Windows 7 is the latest Microsoft’s operating system. It’s something made out of Windows XP and Windows Vista. I found it a stable system and the visual effects are pretty cool. Something I do not really appreciate is the User Account Control which pops up everytime you make a system related operation. I disabled the UAC at the first startup.

Windows 7 was released first to computer manufacturers and leaked on the internet. Today, a retail version is available to everyone.

There are a lot of articles on the internet written about the features of Windows 7, its advantages and disadvantages. Lots of webhsites provide information on how to download and/or activate Windows 7. I would strongly recommend you buy a genuine version of Microsoft Windows 7, so you get all the benefits and avoid all problems. (Do not make/use illegal copies)

Windows 7 not booting?

Here in this article, I’m going to discuss a special case of error in which Microsoft Windows 7 does not boot. This specific case happens when you alter the hard disk’s Master Boot Record (MBR). This might usually happen if you tried to use an activator to activate Microsoft Windows 7 (which is an illegal procedure).

There is a simple way to fix this issue. What you need to do is to fix the boot record. This is done using the Windows 7 installation disk.

“Repair Windows 7″ steps:

1. Set your computer to boot up from the DVD (using BIOS setup, or pressing a specific key on the keyboard while your PC is getting on which lets you choose what to boot from.)
2. Have the DVD inserted when booting the computer,
3. Press any key to start from the DVD once prompted,
4. Wait few moments,
5. Choose language, keyboard layout and click next,
6. Wait few seconds,
7. Click on the “Repair your computer” link on the bottom of the appearing window,
8. It scans for installed operating systems, and tries to fix it if possible, so wait a few seconds,
9. Then (if unsuccessful), click finish,
10. In the System Recovery Options dialog box, click on “Command Prompt”,
11. Locate your Windows drive by navigating the hard drive(s), let’s suppose your Windows is installed in “E:”
12. Type in these commands (and press ENTER after each command) :

    
    
    Bootsect /nt60 E: /force /mbr
    
    Bootrec /FixMbr
    
    Bootrec /FixBoot
    
    Bootrec /RebuildBcd
     

    
    

    (More info on BootRec http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392)

13. Remove the DVD and restart your computer.

Your Microsoft Windows should be alive again now!

Ref:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/showpost.php?p=138888&postcount=1228

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/showthread.php?p=87550#post87550

The problem was that I had deleted my old Windows XP, and though I had no operating system on the PC. Fortunately I did burn a copy of ” The Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows” and it saved me a lot of time throught the process.

After searching for the possible solutions, I came to the conclusion that this error did appear regularly on Vista but as the Windows 7 is quite new, there where no clear documentation on how to resolve this problem.

Possible solutions are:

Disk Errors:

• Run a “CHKDSK X: /F” on your target disk (by replacing X with the proper drive letter)
• Format the installation target partition with tools like Ultimate Boot CD
• (WORKING SOLUTION FOR MY CASE) Using the Windows 7 installation wizard, firstly “DELETE” the installation target partition, then “CREATE A NEW” partition, and then with the same wizard, “FORMAT” the partition.

Unattend Setup:

• If you run an unattended setup, you might face the “Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation” error message, and this is most probably because of improper partitioning information in the “unattend.xml” file.
• Check “Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation” error on Microsoft knowledge base for details on this scenario.
• You can also try to remove the “unattend.xml” file and re-burn the source, to proceed with an attended install.

System incompatibility:

• To make sure that your hardware is not causing this error, I would recommend you remove all uneccessary connected devices, and keep only the strict minimum.
• Check for the minimum system requirements for Windows 7 on Microsoft’s ”Windows 7 minimum system requirements“

Installation Source:

It might be possible that the DVD you’re using for the installation be corrupt, so check it once, and if possible, get yourself another installation source.

C’est le mode de contrôle fondamental d’un ordinateur. Ce dernier prend ses données d’entrées en ligne de commande, qui sont transmises à l’interpréteur en mode interactif.

Son rôle est de traiter les commandes tapées au clavier par l’utilisateur. Ces commandes, une fois interprétées, auront pour effet de réaliser telle ou telle tâche d’administration, ou bien de lancer l’exécution d’un logiciel.

L’invite elle-même consiste en quelques caractères, en début de ligne (généralement, le nom de compte de l’utilisateur, et/ou l’unité logique par défaut, et/ou le chemin par défaut, et/ou date, …), se terminant par un caractère bien connu (souvent « ] » ou « > »), invitant l’utilisateur à taper une commande.” [1]

Ouvrir une “Invite de Commande”

Sur votre clavier, appuyez sur la touch “WINDOWS” (entre ALT et CTRL) et cliquer sur la lettre “R” du clavier.

La fenetre intitulée “Executer” apparaitra,

Tapez “cmd” et cliquez sur “Executer”,

Vous avez maintenant une “Invite de commande” soit un “SHELL”.

Ref:

[1] – http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpr%C3%A9teur_de_commandes

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 recently.

Today, I installedit on my Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3, and now it’s been 3 hours I’m testing it.

So far, I’m not so happy with it. It’s a bit slower and does not look so different.

Page formattings are different on IE8, as the same websites on IE7 are better looking! Paraghraph indentation is messed up in IE8.

The new Yahoo! Mail interface does not recognize IE8, and if you try to get in anyway, you won’t be able to read your emails because you can’t access the “folders” as such object is not authorized!

On Facebook, to confirm requests as friend requests, IE8 gets very slow when you click the confirm button as it looks like a “Not Responding” application for a while and then it gets alive again!

Something new that I liked is the “Activity” feature. When you select a text on the screen a small arrow button appears and you can do many things with it like send it with Hotmail, or Blog about it on Live Spaces and other features.

Other thing is “View selected source” which is a feature already there in Firefox for years. With which you can view the source of the selected page element.

I liked the “Translate with Windows Live” activity, which opens a small inline popup with the translation to the default language which you can change too.

IE8 gives you the possibility to create your own Activities as it uses XML files to deal with different activities.

Some few graphics improvements have been done on IE8 including the “You have opened a New Tab” page, the “Quick Tabs” page.

The “Manage Add-ons” section have been changed and it look a lot better and more comprehensible and easy to use.

Microsoft change the “Phishing Filter ” to the new “Safety Filter”.

Well, now it’s been just a while that I’m using IE8, I’ll write a more detailed review later.

But till now, in overall, I’d give a 4 out of 10 to IE8.

You can download and test IE8 from Microsoft. Here’s the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/getitnow.mspx

Now You can Download Windows XP SP3 directly from Microsoft!!

That is a standalone service pack 3 update, and is not the whole Windows XP operating system.

I personally do not recommend slipstreaming the service pack, because of few version conflicts on ms dll files.

So just download and install the Service Pack 3 of Windows XP on your system before anyone else!

PLEASE Read throught the article before downloading…

The download link is  at the end of the article

This Blog is written in two languages. / Ce blog est en deux langues.

 ========English========

On 19th of February, Microsoft released a new Release Candidate of its Service Pack 3 for Windows XP

The exact version is Windows XP Service Pack 3, Release Candidate 2 Build 3311

This new service pack provides

-10% increase in performance

-Network Access Protection (taken from Vista)

-Black Hole Router Detection

and a lot of updates and hotfixes which came after the SP2 till date.

The download size is about 315MB.

Microsoft put the public release date in the first half of 2008.

Be aware that SP3 is still in beta version, so think twice before updating.

 ========Français========

Microsoft le metra en public dans la première moitié de 2008.

Soyez conscient que SP3 est encore en version bêta, donc réfléchissez bien avant de proceder à la mise à jour. 

 =============================

DOWNLOAD SP 3:  (All directly from Microsoft.com)

Windows XP SP3 Build 3311 (ENGLISH) : Download 

Windows XP SP3 Build 3311 (German) : Download

Windows XP SP3 Build 3311 (Japanese) : Download

Script to be able to get SP3 through Windows Update : Download

If you’ve bought Windows Vista online and you received Windows Vista installation files throught Windows Market palce, you’d have some filess of “.wim” and “.exe” extension. Instead of paying extra expedition and delivery charges, you can create your own Windows Vista installation DVD, which would be a Bootable installation DVD as well!

How to create a Bootable Windows Vista DVD :

1. Put the 3 downloaded files in the same directory (install.wim, boot.wim and an application X13 – 49120.exe)


For simplicity’s sake, lets suppose you put these files in a new directory named vista_flat under your C: drive. So the directory’s path is “C:\vista_flat\”



2. Launch the application “X13 – 49120.exe“. The installation wizard will create a new folder called “Vista” next to itself (here the path would be ”c:\vista_flat\vista\”) and it will fill it with all the neccessary installation files. This would need about 2.5 GB of space on your hard drive.
   
3. Once the extraction finished, the Windows Installation window will appear, please close this window and confirm the cancellation of setup.
4. Download CDimage from Gibni Downloads. I recommend saving CDimage to your “c:\vista_flat\” directory




5. Open a command prompt command prompt (browse to the directory where CDimage is located, and execute the following code:

   cdimage.exe -lVISTA_EN_DVD -m -u2 -bC:\vista_flat\Vista\boot\etfsboot.com C:\vista_flat\Vista\ C:\vista_flat\Vistax86.iso

6. The ISO image file of Windows Vista will be saved in your choosen directoy (here in c:\vista_flat)
7. Burn Windows Vista ISO file to a blank DVD using a DVD burning software of your choice. You may use Nero or Alcohol 120%. I recommend to use the minimal speed for burning.

You Windows Vista installation DVD is ready!

Download Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate

To download Windows Vista, you need 3 files, which are provided by Microsoft. Please note for using Windows Vista or any other protected software, you need legal and valid licence(s).

Download links are on the next page…