Microsoft has released an update for IE 7. The big news - it no longer requires Windows Validation. This means you can install it even if MS detects your copy of windows is not genuine.

I downloaded it to see if there were any other differences. You can do the same by just downloading the latest copy from Microsoft. If you already have IE 7 installed it will simply update it.

One change I noticed right away…can you see it?

Here is the original IE 7:

Here is the latest IE 7

THEY TURNED THE MENU BACK ON!

Damn. I wonder how many nasty emails they got about that one. What made them think getting rid of the menu was a good idea? I always found myself cursing because I had to use the keyboard to force the menu to appear.

Eventually after getting 100s of emails about it, and finding the registry key for it, we released an IE 7 tweaking tool that could turn it back on.

I am glad MS woke up and started listening to customers….maybe there still is hope for Vista :)

Update: I guess there is no hope for Vista. According to some of my readers, the update is for the XP version of IE 7 only.

ISO files are images of physical CD and DVD ROMS. You can use to burn them to disk. Microsoft now distributes many of their DVD, and CD ROMs from their website in this format.

Many times you just want to pull a few files off the ISO without burning it to physical media. Microsoft has a little known tool for doing this.

You can download it from here

It is not the most user friendly application, but it is free, and it works well. Let me walk you through mapping an ISO file.

The name of the program is the Windows XP Virtual CD Control panel. Download the file, and extract to the folder you want to run it from.

If you want to map an image file, simply launch the program called VcdControlTool.exe

The first thing we need to do is install a driver. When the program is launched, click on the “Driver Control” button.

We need to install the driver, so click on the only button that is enabled - “Install Driver”

It will open a file browse dialog. It should default to the same folder you installed all the other files for this program….if not you will need to browse back to it and select VCdRom.sys

Once you have selected the driver, the “Start” button will be enabled. Click on it. Now click OK.

We need to add a drive before mounting the ISO. Click “Add Drive” and a drive letter will show up in the window.

Finally we can map the iso by clicking on the mount button. It will allow you to select an ISO to mount. Select your ISO, and click OK.

You will be presented with special mount options. You may need to check these if you are having trouble mounting an ISO. Usually when I first try to mount an ISO I leave them all unchecked. If I run into trouble, then I experiment and try each option.

Once you have mounted the ISO, it will look just like a standard CDROM. If we browse to My Computer and look…

Now I have access to my ISO file, without ever burning it to a disk.

A few last things to note:

1. You don’t need to keep this application open after mounting the ISO. It will stay mounted until you unmount it.

2. If you reboot your system, you will need to remount the drive again

• NVIDIA ForceWare Release 163.75 BETA
  Beta driver for GeForce 6,7, and 8 series GPUs. Added support for 5 Nvidia motherboard GPUs, improved compatibility for Half-Life 2 Episode 2. Added profiles for a number of games, as well as compatibility fixes.
  (tags: Nvidia, Beta, Drivers, Video )

If you wish to bring up Windows’ file search minimise all your windows and press F3. You can also search within a certain folder too: open that folder up in Windows Explorer (the name for the program that opens when you double click on ‘My Documents’, ‘My Computer’, etc) and - you guessed it - press F3.

Pressing F3 opens search dialogs in many other programs as well: in Internet Explorer it opens (and closes) the vertical search bar; in MS Outlook it opens up the ‘Advanced Find’ dialog. Try pressing F3 when using applications that have some sort of search facility.

In a similar vein, you can open up the find facility in many applications by holding down the Control (’Ctrl’) key and pressing F. To explain the difference between search and find, consider that you will search for a web page and when you have opened it you can find text within it. In MS Word Ctrl + F opens the ‘Find and Replace’ dialog. As with F3, try it out in any program that has a find facility.

Of course some programmers use slightly different standards. For example in Firefox both F3 and Ctrl + F open the find word dialog at the bottom of the screen.

Happy hunting.

In previous versions of Windows, you would find a built in utility called ScanDisk. This utility exists in Windows XP but is called the Error Checking utility. So, in addition to running Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter to optimize the performance of your computer, you can check the integrity of the files stored on your hard disk by running the Error Checking utility.

As you use your hard drive, it can develop bad sectors. Bad sectors slow down hard disk performance and sometimes make data writing (such as file saving) difficult, or even impossible. The Error Checking utility scans the hard drive for bad sectors, and scans for file system errors to see whether certain files or folders are misplaced. (more…)

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Booting to Safe Mode can be a very effective method of troubleshooting a system. Safe Mode allows only essential files and drivers to be used. An example of why you would need Safe Mode is; If you have installed a new hardware device and upon rebooting your system it will not start. If you can get into Safe Mode you will be able to remove the offending hardware device from your system and allow your system to boot normally.

If there are damaged, deleted or corrupt system files involved, Safe Mode may not be an option. You may need to use the Recovery Console for help. (more…)

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