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Windows 7 Tips & Tweaks

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No problem at all. :)

If anyone runs across anything to add, feel free to post it here or PM me. Let's keep this list growing! :beer:
 
Well, I ran into a little issue the other day. Loaded speedfan up and there were no HDD temperatures. Thought that was strange, then I saw there was no S.M.A.R.T. monitoring at all! Hmm. So I did a little searching and found zilch. One question at the official Win7 forums asking the same thing with no answers.

So, I get around to getting Folding@Home installed. To do so properly (at least with MPICH), you have to disable UAC altogether. Since it's just my wife and me, there is no reason for it to be on anyway. Loaded up Speedfan...lo and behold, the HDD temps were there.

So, long story short - If you are unable to monitor you HDDs S.M.A.R.T. features, such as temperature, it's because UAC doesn't allow you to. WHY it doesn't allow you to, I haven't the foggiest. There is probably something someone can figure out to have it work with UAC enabled. But the fastest way to get it back is to disable UAC altogether.
 
Well, I ran into a little issue the other day. Loaded speedfan up and there were no HDD temperatures. Thought that was strange, then I saw there was no S.M.A.R.T. monitoring at all! Hmm. So I did a little searching and found zilch. One question at the official Win7 forums asking the same thing with no answers.
Right click < Run as Administrator?

You didn't mention trying it.
 
Would have been smart, but I didn't mention it because I didn't do it. Thank you for correcting my error!
 
i've been using ubuntu for the past year at home, and win7 is the OS that is finally getting me back to MS. Currently on x64 Pro RTM at home and couldn't be happier.

I did have a few programs causing me problems, tried running as admin/compatibility mode/etc. As usual, disabling UAC magically got things functioning accordingly.

Still dual booting Ubuntu Jaunty cause i love teh linux, but it sees very little of my time now. :)

What's up with Live essentials...
 
Well, they've got some small stuff up now. They had an antivirus program (which is what peaked my interest), released it to beta and then pulled it after a number of people grabbed it. From the site:
Thank you for your interest in joining the Microsoft® Security Essentials Beta. We are not accepting additional participants at this time. Please check back at a later date for possible additional availability.
No telling when that will resurface.

Oh, and...
This should be a sticky!
...thanks for the mention!
 
I actually snagged Security Essentials manually, it should be live any day now. It was on Live? A/w, my supervisor swears by it, he's been testing it and it cleaned some stuff up that norton didn't.
 
I finally got to looking at this, and it's a nice collection of resources. I need to thoroughly go through the links, but it looks like quality material.

I'd suggest removing the Black Viper link. His tweaks are generally only good for sending people to tech forums looking for fixes to the stuff they broke following his guides.

Black Vipers XP "tweaks" benched...

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve...16/m/665003375931?r=314006475931#314006475931

Also, this program "Tweak 7 - Tweak UI for Windows 7" only works for 14 days according to the description. It may be a soft expire where it'll still work after the time's up, but I don't know. It may be worth trimming the applications, and only keeping the best of the bunch. If I get the time over the next few days, I'll check out the different programs, and see which are the best, and which are redundant.

I agree with the sticky suggestion. This shaping up to be a good guide for Win7 :^)

Edit:
for clarity
 
I've looked at a few of tweak programs, and they seem to be of dubious value to me. They have some useful features, but also some that look like snake oil. They strike me as being similar to magic tweak programs that were big in the early-mid 2000s. One program which is completely free has an interesting option where you can have 4 virtual desktops. I don't think I need such a thing myself, but they seem to be pretty popular with others. I may just need to work with them awhile to see the value. I didn't see the use of tabbed browsing either until I really fooled with it. Now I'm a tab junky :^D

Anyway, here's the program, taken from the 7 free tweak utility link above...

http://www.tweaknow.com/powerPack.html
 
Thanks a lot for your input johnz. I'm a bit under the weather right now, but will definitely edit as necessary as soon as I can sit up for more than five minutes.
 
ReadyDriverPlus to automatically disable that enforced driver signing in Vista or Win7 x64 without having to do the F8 thing.
http://www.citadelindustries.net/readydriverplus/

VistaBootPro3.33 to edit your BCS and name and order all your other MS OS on multiple partitions and hard drives.

Be careful you know where Win7/Vista put the boot files. They often put them on the BIOS selected first boot hard drive if you aren't careful when installing the OS. You can also fix that with this BCS editor program as it can write the correct info onto copied boot files you copied over from the other hard drive.
http://majorgeeks.com/VistaBootPRO_d5625.html

Waring You should only use these programs if you are advanced enough to understand how it works and how to recover if you render your OS unbootable. It took me several Win7 CD repair sessions to fix an issue where both these listed programs had a major conflict just the other day for my system when I changed the boot order but not ReadyDriverPlus. It's probably a good idea not to use these together unless you are an expert.

Other than that, these are great apps to get control of your own system rather than Microsoft defaults. If you are going to change the boot order, make sure to uninstall ReadyDriverPlus first and don't install ReadyDriverPlus until the last after you've set your boot order and verified that it works. I pulled a drive out and that upset my apple cart big time LOL.
 
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/begin hijack of my own thread/

lol HokieAlums.... are you funnyperson?
Haha...so, better late than never. You didn't ask if I was a funny person. You asked if I was funnyperson1. I can now say that no, I am not. Though I do appreciate a good hokie avatar. GO HOKIES!!!

/end hijack/
 
Bump for some more tweaks/tips/programs. Trying to get this thing as comprehensive as possible before launch. We'll probably see a good influx of people with questions and such after launch (Oct. 22nd). If anyone has anything, by all means share it! :beer:
 
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