My Technology Guide

If you dual-boot or multi-boot your PC, then it might be sometime a daunting task to edit and change the boot loader entries. But there are some utilities available for both Windows and Linux platforms that makes this daunting task easy.

EasyBCD is one such freeware utility available for the Windows platform, that helps you to take control of your boot loader easily. EasyBCD lets you customize your Windows Vista or Windows 7 boot loader settings easily. Using EasyBCD, setting up and configuring dual-boot or multi-boot options between Windows 7, Windows Vista, older editions of Windows like Windows XP & Windows 2003, Linux distros like Ubuntu, BSD, and even Apple Mac OS X is an easy task.

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.

Microsoft has released the official beta version of Windows 7 SP1 at last publicly. Users who want to download and install the beta version of SP1 are first needed to register at the Evaluation Center. During registration remember to select IT or any developer related occupation to be able to download Windows 7 Service Pack 1. SP1 is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7, and are available in English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish language.

This service pack is also offered via Windows Update and in standard ISO image format, which is around 1.2 GB in size and required to be burned to a DVD first to use it.

Do you want to easily remove your User picture from Windows 7 Start Menu? Kishan Bagaria, one of our fellow mate and a member of The Windows Club Forum has came up with an one click solution. He has developed a free portable app known as Windows 7 Start Menu User Picture Remover that allows you to remove your User picture from your Windows 7 Start Menu with just one click.

To use this app, you just have to download it from his website door2windows and save it to a location on your hard drive. The download size of the app is amazingly only 441 KB for the ZIP version and 896 KB for the EXE version. After saving it, just run the app with Administrator rights and click on the Remove Start Menu User Picture button.

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.

Microsoft's new Windows Live Essentials or Wave 4 is ready to rock - in beta form. If you're interested in checking out the new releases, then visit the Live Essentials beta download page now. You can download Windows Live Essentials beta from the official website. Downloads are provided in seven different languages including English, Chinese, French and Spanish.

Two different clients are offered on the website, wlsetup-webd.exe will automatically download and install the Windows Live Essential applications, while, wlsetup-webc.exe offers a choice menu to install only specific applications as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.

X-Setup Pro is the best Windows system configuration and tweaking utility. X-Setup Pro is extremely easy to use and it allows you to nearly change 1800 hidden Windows settings and configurations that no other tweaking tool provides. X-Setup Pro wizards help you when you changing critical Windows configurations.