My Technology Guide

Microsoft few days back officially released Windows 7 SP1 Beta for public download. The beta version will expire on June 30, 2011 and after the expiration, users will have to either upgrade to a newer build or uninstall and return to the RTM build.

Users will not be able to upgrade directly from SP1 Beta to the final version of Windows 7 SP1. So, if a user installs SP1 Beta, then they will have to first uninstall it before installing SP1 final. If Windows 7 SP1 Beta uninstall routine fails, then the user has to do a clean install of Windows 7, which no user will like. Anyways, Microsoft has provided a simple guide on how to uninstall and remove Windows 7 SP1 Beta and revert back to the RTM build.

At the Google Chrome Help Forum, Google employee Blair has posted a list of software identified to crash Google Chrome web browser. In the list users will also find some popular software such as WinMount, NVIDIA NTune, SpeedBit Video Accelerator, etc listed along with others that causes instability in Google Chrome.

Blair suggests to temporarily disable the marked softwares and see if it resolved Chrome crashes. Blair also listed some softwares, for which you can simply disable some of its functions without disabling the software completely to solve crash issues.

For protecting our computers from security and malware threats we sometimes experiment with different security suites to see which one is better than the other. In this process, we install and uninstall these security suites as it is always advisable to use only one antivirus or a full featured security suite at a time in our system. More than one antivirus or a full featured security suite that includes everything from a firewall, antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-malware, and more can cause lots of performance and stability issues.

Although we can easily uninstall the existing security program using Windows built-in "Add/Remove Programs" (or Programs and Features in Windows Vista and 7) applet but it's not a perfect solution. Sometimes the uninstaller of the program doesn't remove all the components and registry keys installed by the security program completely, this can hamper with the newly installed security program and may even cause system instability and BSOD's.

Most modern hard disks that are available today comes with a built-in feature called Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, or S.M.A.R.T. (sometimes written as SMART). Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology or SMART. The hard disk's integrated controller works with various sensors to check various aspects of the hard drive's performance, from this information, S.M.A.R.T. determines if the hard drive is behaving normally or not.

This helps the operating system keep an eye on the health of the drive, by checking its operating temperature, how long it takes to spin up to full speed, whether it encounters any read errors, and so on. When a failure is anticipated by S.M.A.R.T., the drive is typically replaced and returned to the manufacturer, who then analyzes these dead drives to discover where faults lie and how to prevent them from recurring on the next generation of hard disk drives.

You have just brought a brand new PC or laptop or netbook that came pre-installed with Windows 7 from one of the major manufacturers, viz. Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Toshiba, etc. But the problem that you face when buying from them is you won't receive any Windows 7 installation media with your purchase. Instead, you will receive either a "recovery disc" (if you’re that much lucky) with your purchase or you'll have a "recovery partition" built-in your machine.

You may ask what is the problem here, as you can easily recover your Windows 7 or Vista, using the "recovery disk" or "recovery partition." Well, the problem is, when you use the recovery disks/recovery partition to recover Windows 7 or Vista, it will delete all your files and restore your computer to the state it was in when you first purchased it.

Using Windows Task Manager and many other third-party task manager replacements you can never kill more than one process at a time. Sometimes, Windows built-in Task Manger fails to kill or terminate a process which is hanged or a process related to malware or other malicious programs. But, today I found a small, free portable application that can end multiple processes and also stop those stubborn processes which are hard to kill.

KillProcess is the application I am talking about. This application is "an assassin of the extreme kind". It can kill almost any process running on a Windows machine, which even includes running services in the computer system. KillProcess can even terminate protected Microsoft system processes without any hiccups!

Few days ago I wrote about FixWin, a free application which helps you fix a number of Windows 7 and Windows Vista errors. It's a lot like Microsoft's web-based FixIt solutions. Windows users are now having another option to fix common Windows problems and this one comes straight from Microsoft stable. Microsoft Fix it Center Client contains troubleshooters that help detect issues on target PCs and solve them on demand or proactively.

Microsoft's new Fix It Center is a program which you can download for free. Fix It Center is currently in Beta stage and provides automatic fixes for a wide range of Windows bugs, problems and annoyances. You just need to choose the issue you need to fix, click Run, and follow the prompts (if any) by the program. The simple step-by-step instructions are very easy to follow and even your family and friends who are not so expert of computers can correct these problems with ease.