I have been running the Microsoft Windows office 2010 Pro Beta version until yesterday. After the official release of Microsoft Office 2010, I wanted to uninstall the Beta version but it would not uninstall. So I tried to install the new release over only to be greeted by an error message asking me to remove the pre-release or beta version first. Nice!

Luckily I remembered trusty old Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. It removed beta version in a jiff and now, I am enjoying the all-new Microsoft office 2010.

Windows Installer CleanUp Utility is a great utility to have in your toolbox. Anytime you are having an issue uninstalling a program, use this utility.

After I upgraded to Windows 7, I noticed my Quick Launch Bar disappeared. I like my Quick Launch Bar and the easy access to my favorite programs/documents it provides.

Quick Launch Bar works a little differently on Windows 7 so before creating a folder and adding it on the Taskbar, make sure to read the following thread on Windows Seven Forums: Quick Launch - Enable or Disable

Just in case, I am posting the short version here:

1. Right click on a empty space on the taskbar and click on New Tool.

2. In the Folder line, type or copy:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

3. Click on the Select Folder button.

4. You now have a Quick Launch toolbar on the taskbar.
NOTE: Click on the arrow to see your Quick Launch shortcuts.

After you have your Quick Launch Bar, you can make changes to the way it is displayed.

Incoming search terms:

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Yesterday I received my Windows 7 Launch Home Party package. I posted the photos of the package on our House Party home page.

Yes, the Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition was in the party package.

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FZ180E Laptop. Sony's eSupport site indicates:

Information about upgrade and support for Windows® 7 for the VGNFZ180E VAIO® model will be available when Windows® 7 is officially released by Microsoft. Please check back then for further information.

Hey, I will be hosting a Windows 7 Launch Party on the day Windows 7 is officially released. I need to be able install it way before then.

I am posting this using my Sony Vaio Laptop that is running the Windows 7 Ultimate I received in my House Party package. Here is how I upgraded my Sony laptop to Windows 7:

I really did not want to take the chance of losing my Vista setup and decided to first clone my hard drive and install the Windows 7 upgrade on the new hard drive. I have been thinking about upgrading my laptop's hard drive anyway. Sony laptop owners take note though: You may void your warranty if you replace your laptop's hard drive. Read your warranty first. If you follow the steps I followed, you will preserve your current hard drive in its current condition and you can swap it back in if something goes wrong.

I had already purchased a Fujitsu MHZ2320BJ-G2 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive and a APRICORN EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL 2.5" USB 2.0 Hard Drive Upgrade Kit from my favorite online shopping site:

Here are the simple steps I followed:

1. Deactivate any DRM software like iTunes.
2. Turn off the computer.
3. Take the old hard drive out.
4. Put the new hard drive in the laptop.
5. Put the old hard drive in the Apricorn's external enclosure and connect enclosure to the computer's USB port.
6. Turn the computer on, put Apricorn EZ Gig II CD in the DVD Drive and boot from CD.
7. Select the Clone Hard Drive option and follow the prompts. Make sure to check Typical Upgrade and clone your hard drive as is even if your new hard drive is larger than the old one. You can resize the partitions later. Be carefull in checking source and destination drives. Remember: Your source drive is your old drive that is connected to the USB.
8. The process, in my case, took about three hours. At the end I disconnected the Apricorn external drive and took the EZ Gig CD out and rebooted to my new hard drive.
9. Final step is to put the Windows 7 DVD and start the upgrade process.

I am happy to report that the Windows 7 upgrade process is painless. My computer did not freeze in the process and it did not take long.

All my programs, including Lotus SmartSuite which supposedly had compatibility issues in Vista, are working without any problems so far. All my settings, documents, pictures and favorites are intact. Wireless connection did not require any adjustments.

I have a better laptop with a larger and faster hard drive and a much better operating system.

Apricorn EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL EZ Upgrade Universal Notebook Hard Drive Upgrade Kit List Price: $39.00 Sale Price: $34.48 You save: $4.52 (12%)   Eligible for free shipping! Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Description

Universal Hdd Upgrade Kit F/ All Notebook Computers Pata & Sata

Features

• USB 2.0 external hard drive enclosure for Windows 2000 and XP
• Backup software compresses data to less than 1/2 its original size
• Password protection for backup images
• Includes data transfer utility for Windows, USB aux power cable, USB cable, and quick start guide
• 3-year limited warranty

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This is exciting!

Official launch day for Windows 7 is October 22, 2009.

Thousands of people will be hosting Windows 7 Launch House parties starting October 22, 2009. I am one of them.

I am a confirmed party host. As a guy who declared Windows 7 Rocks after trying the Release Candidate back in May, I am excited.

Still working on the details of the party. This is going to be good!

Here is the link to my party site: http://houseparty.com/party/188530

Every once in a while I need to install Apache http server on my pc or laptop to use as local test server. I also need to install Perl, PHP and mysql to have the complete environment to test scripts and applications before uploading them on a live server.

Ricocheting.com has a great tutorial for installing Apache, PHP and Perl on a Windows server. Last time I had to do a re-install on my PC, I followed their tutorial.

A few impressions and comments:

1) They recommend staying with the default installation of Apache and changing "DocumentRoot" later. I change the installation location to "C:\Apache" which defaults DocumentRoot to C:\Apache\htdocs. It is much better to do it this way. You will not need to modify the configuration file to set DocumentRoot. You will not need to dig into all the way to C:\Program Files\Apache\... to look at log files or configuration files either.

2) I loved their tip about where to install ActiveState Perl: "C:\usr". I used to install Perl to C:\Perl directory which forced me to change the shebang lines on scripts. Listen to this:

If you will be using Perl CGI programs and want to maintain some level of portability between both Linux machines and Windows machines, you will want to install Perl to the same location on your Windows machine that it is on most Linux machines.

For example, on a standard Linux machine, Perl is located at /usr/bin/perl and so every Perl program that I write begins with #!/usr/bin/perl. So, when I install Perl on a Windows machine, instead of installing it in the default location (which is E:\perl for ActivePerl) I install it in E:\usr so that the Perl executable is located at /usr/bin/perl. This allows me to write code on my Windows machine, then move it (without making any changes) to a Linux machine and have it run there. And vice versa.

Wow! I wish I had figured this out earlier... "#!/usr/bin/perl" works in windows if you install Perl in C:\usr directory. No, you do not need to have "C:\" on the shebang line. This will save a lot of time and headache.

3) The site also includes the lines required to be added in Apache configuration file to make CGI and PHP work. I will put a copy of these here:

To activate CGI:
Edit the Apache httpd.conf Configuration File and search for Options Indexes FollowSymLinks (about line 190) when you find it add ExecCGI to the end so it looks like

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI

To use CGI outside the cgi-bin directory, uncomment:
#AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
Also add .pl behind .cgi so 'perl' extension is also treated as cgi files.

To use PHP at the very end of the httpd.conf file add the following lines:

LoadModule php5_module "C:/php/php5apache2_2.dll"
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
PHPIniDir "C:/php"

Also Open php.ini in a text editor and scroll down about halfway through the file and look for doc_root then change it to point to whatever your Apache DocumentRoot is set to. In my case: doc_root = "C:\Apache\htdocs"

To get Apache to automatically look for an index.php, and index.pl search httpd.conf for DirectoryIndex (about line 212) and add the files you want Apache to look for when a directory is loaded (if it doesn't find any of these files, it displays folder contents). Mine looks like:

DirectoryIndex index.php index.pl index.html

They also have information on installing MySQL which is pretty straightforward.

There is one thing I would like to add here though: If you want to use DBD-MySQL package with Perl , you will notice that it is not included in the latest ActiveStatePerl distribution. You can't even install it using the GUI ppm. Here is what you need to do:

At the Command Prompt type:

ppm install http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/DBI-mysql.ppd

UPDATE on Jan 9, 2009 >>>

If you use ActiveState Perl 5.10, above link will not work either. The easiest way to do this is to start your Perl Package Manager, click on Edit -> Preferences and click on the Repositories tab. Type "http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/PPMPackages/10xx/" in Location. You just installed the Repository that has the DBD-MySQL package which will enable you to install it using your Perl ppm.

It sure will be nice to have all this info ready when I need to install Apache, Perl, PHP and MySQL on Windows next time.

Microsoft has done it again!

If you enjoyed the pain of upgrading Vista get ready for another wave of pain.

A week ago I downloaded the Vista Service Pack 1 and ran the update on my Sony laptop which halted at boot. Tried the safe mode and saw crcdisk.sys as the last entry when the computer halts. A quick search about crcsisk.sys revealed that others had the same problem and some had to go through re-installing vista to fix it. Scary stuff... Luckily I had made a set of recovery disks and a quick system restore solved the problem of not being able to boot.

So I waited for Vista Service Pack Update to be delivered by Windows update. Today, after prompting I let the update go through again. Call me brave or stupid... Guess what? My laptop halted at boot with an error message about acpi.sys being corrupt which required another recovery disk repair and rolling back the update. This is ridiculous.

Here are the results of search about Vista Service Pack Problems on Yahoo. This is scary stuff.

I just can not understand this blunder by Microsoft that is called VISTA... How is it that a new OS upgrade demands more memory, more computing power, more money to get these things and runs slower? How is it that by upgrading to a new OS you end up dumping some of your peripheral hardware because there are no drivers available? How is it that when it is time to update this new OS, it halts your computer? How can a multi-billion dollar company make such a blunder?

Six months ago, it was nearly impossible to find a new computer with Windows XP. They are easier to find now. We just ordered two with XP professional loaded from DELL.  And I heard Microsoft will discontinue Windows XP. Unbelievable! I think Vista offers a great opportunity to enter the Computer OS market for a company who can put together a reliable, feature-packed, compatible linux distro. I also hear Vista runs better on MAC. How Ironic! You got Apple building computers with INTEL chips and making them capable of running Microsoft software while Microsoft trying to turn Windows into a Mac look-alike with all the useless eye candy. First thing I do with a computer loaded with Vista is to turn off all that Aero stuff.

I hope computer and hardware manufacturers start putting some pressure on Microsoft to get its act together because their tech support lines will be getting a lot of calls after this Vista Service Pack 1 start going through the Windows Update.

UPDATE Jan 9, 2009 >>>

After I re-imaged the my hard drive to the original setup, I went through the Vista Service Pack 1 update without a problem by following the instructions on Sony Support site:

When using the Windows Update utility, the installed Microsoft Hotfix KB948343 may block the installation of the Windows Vista® Service Pack 1 (SP1) update if the following drivers are also installed:

Sigmatel Audio Version 6.10.5511.0 (or earlier)
Intel Graphics Version 7.14.10.1322 - 7.14.10.1403
UPEK finger Print Version 1.9.2.99 (or earlier)

If you are experiencing this issue, you will need to download and install the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Stand Alone KB936330 update from the Microsoft Download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b0c7136d-5ebb-413b-89c9-cb3d06d12674&DisplayLang=en.

IMPORTANT: The Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Stand Alone KB936330 file size is 434.5MB, and may take a while to download.

Incoming search terms:

• Vista Service Pack 1 Issues

When trying to run Windows Vista Help and Support, I kept getting "Internet Explorer cannot download / from windows" error with a blank Help and Support window. I needed to get to Help and Support so I can create recovery disks for my laptop.

Here is the solution I found online:

If you have been getting the dreaded "Internet Explorer cannot download / from help" error message when attempting to open Help and Support in Windows Vista, try this fix. It re-associates the .xml file type with its default settings, which may be altered by application installation routines such as the one for Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. Once you've merged this into the registry, re-launch Help and Support and it should work.

Fix Windows Vista Help and Support

The link on this post does not work but this link found on VistaClues.com works:

http://www.chris123nt.com/guides/RTM_Fixes/Fix_Help_and_Support.zip.

It is a registry patch:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml]
@="xmlfile"
"Content Type"="text/xml"
"PerceivedType"="text"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml\OpenWithList]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml\OpenWithList\winword.exe]
@=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml\PersistentHandler]
@="{7E9D8D44-6926-426F-AA2B-217A819A5CCE}"

Everytime I have an issue like this with Windows XP or Vista, I end up finding a solution and fix it and then forget about it. Well, it never fails that I face the same problem again on my computer or on another computer and I go through the same steps of searching online to find the right solution. So I decided to post these tips here for future reference. Hopefully these tips will be useful for others also.