setup. But to each his own.

Display Switching

This is one that is especially useful if you use a laptop that you dock when at home. Hold down the Windows key and press P (Win+P) and you will get a screen showing you four options:

Speed

One of the biggest improvements in Windows 7 is its increased performance.  Unlike Vista, which is a resource hog, Windows 7 runs faster than any other operating system has on my computer (that’s partially due to Windows XP not seeing all my ram and not being 64 bit). In fact, Windows 7 has such a small foot print that you can use it any computer that ran Windows XP or for netbooks. Not only does it run programs faster, but it boots in a fraction of the time that any previous Windows release has. So if you’ve been thinking about upgrading your Vista computer because it’s starting to get slow, consider just upgrading to Windows 7.

Summary

There’s a hundred more things I could cover about Windows 7, but most of them are so subtle that there isn’t much to say about them individually, but as a whole they have created an amazing new experience. So I won’t bore you with a paragraph about the new Calculator or the fact that you can set it up to switch backgrounds every thirty minutes. What I will say is this; try it! If you’re at all skeptical due to a bad experience with Vista or you’re just another Mac Fanboy I challenge you to try it out for a few days. I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed. As for myself, I’ll be sticking with Windows 7.

Start off by opening the Run dialog box. In Windows 7 this will not be found in your start menu, so you will have to hold the Windows key and hit R. Once the dialog box pops up enter control userpasswords2 and hit ok.

A new dialog box will pop up that shows the users in your system. Simply pick the user you would like to automatically log in, and then unselect the option Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer. After doing so, hit Ok to save and close the dialog box.

Now to test it out, just reboot your computer. You should automatically be logged into your account!

The process for hiding an account has not changed since Windows XP.  This involves tweaking the registry so I do not recommend proceding if you are not comfortable doing so.  To access the registry editor, select Start->Run or hold down your Windows key and hit R.  In the next prompt, enter regedit and hit enter.

Navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and create a sub-key named SpecialAccounts if it does not already exist.  Inside of that key you will create another called UserList.  Make sure UserList is selected and on the right hand side right click and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value. Give this new value the same name as the user account that you would like to hide.

To confirm that it worked hold down your Windows key and hit L which will lock the computer. If you see the user in your list then lock back into your admin user and double check your configuration. If not, then you have successfully hidden it.

To make this process a little more simple, you can create a text file will the following contents and save it with a .reg extension. This is very handy if you need to do it on serveral computers or if like myself you have many registry tweaks you need to apply each time you reinstall Windows.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
"lan"=dword:00000000

In this example I use lan as the username, you can of course use whichever username you like just make sure to update the value in the DWORD value. After saving this file you can simply double-click the registry file and it will automatically apply it for you.

In the event that you would like to log into this user you can activate the old Pre-XP login screen by hitting CTRL+Alt+Del at the login screen. You will be prompted for a username and password, enter the appropriate values and hit ok. Keep in mind this will create a desktop profile for the user the first time you log into it, so the first time you do this it may take a bit longer.

Now on the linux box, just type in:

sudo mkdir /mnt/shared
sudo mount -t cifs -o username=lan,password=lan,rw //192.168.20.2/shared /mnt/shared

Just make sure to replace the IP with your own and it should work flawlessly!

Open up your command prompt and enter:

net stop beep

And that’s all there is to it!