Change Boot Order in Windows 7

Would you like to change the boot order in Windows 7? It’s very easy and doesn’t require a lot of work and you don’t have to modifiy the boot.ini, although you could do that as well if you are an advanced user, but let’s look at the safe & easy method first.

The “easy” method would be to change the default operating system by editing the startup settings.
Do you know where to change those options? No? Then read on…

About The Boot Order

The default OS will always be the first in your boot list. That’s why you have to change the the default OS if you want to change the boot order in Windows 7. Ifyou installed Windows Vista and then Windows 7, Windows Vista will be your default OS.

Why Do You Want To Change The Boot Order?

If the answer is “So that I can boot Windows 7″, then you should rethink your strategy. If you can only see the bootup options for a few seconds and you are not able to select Windows 7, then you don’t want to change the boot order, you want to change the boot selection time.

Set the time to 20 seconds, that will be enough to select the operating system of your choice. You will find that option directly below the dropdown-field of the default OS (compare with step 4.)

Changing The Boot Order In Windows 7

1. Open the Explorer (Windows key + E) and right-click on “Computer”
2. Click on “Properties”
3. Edit the Startup & Recovery settings as seen below:

Click on Settings ...

4. Next, you got to select the operating system of your choice from the dropdown field. I have highlighted it in the picture below:

Select the default OS from the dropdown field

Stock Gadget for Windows 7

Are you trading with stocks? Have you bought some Microsoft stocks or are you interested in DOW Jones and Co?
Well, the bad news are that Microsoft had to remove the stock gadget from Windows 7 RTM (all editions).

Dow jones, who is the provider of the “Dow Jones Industrial Average” quote feed to the Win 7 in-box stock gadget, wants a EULA agreement to be shown and accepted for any user before they can see the data from their feed in the stock gadget.

Luckily there are many 3rd party gadgets available.

Stock Gadget for Windows 7 (Windows 7 Beta)

I don’t fully understand why they had to remove the stock gadget. There are many sites that display realtime stats of Dow Jones, NASDAQ and other indizes, but I suppose it’s all about “pre-installation” without user confirmation. When someone visits a website and requests a realtime quote he does it on purpose and they have to agree to the EULA of the site. Did you know that you have to accept the TOS of a website or you are not “allowed” to visit a site? Of course no one cares, but I guess it makes all the difference.

Download Stock Gadget

Anyway, I hope that this stock gadget for Windows 7 helps your trading endeavours!

Windows 7 Stock gadget

Almost 100,000 downloads. Pretty popular gadget by now!

Microsoft to release free security software soon

Microsoft plans to release the final version of its free antivirus software soon, according to a note sent to testers late Sunday.

"The final version of Microsoft Security Essentials will be released to the public in the coming weeks," Microsoft said in the note.

(Credit: CNET News)

Microsoft first announced its plans for the product, then code-named Morro, last November, at the same time the company said it was scrapping its paid Windows Live OneCare product.

Public beta testing of Security Essentials started in June, with Microsoft reaching its goal of 75,000 testers just one day after it issued a call for them.

On a personal note, I've been using the product on several machines since June, and I like the way--unlike other antivirus programs--it doesn't make a spectacle of itself, just quietly doing its thing. I often forget it is running on a machine, yet it did save my bacon a couple weeks back when I almost caught Koobface from a friend on Facebook.

Firefox gets an early taste of 3D Web standard

A nascent technology called WebGL for bringing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web is getting a lot closer to reality.

Last week, programmers began building WebGL into Firefox's nightly builds, the developer versions used to test the latest updates to the open-source browser. Also this month, programmers began building WebGL into WebKit, the project that's used in both Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome.

Wolfire Games picked up on the WebKit move and offered a video of WebGL in action.

Overall, the moves stand to accelerate the pace of WebGL development by making it easier to try out. But the technology still has a ways to go before people will be able to play Web-based versions of a 3D software such as first-person shooter video games or Google Earth.

"All of these implementations are going to have some interoperability issues for the next little while, as the spec is still in flux and we're tracking it at different rates, but will hopefully start to stabilize over the next few months," said Vladimir Vukicevic in a blog post.

WebGL is one of a several efforts under way to make Web browsers into a more powerful computing platform, increasingly capable of rivaling what software running natively on a computer can do. Even the company with the most to lose from that direction--Microsoft--is embracing it with a Web-based version of Office.

The WebGL plan emerged in March from Mozilla and the Khronos Group, which oversees the venerable OpenGL standard to let software tap into a computer's hardware-based graphics power . WebGL's roots lie with an earlier Mozilla project called Canvas 3D, a cousin of the present two-dimensional Canvas technology for drawing graphics in Web pages.

Although Google is a WebGL supporter, it's also developing a higher-level 3D graphics technology called O3D for browsers. Google is working on building O3D into Chrome, but the fruits of that labor aren't yet available.

WebGL has a ways to go, as well, but developers eager to give it a whirl should probably start thinking seriously about it.

"The WebGL working group is targeting the first half of 2010 for release of the standard, but implementations will show up before that," said WebGL programmer Mark Steele in August.

Those wanting to try it not only have to download the Firefox nightly build, but also have to specifically enable WebGL through the Firefox "about:config" mechanism. Vukicevic has instructions on his blog.

Put useful info on Windows' welcome screen

Creating a custom Windows log-on screen has never been faster or simpler. Two free utilities let you do more than replace the boring Windows default start background with a picture of your pet hamsters, though you can do that, too.

Add system info to Windows' start-up sequence
In a post earlier this month, I described the beta version of the free TweakNow PowerPack 2009 utility that makes it easy to view system information, maintain Windows, and customize the OS' interface. As that post stated, I encountered a couple of rough edges in the beta version I looked at, but that's to be expected in a beta.

One TweakNow feature I took advantage of right away was the program's ability to add a "legal disclaimer" screen to Windows start-up. One practical application of this feature is to add information about the system to the screen's text box, which can make life a lot easier for you or for whoever has to maintain the machine.

Suppose you need to find out what type of memory your PC uses, what type of processor it runs, its current version of Windows, or even the toll-free support number of its vendor. It's not always easy to find all this information, which resides in various locations on your system. Utilities such as TweakNow can help you collect this type of data, but you'll still find yourself clicking around their various nooks and crannies to unearth what you need.

You could create an image containing this information and make it your Windows Desktop, but adding system information to a screen that appears early in the Windows start-up sequence not only saves you time rummaging around Windows settings, it also lets you get the info off a machine without having to fully load Windows. This is a capability a lot of IT staffers will likely appreciate, but anyone who maintains multiple PCs could find it a time-saver.

The system information I needed was available in various other TweakNow screens, but it was much easier for me to copy the main System Information screen, paste the data into the text box in the TweakNow Legal Notice dialog (click Windows Secret > User Accounts > Miscellaneous), and edit it there. I added the toll-free support number of the PC's vendor, just in case.

Add system information to the Windows log-on screen via the free TweakNow PowerPack 2009 utility.

(Credit: TweakNow)

Place text in a custom welcome-screen image
If you're one of the many people who simply want Windows to load quickly, you won't be happy having to click through yet another screen before you can start your workday. Stardocks offers two free programs that let you create your own welcome screen, complete with any text you want ready access to.

LogonStudio Vista and LogonStudio XP can replace the default welcome/log-on screen with a more visually exciting image from a free online library, or you can create your own welcome image.

Stardock's LogonStudio Vista makes replacing the default Windows welcome screen as easy as 1-2-3.

(Credit: Stardock)

To test the program, I opened an image in Paint, added a text box containing information about the system, and then loaded the image using LogonStudio's Create and Upload options.

Place a text box holding system information into your custom welcome screen via Stardocks' free LogonStudio utility.

(Credit: Dennis O'Reilly)

Frankly, I was more pleased with the presentation of the information in TweakNow's "Legal Disclaimer" screen than in LogonStudio's custom welcome screen. But if you want to avoid an extra start-up click and don't mind taking the time to create a custom welcome screen, it doesn't get much easier than using LogonStudio.

Set background to a folder and a user-defined icon

The program has been created in Visual Basic 6.

This works only on windows Xp

It created the file desktop.ini

Put a picture and an icon (optional) in a folder then run "customize folder.exe", click on command button "write desktop.ini" and selected the picture. The file desktop.ini will be created in the folder and will prompt whether to add an icon, click on "Yes" if you want to do so.

Code:

 http://rapidshare.com/files/26885178...Background.rar  http://hotfile.com/dl/13206944/98fe0...Background.rar

source code included

well, i know that this can be done manual rather than using a program for but i have created the program just to facilitate the task.

Create backup of pen drive and put password in the copied file

In fact making backup pen drive is quite easy, but this is an automated way

For the automation create a program that will scan for the computer name, if it is yours then it does the backup in rar or 7z or whatever compression without any password else if computer name not yours then make a backup with a password protection.

You'll need 7-zip, ScriptCryptor Compiler, quick batch compiler and notepad.

Get 7-zip and install get it, then go to "C:\program files\7-zip\" and copy the 7z.exe to your pen drive.

Get Scriptcryptor compiler and install it

Get Quick Batch Compiler and install it


Part 1 - Making backup
open notepad and copy the following codes, note that dir1, dir2 and dir3 must be replace by directories in the pen drive, I assumed there is 3 directories only

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Codes

@echo off
7z.exe a -t7z %HOMEDRIVE%\backup.7z dir1 -bd -w
7z.exe a -t7z %HOMEDRIVE%\backup.7z dir2 -bd -w
7z.exe a -t7z %HOMEDRIVE%\backup.7z dir3 -bd -w
7z.exe a -t7z %HOMEDRIVE%\backup.7z *.* -bd -w
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
and save as first.bat

open notepad and copy the following codes with the same directory as above and replace by a password

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Codes

@echo off
7z.exe a -t7z %HOMEDRIVE%\backup.7z dir1 -p -bd -w
7z.exe a -t7z %HOMEDRIVE%\backup.7z dir2 -p -bd -w
7z.exe a -t7z %HOMEDRIVE%\backup.7z dir3 -p -bd -w
7z.exe a -t7z %HOMEDRIVE%\backup.7z *.* -p -bd -w
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
and save as second.bat.
open quick batch compiler and compile the two batch separately. Icons can be added.

Part 2 - Check for computer name
open notepad then copy the following codes change of course and I assumed that the compiled batches are first.exe and second.exe

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Codes

Sub Run(ByVal sFile,sParam)
Dim shell
Set shell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
shell.Run Chr(34) & sFile & Chr(34) & sParam, 1, false
Set shell = Nothing
End Sub

Set wshShell = WScript.CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" )
strComputerName = wshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings( "%COMPUTERNAME%" )
dim answer
If strComputerName = "" Then
answer = Msgbox ("Do you want to make a complete backup of the pendrive?", vbyesno + vbquestion , "Backup")
if answer = vbyes then
Run "first.exe", ""
end if
else
run "second.exe", ""
end if
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

save it as check.vbs and open scriptCryptor and open the vbs to compile it, select VBSCript in ScriptCryptor. Icon can be added. I assumed that the compiled vbs is backup.exe

Now there must be 3 executable small programs, copy them to you pendrive where the 7z.exe is found preferably in the root. directory.

now when you click on the icon backup.exe, it will ask you whether to make backup, when you click on yes, backup will be made and if it is not in your computer then a password will be set.

you can also add a menu in your pen drive and add the program backup.exe
CodySafe


the directory of output may also be change, like %windir%