Mike's Mostly Tech blog

Upgrade Windows 7 from Release Candidate or RTM version

Many of you have been running Windows 7 since the first Beta and moved onto the public Release Candidate. They were offered to the general public as a free ‘beta’ or taste test of the new OS.
Windows 7 is, in my opinion, a huge step up from Vista in virtually every area.

But as you know – or should know, The RC expires in March of 2010! By that time you will have had to have installed the retail version or you will be warned by the machine shutting off every two hours. When the free Release Candidate begins to expire you can’t even do an upgrade install of Windows 7, you will have to either re-install Windows Vista first, or buy a standalone version of Windows 7!

So let’s get with the upgrading.
First let me point out that a ‘fresh/clean’ install is almost always the best way to go. However there are times when an upgrade makes a lot of sense. Such as when you had to ‘tweak’ a special driver, or have massive amounts of applications installed and uniquely configured, or simply just have everything ‘just the way you want it’.

A note on Windows 7 pricing:
The Windows 7 Family Pack, consists of 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade media Setup discs and a single product key which can be used to activate three copies of the OS on three different PCs! The Family Pack costs $150, or just $30 more than a single copy of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade. It’s kind of a no-brainer to me.

OK on to the upgrade process:

Copy of all of the files from the retail disc to a folder on your hard drive I called it “Win7Upgrade”
Navigate to and then open the “sources” directory in that folder, and look for a file called “cversion.ini”.
Right-click and choose ‘open with’ and choose ‘Notepad’. You may also launch Notepad and choose File>Open and select that file.
Change the number 7233 to read 7000 (you’re telling it the minimum version that’s allowed to upgrade). Save it.

Right, now you’re almost there.
One more thing you may have to do.

When doing an upgrade MS limits you to what ‘type or flavor’ of the OS you can upgrade to.
Example; Vista Home Premium can only be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 RC(and therefore ‘Ultimate’) can only go to Windows 7 Ultimate etc.
BUT HERE IS THE GREAT PART!
That is not entirely true!
You can upgrade to a different version with a simple registry adjustment.

Open a command promt on your Vista or (Windows 7 Release Candidate) machine and type in:

Regedit

Navigate to HKLM(HKEY_Local_Machine)Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\ CurrentVersion

Change EditionID on the reg key from “Ultimate” to “[youreditionhere]”
and
Change ProductName on the reg key from Windows 7 Ultimate to “Windows 7 [youreditionhere]”
(minus the quotes of course)

Example:

EdittionID Professional

ProductName Windows 7 Professional

Close the registry editor, restart and do your install.
I have used this trick to upgrade some of our corporate Netbooks that came with Windows 7 Starter to our Volume License version of Window 7 Enterprise.

Remember you will have to have a valid install key/license for what ever version you install AND you will have to activate it. You won’t be able to use the same key on a bunch of machines.
That’s it.

Maximum PC has an article that details some of the steps above in a little more detail. Before you try any of these tricks you should check out this article too.

They also have a fantastically easy to walkthrough of how to boot and install from a USB.

Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows has a great article on how to do a Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media

Well that’s all.
Hope you find this information usefull.
Here is some great stuff on utilizing many of the features in Windows 7. I have also put a ‘short-cut’ image that can be printed out too.

Happy computing
Peace

Google Docs Exporting

As most of you know I am a huge fan of Google web apps – Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs.
By being available nearly everywhere (with Internet connection that is) they greatly enhance productivity.
Google docs is a great tool for putting up reference information such as technical walk throughs, How-To’s, and documents and forms that are needed all the time from different locaitons and the like.
Because my natural paranoia though, I don’t put up sensitive information into Google Docs. And I download my Gmail a few times a week to Outlook. Google (and all ‘cloud services’ – MSN, Yahoo etc.) go offline or are sometimes not available, and as I have written before, the security risk of the cloud is still very real.

If you have lot’s of documents in Google Docs and you would like to export them Google has made that MUCH easier now.
Now you can export all your documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDFs from Google Docs in a siungle ZIP archive.
Perfect for making sure your documents are available whether or not Google is available.
Check out this walk through.
Google Batch Export

Bogus and Malicious emails

Here is a reminder.

Let’s all keep ourselve and our data and systems safe.
I have just recently seen numerous emails comming in supposedly from UPS containing trojan/infected files!!
If you are not expecting and ‘EXPLICIT’ file in an email from a TRUSTED person.

DO NOT OPEN/RUN OR DOWNLOAD IT!!
Info on some here.

Legitimate vendors – eBay, ups, fed-ex amazon etc. will send you notice that you have invoices, receipts, shipping info etc. ready for you viewing.

BUT do not click on links provided in emails requesting personal information – they can contain links to bogus/phishishing sites! [sites that mask as legitimate but instead ‘steal/get you to give them your personal information]

If the email is from a true valid vendor you should be able to go to the appropriate vendor site by typing in the web address into your web browser and logging into your account and checking ‘messages/status etc.

I have spent a lot of time recently cleaning up systems that people inadvertently infected with spy ware/malware. And by trying to ‘fix’ the problem by themselves many of these folks have only infected/wrecked their machines more dramatically.

There are LOADS of malicious emails out there claiming to be ‘security updates/upgrades’ or Outlook system updates etc. that are cleverly (dastardly actually) masked (spoofed) as comming from within your organization, or some other trusted entity (often Microsoft).

Here is a good article on what some of these look like. Here is another. And still another.
You get the idea I hope.
They vary but the result is the same – you infect your system and your entire network with a ‘backdoor’ trojan.
These types of emails are very dangerous ‘phishin’ attacks designed to place a trojan silently onto your machine.

Once again please NEVER click on a link with in an email! From anyone.

The safest thing to do is call the person suposedly sending the email and verify it’s validity, or simply type the address directly into your browser.

As always I hope that any of you who read this have current Antivirus and Anti spyware software installed and most importantly keep them updated daily. And have them currently running.
While there may be advertisements listed on my site for anti-spyware and anti-virus protection, I can’t always control who or what they are for. I can however, recommend the links below.
My recomendations are as follows:

For a very, very good Antivirus and spyware solution (and free at that):

http://free-antivirus.eeye.com/

Their solution – Blink is fantastic.

You may also have Symantec/Norton, McAfee or AVG installed – Great!! but is it updated daily?

http://www.symantec.com/business/security_response/definitions.jsp

http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?cid=45702

http://www.grisoft.com/us.download-update

Another super free and great anti-spyware is Spybot Search and Destroy (Spybot S&D;).

I have used this to successfully fix/repair dozens of machines.

Beware though there are many ‘bogus/extortion’ appliations that are trying to trade off the ‘Spybot’ name.

The home to the one and only freeware SpyBot Search & Destroy is:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/index.html

And a very highly rated anti-spyware package by PCWeek is Spyware Doctor. Not free but worth the price:
http://www.pctools.com/spyware-doctor-antivirus/

Google Wave

I have been messing with Wave for a short time now and I can tell you it is ‘neat’, and powerful, but fairly hard for the average joe to understand. I think the potential is huge; if I can just figure out how I will actually use it. 🙂

Google Wave was designed by software engineers to solve a problem that didn’t really exist till they created it. A lot like Twitter. And most of you know how I feel about that. This guy has good rundown of the idiocy of Twitter. But I digress..

Google Wave looks to be a great help to people who regularly and continually need to collaborate in a ‘live’ environment. Like software engineers! Go figure.
It combines a live very powerful Wiki, email and documents in one single point in ‘real time’. For people in businesses that require lots of quick correspondance to work on and complete projects this could be a big help. Likewise for social groups (PTA, Boy Scouts, Soccer Club, Business Alliance etc.) to keep events organized this may prove very powerful.

I like the ability to ‘drag and drop’ files right into a wave.

Here is Google’s best description I’ve seen to date.

LifeHacker has a good post about how people are actually using it in various scenarios here.

It has been hyped to no end by Google and the media. Check it out for your self. You may find a good use for it you may not, who knows.

You may get an invite soon if you are reading this; I ‘nominated’ a lot of my contact list. 🙂

Anyways have fun all.
Peace.

Latest Virtual Machine tools and tips

As some of you know I have been using VMware for years to create and manage virtual machines. It is one of the best ways I know to evaluate operating systems and configurations with out messing up a ‘live’ system. Using VMware (and the VMWare converter) I can also convert Acronis images to Virtual machines, enabling me to test service pack updates and application upgrades. I even have several OS X VM’s I use too. Look here and here.

I also use Virtual Server 2005R2 on my server/home workdation (for XP it’s called MS virtual PC 2005) and now Hyper V for 2008 server. Using MS Virtual server I have been able to download and evaluate various full blown MS products extremely easily by just downloading a pre-made VHDs from MS and adding them to the virtual server. Things like, Win2008R2, Exchange 2007 and 2010, SQL2008 and many more operating systems applications and configurations.

There is now an updated tool available from Sysinternals (who where swallowed up by MS) to actually create complete VHD’s (virtual hard drives) from your existing running systems!
These can be used as backups, for fail over safety, or testing purposes too. The vhd’s can be added to Virtual server, Virtual PC and Hyper V VERY easily. And they will not require another activation as is nearly always necessary when using VMware.

Here is very good article from LifeHacker with a quick rundown of it:
http://lifehacker.com/5377399/disk2vhd-turns-your-pc-into-a-virtual-machine

This article prompted me to revisit this, so I decided to see how well it would work with my office machine, which I just happened to have sitting on my desk here at home.
I downloaded and copied the new Disk2vhd app to the laptop, ran the application to create the vhd and saved the vhd to a share on my home server. After the vhd was created I launched the MS Virtual Server Administration console on my server (a localmachine website), ‘created’ a new vm and added the vhd, set up the network options and started it.
And bam, it works like a champ! I was even able to connect from the VM to my office via VPN and run my ‘Cisco SoftPhone’!

Now, if you have no desire to try this just take off now, sorry for wasting your time.
But for any of you fellow techies that want to learn or experience something new, here is more info.
Latest version of Disk2vhd:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

MS VirtualPC 2007:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/support/virtual-pc-2007.aspx

or:Virtual Server 2005 R2:Info:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/

More info:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualserver/default.aspx

Download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID;=bc49c7c8-4840-4e67-8dc4-1e6e218acce4

Or if you are already using Windows 2008 Server you can use Hyper V:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/default.aspx

As always if you do not understand something, take the time to read about it and learn it. If you still don’t get it, read some more. Maybe a lot more. If you try something and is doesn’t work. Try this http://www.google.com/ and type in your question. But don’t type it to me 🙂

Other notes:If you don’t have a modern machine with modern processor (Intel core2duo, Athlon multi-core or better) and plenty of RAM, don’t even think about trying to create a virtual machines. It will be slower than a 1995 Packard Bell.

Peace

Portable tools for Procuctivity and System Recovery

I have a few custom bootable USB recovery sticks containing Hiren’s Boot CD, UBCD4Win and ERD that have recovery consoles along with a WinPE (Mini XP) environment that I use to recover and repair all sorts of Windows issues.
On my USB drive I have loaded hundreds of applications; some for use in the WinPE/Recovery mode (AV/Antispyware system and Troubleshooting apps) and many, many more for use in ‘tweaking/setting up’ a proper secure system.
I also use both of these two tools listed below; sometimes in the PE environment and also in Windows.

Even if you don’t have (need or want) a bootable USB recovery stick, these two utilities – Liberkey and NirLauncher – are fantastic tools to have on a USB drive.

Both give you tons of ‘portable applications’ you can bring with you to any Windows machine. Just plug in your USB drive and you can access loads of portable applications.
Liberkey:
http://www.liberkey.com/en/les-atouts-majeurs-de-la-liberkey.html
Download:
http://www.liberkey.com/en/download/6-liberkey-ultimate/
Nirsoft Download and integration information:
http://blog.nirsoft.net/2009/10/04/beta-version-of-nirlauncher-package-is-available-to-download/

Hiren’s:
http://www.hirensbootcd.net/
To creat a bootable USB drive with Hirens:
http://www.hirensbootcd.net/usb-booting.html
UBCD4Win:
http://www.ubcd4win.com/
UBCD4Win to USB:
http://techacs.blogspot.com/2008/10/putting-ultimate-boot-cd-for-windows-on.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdIKHdcMA0Y

http://ubcd4win.com/forum/index.php?s=11a797e9a1ce62fe41be3e3f6b14237a&showtopic;=10411

Please note if you are going to create and use Hiren’s or UBCD4Win and create a bootable USB drive you must read and follow the directions from Hiren’s and/or UBCD4 Win’s sites.
The have listed the how to’s now in great detail. And there is plenty more info available by just checking their forums and of couse Google.
If you don’t understand all of what is required or just ‘can’t do it’ – do not even attempt it.
You may end up doing something real silly like formating your hard drive or worse some one else’s!!
Also beware if you are not sure what you are doing or are not COMPLETELY versed in all of the the recovery and system tweaking applications listed you may also kill your macine or someone else’s.
If you do hose something DO NOT CRY TO ME!
YOU ARE WARNED!

Turbo charge your wireless router!

Here is something some of you may wish and be able to do.

It is possible to take many home wireless routers and greatly increase their signal strength and output, enabling you to get coverage over a much greater area of your house or business.Again I said maybe, because I don’t know if your router is supported and some of you have a ‘technical impatience’ and difficulty following precise exacting directions. That may inhibit you. 😉
But if you are up for some learning and tweaking this is for you.

As with all things technical, there may be things and concepts you don’t understand completely or at all. If that is the case you have the greatest reference resource the world has EVER seen – the Internet! Use Google or Bing to look up what you don’t know and read, read, and read some more! Read more that the first page of results get as much information as possible.In the caveman days I used to have to go to the encyclopedia, dictionary and then the library.
But you don’t have to go anywhere and you now have more information available than has every been to any other generation.

These articles from Lifehacker.com and others describe how to ‘flash’ your wireless router to dramatically increase wireless broadcast strength and throughput, thereby distance, while at the same time adding reliability and more security.

It seems Tomato is simpler and easier to use, but does not support as many routers. DD-WRT looks like it supports more routers and has a very advanced configuration (which 99% of people will NEVER need). So the choice is yours.

Remember this information is provided with no warranty or grantees. If you mess up you could turn your router into a ‘brick’. Of course you could always reset it to the original factory settings most cases though. But if you are afraid of technical challenges and don’t want to spend the time fixing a mistake DON’T TRY THIS.

I have a friend who used Tomato and was really shocked at how much more distance he was able to get. He had a Linksys router. I do know of someone else who used Tomato on a netgear too (http://www.myopenrouter.com/blog/entry/10288/Installation-of-Tomato-Firmware-on-NETGEAR-WGR614L/)

http://lifehacker.com/178132/hack-attack-turn-your-60-router-into-a-600-router

http://lifehacker.com/344765/turn-your-60-router-into-a-user+friendly-super+router-with-tomato

Tomato’s site:http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

DD-WRT’s site:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php?title=Installation#Supported_Devices

Well happy tuning and good luck.

More On Google Voice

As I have mentioned in my emailed techtips to some of you before I love using Google Voice and most of Google’s other applications (primarily Gmail). I really like Google Voice for the ability to ‘transcribe’ my messages.
This feature also makes for a great ‘voice note taking’ application, while on the road or away from a system.
Mark Stout has put together a newer step by step on precisely how to use Goolge voice for note transcription in a little easier fashion than I previously mentioned and it is definitely worth checking out.

http://markstout.blogspot.com/2009/08/transcribing-my-own-notes-with-google.html

All kinds of Windows 7 info

I really like the new Microsoft operating system Windows 7.
I think it will have a huge impact on usability and security for all who upgrade.
It should also make it easier, from my standpoint, to administer and manage.
I expect many fewer calls for support.
A basic tour of Win 7 from Microsoft:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/tour

Below are some links that I highly recommend you check out.
There are so many great features with Win 7 that make the Operating System so much easier to use than Vista and more secure that XP.
The interface alone has all kinds of features – like the ‘dock’ and previews that make for a much more useful interface.
Behind the scenes there is of course all the stability improvements too.
Things like networking that just works, disk burning built in and faster application performance.
Take some time and really check out these articles and mess with the functions they talk about and you will be amazed!
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/the-geek-blog/what-you-should-expect-from-the-windows-7-beta/

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2009/01/12/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets.aspx
http://chris.pirillo.com/the-top-windows-7-tips-and-tricks-list/

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/01/14/windows-7-tips-and-tricks

http://www.softsailor.com/news/887-70-useful-windows-7-tips-tricks.html

For those with Vista and/or Windows 7 here is a very nice freeware utility.
Just be careful of what you tweak you could hose your system!
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-v2-a-tweak-ui-for-windows-7-vista

Some great Windows ‘hot keys’:

Windows 7 driver issues

Some of you have taken the jump to Windows 7.
As a MS Technet subscriber, I am one of those who have been using it for some time.
I believe it is the OS that Vista should have been. It takes security way beyond XP and usability way beyond Vista.
But some have still had problems with drivers not working correctly.
MS has a great – how to on how to fix this.
If a device will not work with Windows 7 drivers or you need to use older drivers you can use this method.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprohardware/thread/80cae5ee-dc98-4a2f-8284-a1ab826059b7