Category: Software


Tweaking startup programs and services

Filed Under: Software by Debbie — Leave a comment
December 25, 2009

I found a nice tool from TechSpot that will let you search listings of items frequently found in the Startup folder for windows – search or choose alphabetically.

And for services, Black Viper’s enormous list and descriptions will help you cull unnecessary items and reduce the drain on your computer’s memory.

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Windows 7 Migration finished – for now

Filed Under: Software by Debbie — Leave a comment
December 22, 2009

After working on this all day, except for a short break this evening, I’m declaring this migration complete.

It went pretty well, only a few additional snags this evening:

  • Had to install Filemaker twice, but my client database loaded just fine.
  • I couldn’t find my PlanPlus backup anywhere – not on the CD I made just for that purpose, not in the windows_old folder and not on my imaged disk. Sigh. This isn’t an enormous loss, but I hope I don’t fail to show up for a meeting in the next few weeks because I forgot about it. I generally only plan out events in the next 2-3 weeks unless there’s something big out further.
  • The Intel Audio Studio for my system board only runs on XP, so I can’t use that anymore. And Intel’s Desktop Utilities file is gone until January – they’re working on a new 64-bit version now.
  • I cannot figure out how to let my PC see my notebook. This was working fine when both were on XP; I spent an hour today trying to figure this out and got nowhere.

Otherwise, OpenOffice, TweetDeck, Carbonite, Goodsync and all my little web development tools (XAMPP, WinMerge, IE Tester, Klok) installed just fine. And even QuickBooks imported my company file with no problems at all.

I’d say today went very well overall – I know I’ve missed some things and will be busy in the next couple of weeks getting everything squared away but the vast majority of it is over.

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A few small setbacks

Filed Under: Software by Debbie — Leave a comment
December 22, 2009

Reinstallation of my programs on my new Windows 7 machine is going pretty well for the most part. I did run into a few snags:

  • I couldn’t find anywhere to download my beloved Homesite. Ack, I may actually be forced to learn to use the (non-visual) side of Dreamweaver. All those project files…
  • Why is there no Notepad in Win7? I need to open a text file.
  • I forgot that I can copy over the sites for WS-FTP, so I’ll need to find out how to do that again and migrate them from my backup image.
  • My graphics card (GeForce 8800 GT) wasn’t playing well with Windows 7 but I found a 64-bit driver on the PNY site, so all is well now.

 

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Making the move to Windows 7

Filed Under: Hardware, Software by Debbie — Leave a comment
December 22, 2009

I’ve been planning to be ‘closed for business’ this week for 2 months to give myself plenty of time to do some major updates to my computer – starting with migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7.

The last time I had a fresh install of my OS was in late 2007, so it’s well past time. So Windows 7 came in a very small and very expensive box from Amazon on Monday, and I began the process of getting ready for the hard disk wipe. That included:

  • Making a full image of the entire XP disk, files, OS, etc.
  • Making sure I had all the installation disks (or a place to download them) and license files for all the programs I’ll need to reinstall.
  • Taking a screenshot of my programs directory so I can keep track of what I’m doing.
  • Taking a screenshot of my desktop so I know how that was laid out last time.

So far, I’m very happy. The Win7 install went easily, I’m in the process now of adding my programs back in. I’ve got Thunderbird and Firefox working fine with my old profiles intact, and TrueImage’s complete disk image has come in very handy for moving files around.

I like Win7 so far, very much – it looks great and I’m so happy I’ll finally be able to add four more GB of RAM to my machine. But I didn’t like not having a Quick Launch bar so I went looking for a solution and found this. Very nice, very simple.

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Firefox on speed for XP users

Filed Under: Software by Debbie — Leave a comment
December 9, 2009

My FF has been opening verrrry slooooowly for the past few weeks. I happened upon a neat little trick today that really helped.

If you have a slow FF and are on Windows XP, right-click the shortcut for FF and click Properties. On the Compatibility tab, select Windows 2000 and the tickbox for ‘Run this program in compatibility mode for.’

FF was taking about 45 seconds to open; now it takes 2-3 seconds and I haven’t noticed any other differences. Very cool.

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My computer is 10 lbs lighter

Filed Under: Software by Debbie — Leave a comment
October 12, 2009

I installed (after a few false starts and problems) CS4 a few weeks ago. All is well, so I just removed CS2 from my machine. It seems very frisky now, but I’m probably just imagining that…

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