Recently in Windows 7 Category

"Before I upgraded to Windows 7, I used Windows Movie Maker as my camcorder software. Windows 7 doesn't have Windows Movie Maker, so I'm left wondering what the best camcorder software for Windows 7 might be?"

I find it highly disappointing Microsoft basically abandoned Movie Maker. There is a version available as part of the Windows Live Essentials pack, but it stripped out most of the features from the Windows XP and Windows Vista versions. While the best anything is relative, I'm left with one of three strong choices for best camcorder video editing software.

"I want to turn off Windows 7 System Restore. Is there a way to safely disable System Restore in Windows 7 or will I screw up my computer?"

Windows 7 System Restore is meant to provide some safeguards for you to easily roll back your Windows 7 configuration if you install software that conflicts with other parts of your computer. You can disable this feature, but then you lose the ability to roll back when you install software. There are times when you need to disable System Restore, like if you are trying to get rid of a virus or malware that might get stored in a System Restore point. In general, I would leave System Restore enabled as a precautionary measure, but disabling System Restore shouldn't hurt Windows in any way.

"I need to free up space on my computer. I think Windows System Restore is taking up a bunch of space. Can I delete System Restore Points from Windows in order to free up space or will that cause problems?"

You are correct that Windows System Restore takes up a fair amount of disk space with multiple restore points on your computer. As long as you don't have any problems with your computer, it is reasonably safe to remove all but the latest restore point from Windows. You can delete System Restore points from your computer, but the safest way to do it is to use the built-in Windows Disk Cleanup utility. Finding the option to delete System Restore points can be a little tricky, so I'll walk you through it here.

"I want the date on my computer to be six months in the past, instead of today's date.I tried changing the date, but it keeps going back to today's date. Is there a way I can backdate my computer?"

By default, Windows automatically updates date and time information based on time servers on the Internet. This means that when you set you computer date to a point in the past, the next time the automatic update check takes place, your computer will be reset to the correct time. The good news is you can turn off automatic time updates.

"I'm trying to create a lmhosts file on my Windows 7 computer but I keep getting an error message that says Access to C:\Windows\System32\ drivers\etc\lmhosts.sam was denied. How can I edit lmhosts.sam so that I can create an lmhosts file on my Windows 7 computer?"

One of the security measures Microsoft took to protect Windows Vista and Windows 7 from malware was to make it harder to edit the lmhosts and hosts file. You need administrator privileges to edit the files, which takes an extra step than being an administrator account.

One of the new browser features in Internet Explorer 9 is the ability to pin a site to the Windows taskbar. This is a little like giving your browser bookmarks an important piece of real estate on your desktop, because there's only so much taskbar you can fill before it becomes unusable. For sites I use like applications, like Evernote and Dropbox, this might make sense, because I access them so often I like to open them quickly. For most things, I don't see the point. Whether I actually use this feature or not remains to be seen, however, Microsoft did do a few things right to maximize the potential usefulness of pinning sites to the taskbar.

Internet Explorer 9 has a handy feature that shows you which add-ons are slowing down the load time for the browser. So far, I haven't seen this feature from any of the competition and it's very telling. For instance, I hadn't ever noticed that Lenovo puts its own password manager in IE until launching IE9 for the first time and seeing that the Lenovo password manager add-in increases IE9 launch time by almost a full second. If you feel like you're waiting forever for the browser to launch, some of those extras you installed.

"I use Remote Desktop all the time to connect to my Windows XP computer. I recently got a new computer with Windows 7 and I can't figure out how to make Remote Desktop work. What do I have to do to turn on Remote Desktop in Windows 7?"

Microsoft made some changes to the way Remote Desktop works starting in Windows Vista. As you discovered, Remote Desktop is disabled by default in Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Fortunately the process to enable Remote Desktop in Windows 7 is fairly easy.

"When I look at my Windows processes in Windows Task Manager, I see more than 10 instances of chrome.exe. I don't understand why. It looks like it has something to do with Google Chrome, but I only have one window open on the task bar, so what is chrome.exe and is it hurting my computer?"

You are correct that chrome.exe is the executable file for Google Chrome. The reason you have more than one chrome.exe process is a combination of the way Chrome runs plugins, as well as the way Chrome handles the process for each new browser tab. Just because all the tabs are in a single window, doesn't mean Chrome treats it as one process.

"My computer came with Windows 7 and I want to put Windows XP on it instead. Is there any way I can downgrade Windows 7 to Windows XP easily?"

While there are a number of solutions claiming to offer easy ways to rollback Windows 7 to Windows XP, the easiest way I've found to accomplish this is to simply delete the Windows 7 partition and install Windows XP in it's place. There are a few steps required, but nothing that even the most novice of users shouldn't be able to handle. While I'm providing the steps here, I don't recommend downgrading Windows 7 to Windows XP because there are many things about Windows 7 that make computing easier and are more secure.