so I think I know the source of my problem for my computer freezing. I noticed that my computer will never go to sleep now, even though its set to sleep in 1 hour. And if I leave it untouched for somewhere around that time my computer freezes and it does not respond. So I believe something is up with my power management. Any way to fix that?

 

your motherboard

 

A clean install wouldn't hurt to try but i don't know how much stuff you got on there. Its a pain when you have a computer all setup and how you like it and then have to reload

 

I have a similar problem, but I know the hanging is due to Firefox.

 

Yea, I didnt want to come to that, but I may just do that, since school is over now I kinda have the time.

I got a question though, when I do a complete restore, I will go back to vista since thats what came with my computer. Now I have windows 7, I bought it from that student deal microsoft had back in december. I still have the downloaded file on my computer, so should I save that to a disc or hard drive, do a complete restore, then install windows 7 again?? I hope that file has the setup on in and that it just doesnt disappear. Also for the key, I think I have it on my phone, i have some 25 digit key on my phone, and windows 7 does have a 25 digit key. But what happens if thats not it, is there anyway to get a lost key?? Can I find out my windows key from my computer?

 

find key with magic jellybean keyfinder.

the windows 7 "file" you are talking about that you used to install win7. is it an iso file? Depending on what you have, you may be able to do a clean install of win7 from the win7 install or if that doesn't work, you could restore to vista and when you run the upgrade just tell it to do a clean install. However, in doing so, you will have a win7 install only, no apps or drivers. You would have to manually load those back.

 

Yes : google: windows 7 key finder. If you have that install program and a spare 4gb flash drive or external drive you can make a bootable flash drive with the 7 install files using www.wintoflash.com

Let me know what file they gave you and I'll help you make it bootable since I've done it twice. Did they give you a disc image .IMG file or was it a folder with three files named box1 box2 and setup.exe

 

 

These are the files I have:

 

ok good, you're halfway there! now you have two options using a 4GB flash drive OR making a bootable DVD out of the expandedsetup folder. Let me know which you can do. FYI the flahs drive router is easier to do and it's a quicker install.

 

alright, I think my dad has a 8gb flash drive, I'll ask him.

 

you're gonna have to wipe the flash drive so backup any info on it first and then go to www.wintoflash.com download the latest version which I think is 0.6.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0005 (you'll get it when you see it)

so download that unzip it and run the program wintoflash.exe (it doesn't require an install) click on run wizard then for windows directory point it to the expandedsetup folder you showed above. then set your flash drive as the destination drive and start the transfer. It might give you some errors saying that your flash drive is in use. Just click retry until it works, it'll work. It doesn't always pop up those errors though but just click through them and you'll be fine.

then once it's done insert flash drive into your laptop and hit whatever key it is you need to hit to bring up your boot menu and boot from your flash drive and make sure you've backed up your data and deactivated any necessary software from your laptop cause you should do a clean (or "custom" as MS calls it) install make sure you reformat your drive too just to be sure. that will give you a clean slate, and I bet most if not all of your drivers will be installed. Everytime I've installed windows 7 it's gotten all the drivers automatically but you may want to check with Sony for newer versions just in case.

If you have to go the DVD route let me know cause it's totally different process.

 

Yea it looks like I'm going to have to go the DVD route.

BTW, is it just possible to run it from the files I have? Because thats how I upgraded it. I didnt need to make a DVD or anything

 

you could but I wouldn't recommend it. Cause you system is already fuXored so upgrading a fuXored system probably isn't going to unfuXorify it. The most sure way is to do a clean install.

I'll give you instructions a little later....

 

I'm trying to think of a way to make the Windows computer name of our new work machines blatantly obvious to the end user. The idea being to help speed up support calls. Our end users have a wide variety of office and desk configurations so it's pretty likely that a simple physical label on the machine would be out of view or hard to get to. Hence my desire to do this "electronically" somehow.

I should clarify that by making the computer name "blatantly obvious" I'm talking about making it either always visible or no more than one click (or double click) away. Just curious if anyone has any ideas.

 

Label to the forehead.

 

make a desktop background image with the name of the system or whatever pertinent info you need...

ugly, yet effective

and disable changing the desktop background in group policy

 

ok thanks stunna

 

This registry hack changes the label "My Computer" (which is usually on the desktop or in the Start menu) to the current user name and computer name:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/rename_m...on_desktop.htm

 

Nice!

 

That reg hack is a good one.

I was going to say just have them press the windows key and pause/break.

 

then they'd be hunting for 10 minutes trying to find the pause/break key

 

not when the support person tells them where it is.

The last place I worked just added and entry to the start menu and it brought up something similar to msinfo32 with some additional proprietary info.

I was just suggesting a way that kept somebody from writing a script.

 

Then it would be 15 minutes.

 

That could possibly lead to riots considering some of the people who will be using the computers. Let's just say that they're quite influential but their computing priorities are not grounded in their work.

Changing the name of the "Computer" shell object was my initial reaction as well since I remembered doing that for a few XP machines many years ago. The huge problem with this is that you're probably going to break 3/4 of all instructions on how to do anything on a Windows machine if you remove 'Computer' or 'My Computer.'

 

I don't mean the support in Calcutta.

 

Office 2010 is out in stores today! I'm gonna go pick up a copy. I'm getting the box copy of Home and business edition

 

You underestimate end users.

 

OK so you still have that expandedsetup folder and within it is all the files you need to install 7 but you can't boot from the folder so we're going to take the folder put it on a dvd and make the dvd bootable then everything will work. For this you're going to need ImgBurn a popular free disc image ripper/burner and a boot image which is the little file that makes the dvd bootable.

You can download ImgBurn here: http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download

I uploaded the same boot image file that I took from a Windows 7 install disc to make my own bootable DVD from my expandedsetup folder. It's here
http://depositfiles.com/files/mgc2guypz

Once ImgBurn is installed launch and from the options it shows you choose write files/folders to disc.
Then click the browse for a folder button and choose the expandedsetup folder.
Click on the advanced tab then click bootable disc.
Click "make image bootable"
Then browse for the Boot Image you just downloaded and use that
Then insert a blank DVD and click the folder to dvd icon in the lower left and make sure you leave verify checked.
Then it should ask you what you want to name the disc, call it what you want.
It will see that you're making a windows install disc and it might recommend to change a setting automatically for you, take the recommendation.
Also it might ask if you want to make the expandedsetup folder the root folder or something to that effect, you do so say yes if it asks then after that it should start burning.


That should be it

 

sweet I'm burning the disc now. After I'm gonna put all my files important files I wanna keep to my hard drive, then when I want to run the disc, do I just turn the computer off, then on and will it automatically see the dvd in there or am I suppose to press some F button to get to the boot menu?

 

depends on how your boot order is setup but it should say "press any key to boot from DVD"

 

Okk I'm now on the clean install!

this is my first time doing a clean install, and I didnt know how clean a clean install actually was till now. Theres absolutely nothing but the bare essesntials haha. Gotta get my drivers now. I can't even scroll on my track pad anymore haha!

 

run windows update it should find most of your drivers

also download windows essentials which has the email, photo, movie, IM programs (you can choose which ones to install)

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials?os=win7

 

hmm surprised they dont have microsoft security essentials up there.

Hmm talking about the essentials, it got an update recently right? Suppose to be really good now?? How does it compare to google's Picasa, and Apple's photobooth/mobile me.

I'm comparing the photos part btw.

edit: all I really need from essentials is the mail, the photos I'm asking because of my dad, he currently uses picasa right now.

 

umm ok potential problem here? My hard drive says I only have 84gb of free space out of 224 gb, thats exactly what I had left on my computer before I did the clean install. But there is nothing on my computer.

 

Ok soo all that space that is being taken up is in a folder called windows.old, which has most of my old files. Not my videos or music or stuff but like all the other stuff. Can I delete that?

 

Like I said, you will lose all your data.

 

Yea, I know that, but whats with the windows.old folder? Should I delete that or should I take some stuff from there?? There's a driver folder in there, that has drivers for my graphics card among some other things. Is my computer using any of those?

 

if there's a documents and settings(the folder might be called users actually) folder inside the windows.old folder then all your stuff is probably in there. there should be a folder within the documents and settings folder with the name of your previous profile. Inside that, you should see folders for my documents/desktop/favorites/etc.

More info on where stuff is when you reinstall.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932912

 

Sorry, I am just here for the doom and gloom....