Windows 7 All-in-One For Dummies
Overview
As the #1 operating system in the world, Windows provides the platform upon which all essential computing activities occur. This much-anticiapted version of the popular operating system offers an improved user experience with an enhanced interface to allow for greater user control. This All-in-One reference is packed with valuable information from eight minibooks, making it the ultimate resource. You'll discover the improved ways in which Windows 7 interacts with other devices, including mobile and home theater.
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About The Author
Woody Leonhard is a bestselling author and has been a Microsoft beta tester since Word for Windows 1.1. He covers Windows and Office topics on his popular Web site, AskWoody.com.
Sample Chapters
windows 7 all-in-one for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
In Windows 7, discover how to find the features you grew to love in Windows XP or Vista. Pinpoint important setup tasks in Windows 7 and check out the cures for common Windows 7 problems.
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Windows 10
Setting up a firewall is an effective way to protect your computer from outside cyber attackers and malicious software. But keep in mind that by setting up a firewall, you are changing the way your computer communicates with other computers on the Internet. The firewall blocks all incoming communications unless you set up a specific inbound exception in the Windows firewall to let a program in.
Defragmenting a hard drive with Windows 7 is simpler than ever — in fact, you don’t need to do a thing . . . sort of. By default, Windows 7 automatically schedules a disk defragmentation session to run every week. However, you do have to ensure that your computer is ready for the defrag process.
Not too long ago, defragmenting your hard drive rated as a Real Big Deal.
FreeCell, Microsoft’s first Solitaire variant, mimics the card game of the same name. Game play in FreeCell resembles “regular” Solitaire in many ways, as you use the cards to build suit stacks and sequential columns of cards in alternating colors. Yet, most people don’t know that there are game cheats available to help them boost their FreeCell player statistics in Windows 7.
One of the simplest, most absorbing games ever created — and a longtime personal favorite of Bill Gates — Minesweeper has been around since the days of Windows 3.1. Yet, most people don’t know that there are game cheats available to help them win at Minesweeper in Windows 7.
The concept is simple: Click a square and a number appears, indicating the number of adjacent squares that contain mines.
Solitaire is the oldest of all the Windows games. This traditional game has captured the hearts and spare cranial cycles of millions. Yet, most people don’t know that there are game cheats they can employ to help them win at Solitaire in Windows 7.
To get started, choose Start→Games and double-click the Solitaire icon.
Windows 10
Once you’ve established a Windows Home Server network and set up the WHS Connector program on a Windows 7 PC, you can easily access the Windows Home Server Console from any PC that’s connected to the server.
Most Windows Home Server computers don’t have a monitor or even a keyboard or a mouse, you usually interact with the server using one of the PCs connected to the server.
When you buy a copy of Windows 7 in a shrink-wrapped box, you’re allowed to install it on one — and only one — PC. To ensure that you stick to that guideline, you’re required to activate Windows 7 within 30 days of installation.
Every time you start Windows 7, it checks to see whether the software has been activated.
If you have a HomeGroup established, you might want to share a new folder with the group. Windows 7 makes it easy to add folders to your HomeGroup. In fact, it’s much easier to add folders to a HomeGroup than it is to add them to a regular network. There are three ways you can add folders to your HomeGroup.
If you want to make a folder available to everyone in your HomeGroup, the simplest approach is to add it to one of your shared libraries.
You can now add gadgets directly to a Windows 7 desktop. Windows gadgets are little desktop programs that can interact with you, with Windows, with files and folders, with your network, and with other gadgets.
Microsoft introduced gadgets in Windows Vista, but there weren’t that many interesting gadgets, and they had to be docked into a Sidebar.
Windows 10
At the heart of Windows 7’s vastly improved search feature sits the index. The Windows 7 index stores references to the contents of the computer. You can greatly speed the search process by adding all your storage locations to the Windows 7 search index.
Windows 7 automatically indexes all files in the following locations:
All Users Start Menu folder
Individual user’s Start Menu folders
All folders in all libraries for all users (even library contents across the network)
Want to add more folders to the index?
Windows 10
In Windows 7, you can add sound to a movie using Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM). You can control WLMM so that it uses the sound that is already in each clip or superimpose a music file over the top of the movie.
Most clips are recorded with sound. By default, the sound plays along with the clip, just as you would expect.
Windows 10
You can add titles to any movie in Windows 7 using Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM). In fact, superimposing text over your clips ranks as one of the simplest of WLMM tricks, and you can use any font known to Windows.
Using Windows Live Movie Maker, you can add text to a single clip at a time. When the movie moves on to the next clip, the text disappears.
Windows 10
Windows Live Movie Maker makes it easy to create a simple movie. You can jazz up your movie in WLMM by adding visual effects and transitions between clips with WLMM's Visual Effects options.
Get your movie put together in the sequence you like.
Click the Visual Effects tab.
WLMM shows you the Transitions and Effects options, at the top of the screen.
Windows 10
Windows Home Server is a wonderful tool for managing your files over a network. But where you'll really see the power of WHS is when you add the Windows Home Server shared folders to your Windows 7 libraries.
For example, you can add the Windows Home Server Photos shared folder to your Windows 7 Pictures library, which will give you enhanced access to all the photos on all the computers in the WHS network.
Windows 10
Windows 7 is designed around networking. Consequently, Microsoft has designed it to be easy to add a network printer to a HomeGroup network using Windows 7. And thanks to HomeGroup networking, when you add a printer to a computer in the HomeGroup network, Windows automatically recognizes it and adds it to the Device Stage on every computer in the HomeGroup.
Windows 10
The Windows Home Server (WHS) allows you to have up to ten users at a time. Each user must use an approved logon name and password to access the files and to ensure that their files are protected. Adding and changing users in Windows Home Server isn’t difficult, but it has to be consistent on both the server and the PC.
Windows 10
Adding a Windows 7 computer to an already established Windows Home Server network takes just a few minutes. Once you’ve connected the new PC to the server, the WHS will go straight to work collecting data for storage on the server.
If you bought a new PC with Windows Home Server preinstalled, use the instructions that came with the PC for setting it up and attaching it to your network.
Windows 10
Windows Live Movie Maker makes it easy for anyone to assemble a movie in Windows 7. Creating a movie in WLMM involves gathering together clips (movie, music or still pictures) and assembling them in the order you want them to appear. Windows Live Move Maker gathers these pieces together to form a movie project.
Windows Media Center is one of the features in Windows 7 that you can use to burn DVDs. WMC uses the Windows DVD Maker engine to burn the DVDs and CDs, but does it from within the Media Center interface. Don’t expect anything too sophisticated, but you can use it to burn a DVD with your Media Center remote.
Windows Media Center is particularly useful if you’re stuck with protected WTV files (recorded from, say, a movie channel).
Windows 10
To connect to a HomeGroup, you need a password, so Microsoft creates a password every time you set up a new HomeGroup. Although Windows assigns an arbitrary password to you, you can change it at any time, as long as all computers in the HomeGroup are turned on and you can log on to all of them.Choose Start→Control Panel.
When you connect to a network, the main question that Windows asks is whether you’re connecting to a home, work, or public network? Windows uses the information to determine how secure your system needs to be. However, Windows 7 gives you the opportunity to go back and change a network type to suit your needs.
Windows 10
In Windows 7, Jump Lists, which appear when you right-click an icon in either the Taskbar or the Start menu, are intended to be your main jumping off point for accessing the files you’ve recently worked with. You can customize Windows 7 to change the number of items displayed on Jump Lists from the default 10 items.
Windows 10
In Windows 7, you can also use the Start Menu to begin a search. When you type a keyword, the search engine will scour your computer looking for files. The Start Menu Search is effective on its own, but you can also change the way the Start Search bar behaves to customize the kinds of results it will find.
Right-click the Start button and choose Properties.
Windows 10
Windows 7 Home Premium is available in both a 32-bit model and a 64-bit model. Although both types of Windows 7 look and act the same on the surface, the way they work is quite different. How do you choose between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions? It really boils down to your needs and capabilities.
The 32-bit flavor of Windows has a limit on the amount of memory that Windows can use.
Windows 10
You can often repair software problems by completing a System Restore in Windows 7. Windows 7 is much less buggy than Windows Vista, but sometimes bugs in software and driver updates will cause your system problems. These system errors can include everything from the system running slowly to the system coming to a screeching stop.
Windows 10
Every network — even home or small-business networks — should be protected by a WPA2 encryption. Once your wireless network is set up, secure, and ready to use, it’s time to connect your PC. To connect to a WPA2-protected network in Windows 7, you need to know whether the network is protect in Pre-shared key mode or Personal mode and you need any required key or password.
Windows 10
One of the new features in Windows 7 is the ability to customize your desktop with a wallpaper slideshow. You can easily create a wallpaper slideshow using the Windows 7 Personalization settings.
Microsoft noticed that many people downloaded third-party software that allowed them to create a wallpaper slideshow in the past and decided to offer this nifty Windows 7 feature.
Windows 10
Have you ever taken a series of shots, side by side, trying to convey the vastness of a scene? Why show a series of little shots when you can create one big one? You can use Windows 7 Live Photo Gallery to create a panoramic photo. This new feature “stitches” together two or more photos to create a composite picture (assuming that you’ve selected a series of photos that cover the same panorama).
Windows 10
In Windows 7, you can use screen savers to create a Boss Key — a key combination that you can press to make the PC immediately switch over to running the screen saver so your boss doesn’t see what you’re really up to. Thanks to the improvements that Microsoft made to the Search function in Windows 7, setting up the Boss Key is quite simple now.
Here are the five most common problems that Windows 7 users face — from missing files and cursors to bad Internet connections — and how to fix each one:
Cursor doesn’t show or move. If no mouse cursor appears on the screen or the cursor doesn’t move no matter how much you move the mouse, shut down Windows 7, make sure that the mouse is plugged in, and restart the computer.
Windows 10
Windows 7 brings a powerful new feature to the table: libraries. Libraries are a way to pull related bits of information together from many different folders. You can pull together the documents in ten of the folders on your desktop plus the ones in your computer’s Public folder, on an external drive, and in the Public folder on another computer connected to your network and treat them all as though they were in the same folder.
Windows 10
As you browse from Web page to Web page, your Windows 7 browser’s Jump List accumulates a list of your recent browser history. In Windows 7, you can customize your browser’s Jump Lists to include your favorite Web sites. You can also use pinning to permanently place links for your favorite Web sites to your browser’s Jump List.
Windows 10
Windows 7 finally gives you the opportunity to customize the contents of the notification area of the taskbar. The notification area is the glob of icons down near the clock that used to be known as the system tray. If you’re tired of seeing a useless icon in the notification area — or if you know that you want to see an icon there all the time — you can now do something about it.
Windows 7 lets you customize your Start Menu to make it work the way you want it to. You can make a number of changes to the Start menu, from adding or removing items, deciding whether to display recently opened items, and even control the way Windows responds when you click Start Menu options.
Right-click the Start button and choose Properties.
Windows 10
When you right-click the Windows Media Player icon in the Windows 7 taskbar, you’ll see a jump list of the songs you listen to most frequently. You can customize the Windows 7 Windows Media Jump List so that so that it shows the items you want instead.
Display your most recently listened to items
You can change a setting in Windows Media Player itself to tell Windows to replace the list of most frequently viewed media with a list of your most recently viewed media files.
Windows 10
If you start receiving Windows Activation Technologies warnings and errors, you need to know how to deal with the problem quickly to repair any loss of functionality. Windows 7 uses Windows Activation Technologies (formerly known as Windows Genuine Advantage) to hunt for pirates. Unfortunately, you don’t have to be a software pirate to run into problems with Window Activation Technologies (WAT).
Periodically, you need to take a few minutes to delete old backups in Windows 7 to make room for new ones. Creating backups of your data is easier than ever in Windows 7, which means that more people will create backups more frequently. Although that’s great, all those easy backups can take up an enormous amount of space.
Windows 10
Windows 7 now calls small networks homegroups — they used to be called workgroups in Windows Vista and Windows XP. If you want to share files over a mixed homegroup and workgroup network, you need to know how to get the different systems to recognize each other.
Homegroups and workgroups can coexist rather peacefully on the same network.
Windows 10
Many people resort to using WordPad because they're having issues with Microsoft Word. And, if you really want and need formatting — and you don't have time to get Word straightened out — you can use WordPad to edit Word documents, but you have to be careful. If you don't follow the process just right, WordPad will lose all your existing Microsoft Word formatting.
In Windows 7, you may find that the Windows Vista and Windows XP features you know and love have moved or changed. If you’re going from Windows XP straight to Windows 7, here’s what changed:
The menus disappeared! Windows 7 doesn’t show the menus (File, Edit, View, Tools, or Help) in Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer.
Windows 7's Device Stage makes the process of installing a local printer incredibly easy. (Most of the time.) Windows 7 does most of the work for you, from recognizing the printer to installing any necessary drivers. In fact, unlike previous versions of Windows, it's usually better to not install the software that came with your printer.
Windows 10
The only way to ensure that you have the best driver for your hardware is to check the driver version number and compare that with information on the manufacturer’s Web site. Just because you’ve upgraded your operating system to Windows 7 doesn’t mean that you now have the most up-to-date drivers on your computer.
Windows 10
So you have a HomeGroup established and you want to block a folder so that no one in your Windows 7 HomeGroup can view it. With HomeGroup, you don’t have to worry about all the complicated permissions dialog boxes that you have to hassle with in regular networks. Windows 7 makes it just as easy to block individual folders as it is to add them to your HomeGroup.
Windows 10
Many Windows 7 users choose to have Windows Live Messenger remember their password when they're setting up Messenger. If you want to use Messenger with more than one user ID, you’ll need to go back in and make Windows 7 forget your Windows Live Messenger password. When Windows 7 doesn’t automatically fill in the password for you, you can use different Windows Live IDs for work, family, and the public at large.
Windows 10
Any file or folder that you move to the Public folder can be viewed, changed, or deleted by anybody who’s using your computer or network. Moving a file or folder to the Public folder in Windows 7 makes it easier to share information with anyone on your PC or network.
Although sharing information is great, and collaborating on documents is often the best bet, when a file or folder is in the Public folder, you don’t have any control over who accesses it or what they do with it.
Windows 10
Windows Explorer is the main tool that you use to interact with Windows 7. You’ll need to use the Windows Explorer to view your libraries, files, and folders. You can access Windows Explorer by clicking the Start menu and then clicking either Computer or one of your many folders, such as Documents, Pictures, or Music.
When you use a firewall — and you should — you change the way your computer communicates with other computers on the Internet. The firewall blocks all incoming communications unless you open a port in the Windows firewall to let a specific IP communicate with your computer. For example, if you want to play many online games.
Windows 10
In Windows 7, you pin a file or folder to the taskbar to have them available at a moment’s notices — well, sort of. Unfortunately, you can’t turn individual documents or folders into icons on the toolbar. But you can pin a file to the Jump List of for its associated application and pin a folder to the Windows Explorer Jump List.
Windows 10
The Device Stage is Windows 7’s way of keeping track of the status of everything that’s plugged into your computer. When you want to know what is happening with a peripheral or want to interact with it (say, load music onto it), you just pop over to the Device Stage and you’re good to go.
You can pin the icon for any Device Stage device directly to the taskbar in Windows 7 and bypass the Device Stage.
Windows 10
Microsoft has established a “special relationship” with Yahoo! and the Flickr Web site. One of the fortunate side effects of that relationship is that you can publish photos from the Windows Live Photo Gallery directly to your own space on Flickr. Using Flickr and Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can share your photos with friends and family around the world.
Windows 10
You have four choices when publishing a movie in Windows 7 using Windows Live Movie Maker. These choices determine how the final product will be saved. If you want your friends to be able to view your movie, you need to convert it into a format they can use.
By default, when you save your finished movie project, Windows Live Movie Maker stores the movie as a Windows Live Movie project (.
Windows 10
After you put together a movie in Windows Live Movie Maker, you can easily get it on the Web. In Windows 7, Windows Live Movie Maker comes preloaded with an option to publish your films directly to Microsoft MSN’s Soapbox Web site, but you can also install other plugins that let you publish directly to more popular sites from within the WLMM main interface.
Windows 10
If you’ve recently installed a new device driver and your computer stops running properly, you need to get rid of the new driver in order to get things going again. In other words, you need to restart the Windows 7 computer with the last known good configuration — which is Microsoft for “dump the new driver and make everything work again.
Windows 10
A new feature in Windows 7 allows you to restore previous versions of a file that you’ve modified or even deleted. Anyone who has ever changed a file only to realize that it was better before they messed with it can appreciate the value of being able to retrieve a previous version of a file.
This feature was first available on Vista’s Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise versions, but now is available to all Windows 7 users.
Another new feature in Windows 7 is the image backup, which is essentially a snapshot of all the settings and files on your hard drive. You can restore the image backup in Windows 7 to bring everything back to the way it was in the event of a calamitous crash. This means that you won’t have to reinstall everything, you won’t have to customize your settings, nothing.
Windows 10
One of the biggest changes you'll see in Windows 7 is in the taskbar. The old Quick Launch Toolbar is missing! However, if you don't like the change, you can restore the Quick launch Toolbar to the taskbar to the Windows 7 desktop.
It’s hard to wax nostalgic about an old Windows feature, but the Quick Launch toolbar has been around since 1997, and plenty of people mourn its passing in Windows 7.
Before making the leap to Windows 7, take a few minutes to run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. The Upgrade Advisor scans your Vista or XP computer and tells you whether your PC can handle Windows 7. Running the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor only takes a few minutes and can save you from the hassle of purchasing an upgrade only to find your computer can’t handle it.
Before you can disconnect a device from your Windows 7 computer, you must first prepare Windows for the change using the Safely Remove Hardware feature. When you click the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the taskbar, Windows stores any data back on the device and releases it from its hold. If you remove the device without using the Safely Remove Hardware feature, you run the risk of damaging your files.
Windows 10
In Windows 7, you can scan photos (or anything else, for that matter) directly into Windows Live Photo Gallery. Although you can also scan photos and documents using Windows Fax and Scan, you’ll get a superior image and higher resolution if you scan your photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery.
WLPG uses the same scanning routines that you see throughout Windows.
Windows 10
Windows 7 automatically defragments your primary hard drive every week. Although that’s great, if you have multiple hard drives (which many people do these days), you need to know how to schedule a drive to be defragged with Windows 7.
One nice update to the Disk Defragmenter feature in Windows 7 is that you can now schedule as many drives as you’d like to defragment at the same time.
Microsoft assumes that you're going to use their basic programs on your Windows 7 computer, and usually they're right. But if you prefer to use another program for specific tasks, you need to tell Windows by setting your Program Defaults in Windows 7.
For example, Microsoft has Internet Explorer 8, but you might prefer Firefox or Chrome.
Windows Media Player, the Windows 7 built-in boom box, sucks you in from the start. Once you set up Media Play in Windows 7, you can use it to play CDs, as well as play, organize, and generally enjoy almost any kind of music and most videos stored on your computer, your network or your homegroup.
Setting up Windows Media Player is easy, but there are many places where you can be lolled into turning over the keys to your privacy.
Windows 10
Windows 7 makes working with multiple monitors easier than ever. Although previous versions of Windows will allow you to use multiple monitors, Windows 7 allows you to really control the display by changing the resolution, orientation, and appearance of items in each monitor.
Once you've plugged in all the monitors you want to use and hooked them up to your computer,
Right-click in any blank place on the Windows 7 desktop and choose Screen Resolution.
You can use the Device Stage to set up a Windows 7 computer for Bluetooth to send information to and from your Windows 7 computer. Using Bluetooth, you can send information, music, and videos directly to your many devices, such as smart phones, without having to hassle with a bunch of wires.
Setting up Bluetooth can be challenging, but the results make it worth the effort.
Windows 10
You can set up the Windows Media Center to enjoy your favorite photos, music, TV, and videos by using just your PC. Viewing stuff on your PC is pretty easy if you don't want to hassle with configuring Windows Media Center in Windows 7 to work with your home entertainment system.
Click the Start button on your remote (if your TV is set up) or choose Start→All Programs→Windows Media Center.
Windows 10
Before you download Windows Live Essentials, you need a Windows Live ID — Windows Live Messenger doesn’t work without it (among others). If you don’t already have a Windows Live ID, you’ll need to sign up for one. Fortunately, it’s an easy process.
If you already have a Hotmail account, an MSN Messenger or Windows Messenger account, a .
Windows 10
When you install Windows Live Messenger on your Windows 7 system, Microsoft starts running it whenever you’re logged in to the computer, which can be very annoying. To stop Windows 7 from automatically turning on Windows Live Messenger every time you're nearby, you need to modify Messenger’s options so that you have more control over the process.
We’ve all been there: You send a document to the printer, and as it begins printing, you realize that you’re accidentally printing a zillion pages you don’t want. How do you stop a runaway print job and then reset it so that it doesn’t try to print the same bad stuff, all over again?
Stopping a runaway print job is a typical frustrating task.
Windows 10
Windows 7 includes a nifty new feature that allows you to restore previous versions of a file that you’ve modified or even deleted. However, unless you tell Windows 7 which drives to scan for previous versions of files, it will only look in the Windows system drive for modified files.
Choose Start, right-click Computer, and choose Properties.
Windows 10
Windows Live Movie Maker lets you trim individual clips — remove pieces at the beginning or end of the clip to make it shorter. Trimming a clip in Windows Live Movie Maker allows you to use just the best part of a clip in your movie.
Windows 7 doesn’t include Windows Movie Maker automatically. You need to go online and download it as part of the free Windows Live Essentials Pack from the Windows Live Web site.
Windows 10
Windows 7 features many automated tools to help you pull yourself out of errors. The first place you should go to troubleshoot problems is the Windows 7 Action Center. The Action Center is packed with preloaded troubleshooting guides that can lead you by the hand to find the resolution to most problems.
Microsoft will download new troubleshooters to your computer from time to time, typically as part of “non-security updates.
Windows 10
Internet Explorer 8 introduces a new feature called Accelerators in Windows 7. You can use Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 to take data from a Web page and run with it using a series of right-click menu options that bypass the traditional process of copying data, pasting it in a search engine and then finding the new page process.
Windows 10
Windows 7 includes several "gesture" features that can save you a lot of time. Foremost among them: a half-window docking capability that Microsoft calls Aero Snap. You can use Aero Snap in Windows 7 to resize windows to half size with a single click — a boon to anyone with a wide screen. This makes the side-by-side display a breeze.
Windows 10
You can use the ClickLock feature in Windows 7 if you have trouble holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse at the same time — a common problem for notebook users. When you use the Windows ClickLock feature, you can tell Windows how long you want to hold the mouse button down before Windows locks it down.
You can use the Window7 Easy Transfer feature to send files from one computer to another or even to send files to an external hard drive. This feature makes changing to a new computer a breeze.
Before you start Easy Transfer, make sure that both PCs are plugged in. Don’t rely on batteries. A Windows Easy Transfer can take a long time, and it’s disk intensive.
One of the big changes in Windows 7 is the redesign of the taskbar with its Jump Lists. You can use the Jump Lists like shortcuts to the files you use most frequently with an application. For example, the Internet Explorer Jump Lists shows frequently visited sites and the Media Player shows the songs you listen to most.
Although it’s nowhere near as advanced as Word, you can use WordPad in Windows 7 to create polished, professional-looking documents. Windows 7 has made improvements to the options and features available in WordPad. One of the biggest changes in WordPad is the introduction of a new Scenic ribbon — similar to the ribbon interface in Word — that holds most of the WordPad tools.
Whenever you plug anything into your computer — printer, MP3 player, whatever — it appears in the Device Stage. The Device Stage is a new Windows 7 feature that helps you keep track of all of the external devices installed on your computer, showing what’s available, revealing the device’s current status, and providing you with a quick way to interact with the device.
Windows 10
When you have more than one document scheduled to print, Windows keeps track of the scheduled print jobs in a print queue. In Windows 7, you can display the printer queue of a HomeGroup printer so that you can check on the status of the documents, change the order in which they’ll print, or even cancel a print job.
Windows 10
Windows 7 includes a fabulous new feature that is sure to help anyone needing tech support — the Problem Steps Recorder (PSR). Once you know how to use the Problem Steps Recorder in Windows 7, you’ll be able to record exactly what your computer is doing wrong so that you can show whoever you’ve asked for help.
If you’re having trouble with a program taking over your computer, slowing things down, or even locking things up, you can use the Reliability Data available in the Windows 7 Resource Monitor to see what’s happening inside the computer. The Resource Monitor knows all, sees all, and tells all (with graphs and statistics galore).
The Search function in Windows 7 actually works. Most searches begin in Windows Explorer, but you can also use the Start menu to begin a search. When you click the Windows 7 Start button, you can immediately type a keyword in the Start Search bar and have Windows 7 look for the text you type.
For example, if you tell the Start menu’s Search bar to look for the word "water," Windows 7 consults its index and knows more or less immediately that your computer has a bunch of matching entries.
Windows 10
If you want to upgrade a computer that is already running Vista, you’re in luck. The upgrade process is a breeze, and you can use the Windows Experience Index (WEI) in Vista to determine how well Windows 7 will run on your PC.
The Windows Experience Index gives a numerical score to each of your hardware components, and your WEI base score is determined by the lowest score out of your hardware components.
Windows 10
One of the best ways to view photos in Windows 7 is by using the Windows Live Photo Gallery. Windows Live Photo Gallery brings a handful of sophisticated tools to the thorny problems of gathering, fixing, and, most of all, finding pictures on your computer.
Windows Live Photo Gallery allows you to index and organize your photos using tagging tools.
Windows 10
Windows 7 includes Windows Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), which enables you to browse Web pages anywhere on the Internet. Windows 7 makes it a snap to launch Internet Explorer 8. However, when you launch Internet Explorer 8 the first time, you need to go through a setup.
The following steps allow you to choose certain options.
Windows 10
Once you've downloaded and installed Windows Live Messenger for Windows 7, you'll need to take a few minutes to set it up to suit you. If you take the time to do this when you first start Messenger, you can save yourself a lot of time cleaning up afterward.
If you already had Windows Live Messenger on Vista and upgraded to Windows 7, you may or may not be able to see it in Windows 7.
Windows 10
Here are some Windows 7 setup tasks to complete immediately to make your computer more effective to use and safeguard against viruses and spyware:
Show filename extensions. Windows 7, by default, hides the filename extension — that’s the last (usually three) characters at the end of each file’s name. This extension dictates how Windows treats the file and is a key piece of information that can help you identify and avoid viruses.
Windows 10
Creating networks in Windows 7 is easier than ever, but setting up a secure wireless network takes a little bit more thought. Every wireless network — even home or small-business networks — should have security protection.
The first law of wireless networks pertains: Any default installation of a wireless network is absolutely wide open and vulnerable to the most casual eavesdropping.
Windows 10
Windows Home Server (WHS) is a feature-packed addition to your Windows 7 world that has a great track record of not being buggy. To get the most out of WHS, it's important to understand what it can do for you.
WHS was created to help manage households and home offices with multiple computers. Unlike a simple network, the WHS is designed to interact with your PCs on a different level.
Windows 10
The Windows 7 Easy Transfer feature makes transferring settings and data files between two computers easy. You can use the Window7 Easy Transfer feature to send files from one computer to another or even to send files to an external hard drive.
It is important to remember that Windows 7 Easy Transfer doesn't transfer everything from the old computer.
Windows 10
Most netbooks can be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium Edition. To determine whether your netbook can handle Windows 7 Home Premium, you first need to evaluate your system hardware capabilities, then check the best upgrade path depending on your preexisting operating system.
In order to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium, your netbook needs at least 1GB of memory (RAM), at least 40 GB of disk space, and a 1 GHz or better processor.
In an effort to improve the functionality and speed of Windows, Microsoft added what they are calling Windows Scenic. You’ll primarily notice Windows Scenic most when you use the Scenic Ribbons in Windows 7.
Windows Scenic is more than just a fancy toolbar; it's an improved user interface that compresses layers and layers of menus and commands into a single stream-lined bar.
Windows 7 will run on most people’s existing computers, but if yours is particularly old or limited or if you just want the latest and greatest, you need to know what to look for in a new Windows 7 PC.
Here’s everything you need to know about buying a Windows 7 PC:
Comparison shop using the Windows Experience Index.
Microsoft hopes everybody will immediately switch to Windows 7, but they're targeting two groups in particular: people already using Windows XP and people already using Windows Vista. But if you've already got Windows Vista, why upgrade to Windows 7? There are many Windows 7 features that Vista users will really like, and some things they might not.
Windows XP shipped with several multiplayer games that allowed you to play opponents on the Internet. These disappeared with Windows Vista. In Windows 7, they’re back. You can once again play Windows multiplayer games over the Internet. They’re free and visually compelling.
There are three multiplayer games in Windows 7: Internet Backgammon, Internet Checkers, and Internet Spades.
The Windows Home Server (WHS) is an addition that you can purchase to supplement Windows 7. WHS is designed to manage your network for you. To help you decide whether you want to make the investment in WHS, take a minute to explore some of the things that Windows Home Server can do for you that you just can’t get any other way.
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