Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Finding bottleneck is a very complicated task, but it is more complicated if we talk about what happens at boot times.
Have a slow boot computer?  Continue reading and you will find how to solve it
Don’t forget to leave a comment including what process is consuming your CPU.

The post is written using Windows 7 but this work for Windows XP or Windows Vista.

First you have to download the free Sysinternals process monitor utility.

Move the cursor to the downloaded program and press the right mouse button, then you select Extract All as you see on the image:

Extract it in the folder you wish. Now run the Process Monitor Program using Run as administrator:

Once it opens, go to the file menu and deselect capture events:

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If you use iTunes and you have two or more PCs in your house, you will likely, at some point, encounter the 5 computer authorization limit imposed by iTunes. There are a number of times when I’ve either replaced my PC or reformatted my hard drive and I’ve forgotten to deauthorize iTunes before doing so. This really is not the end of the world; however, if you do reach the five computer limit, your only choice is to deauthorize all five computers on your iTunes account, which can be a pain because you need to add them back again. This guide serves as a reminder to deauthorise iTunes on your iTunes account before you reformat your hard drive or get a new PC.

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Yesterday, I shared some steps I take to set up a Windows 7 machine the right way. Windows Guides reader, Gene, recently sent me this really useful guide on how to set up a computer and I’d like to share it with you.

Here’s an excerpt from the guide:

I have had many questions and times when I had to set up a new computer that someone had just bought either from a store or a website and it arrived on their doorstep. The following is the procedure that I use to make sure that the system is ready to put online and available for the internet to start trying to be used in a botnet or hit with all the virus’s that are out there looking for new systems that someone has not set up to stop them. I am not by anyway the expert as this is just the way I do it and there are probably other ways and systems to do it also but I don’t have access to them.

How to Set Up a New Computer (PDF 311 KB)

(Right click and Save as…)

When you first set up a Windows 7 machine, there are a few key things you should do. Whether you just installed a clean version of Windows 7 or bought a brand-name PC from the store with Windows 7 preinstalled, this guide will help you configure your PC for optimal use. Please note: even if you don’t have a “fresh” installation of Windows 7, most of these steps will apply.

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New to using the command prompt? Check out the Windows Command Prompt Beginner’s Guide

Windows Guides subscriber, Engineer, submitted the following guide and shows us how to change file associations using the command prompt:

Dear colleagues, many of us get problems when your registry gets corrupted or settings get changed and you have mixed up extensions associated with the wrong programs. Well, don’t panic–everything is easy, we are here to raise and offer up solution to make your life easy. I will explain how to disassociate a file that has been wrongly associated with the wrong program:

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Are you a regular user of the Event Viewer in Windows 7? Ever wonder why Microsoft haven’t programmed it to clear itself after a certain amount of entries or time?

As it stands right now, I have tens of thousands of entries in the Event Viewer which is unnecessary and bogs down the loading time. Maybe for a corporate administrator this is required but for average Joe, it isn’t.

What is the Event Viewer?

“Windows NT has featured event logs since its original release in 1993. Applications and operating system components can make use of this centralized log service to report events that have taken place, such as a failure to start a component or complete an action. The system defines three log sources:

• “System”
• “Application”
• “Security”

Microsoft intends the System and Application log sources for use by the Windows operating system and Windows applications respectively. Only the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (lsass.exe) can directly write to the Security log.”

With that out of the way, on with the guide to show you how to clear the Event Viewer.
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