Tag Archives: Windows

How To Get Your Window XP CD Key If You Lost It

Posted on September 11, 2009 by | Comments Off

If you’ve lost your CD Key for your current Windows installation you can get it back pretty easily. There is a program called RockXP that scans the computer for your product key and gets it out so that you can easily reinstall Windows. This is particularly handy when the computer you bought doesn’t come with the standard Windows reinstall disk, you can throw out the reinstall disk that came with your computer since it’s loaded with junk anyway and download a plain old Windows CD off the internet somewhere and use your legal product key to reinstall windows.

The program will also retrieve system passwords if you’ve forgotten them and product keys for Microsoft Office. On one computer the anti-virus software thought the application was a virus but on all of the other computers I have run it on there hasn’t been a problem. The anti-virus software that showed the false positive was Symantec’s anti-virus.

rockxp interface

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Believe it or Not Windows 98 is Still Around

Posted on March 3, 2009 by | Comments Off

windows98I got asked recently to look at a computer running Windows 98. I laughed a little but I took it and fixed it up. If you’ve still got friends or relatives living in the computer stone age here is what I did to get it back up and running to good working order. Hopefully it will help you get things working too.

First, I installed Avast!4, they support operating systems all the way down to Windows 95. Avast states on their website though that Windows 95 through NT4 will only be supported until the end of 2009.

After Avast ran it cleared up most of the virus issues but there were still some spyware issues so I installed Spybot. Currently, Spybot is fully functional in Windows 98 but I imagine the support will end soon. Spybot cleared up all of the spyware issues.

The last thing left was to clear up the missing files that were trying to load on startup, all files pointing to spyware that is no longer there. Click Start -> Run and type msconfig then click go through the startup list and uncheck any items that might be related to the spyware that was on the system.

Just to make sure the system was clean I ran CCleaner. This way I know there are no little baddies hanging around in the registry and the rest of the system is cleaned up.

If you’ve got some tips for others on fixing up some of those older computers leave them in the comments.

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Windows 7 Beta – A Week Of Use

Posted on January 15, 2009 by | Comments Off

I’ve been using Windows 7 beta as my primary OS for about a week now. So far it is a great OS. When I booted up I didn’t have a single device that was missing a driver. There were even a few driver updates available through Windows Update which was surprising. One of the biggest changes is the task bar. When you first get into Windows 7 there are a few icons that look like your standard quick launch icons. When you click on one you expect a new task bar item to appear, instead what you get is a square around the icon to let you know there is a window open. If you have a second window open (or a second tab open in IE) a second square shows up under the first one and a third adds if you open another window (see image below). When you hover your mouse over the icon you then get to see a preview of the window you want to open. It’s great eye candy but it is a little more time consuming to select the window you want.

Another cool feature in the task bar is the right click menu on IE and the Windows Explorer button. When you right click IE you get a list of sites you’ve visited recently giving you the ability to easily get to where you want to be in a single click. The same goes for the Explorer button, when you right click you get a list of recently opened folders making the folders you visit a lot much easier to get to.

I installed a lot of the applications that I use on a regular basis and they all nearly work perfectly. I’ve installed Firfox 3.05, NVU, VLC, Combat Arms and Skype. After I installed Skype I got a message from Windows letting me know there is a compatibility issue and it offered a suggestion for me. It said to download the newest Skype beta, so I did and it works wonderfully. Combat Arms runs a little slow in Windows 7 and I suspect that is mostly due to drivers which I don’t expect to be fully functioning until after the OS is fully released.

This being a beta I am very surprised at the stability of the OS. I have been using it for a week and have only had to restart the OS twice, each time was because the Task Manager would freeze up on me. Other than that I feel like I am using a finally finished version of Windows Vista.

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Five Best Windows Backup Tools

Posted on July 17, 2008 by | 2 Comments

Backing up your computer is important. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten requests from friends, family, co-workers, homeless people, etc., to get their stuff off of their dead drive. Unfortunately short of spending thousands of dollars on some data recovery services there’s nothing I can do. Look over each of these choices, pick the one you like the best and use it!

MozyHome (Freeware and Shareware)
MozyHome does unlimited online backup for just $5 a month. Mozy is a set-it-and-forget-it solution, and the setting up part is incredibly simple. If you’re just looking to give it a test run or you don’t need unlimited backup, sign up for MozyHome Free, which gives you 2GB of backup space for gratis.


Cobian Backup (Donationware)
Cobian Backup is free backup software that supports scheduled local and remote backups. Users love its rich feature set, as Cobian supports nearly every feature of its shareware alternatives. All current versions of Cobian are freeware, but the latest (version 9) is no longer open source.

SyncBack (Freeware and Shareware)
SyncBack is full-featured backup software available in both freeware and shareware versions. The freeware SyncBack has a few limitations that the shareware version doesn’t, like inability to backup open files, but both versions offer extensive features—including backup profiles and options for local and remote backups. The shareware version of SyncBack will set you back $30.

Acronis True Image (Shareware)
Acronis True Image creates full live disk images of your PC so that when the time comes that you need to restore a backup, you’re not just restoring files—you’re restoring an exact copy of your PC as it was. The latest version of Acronis supports excluding individual files and folders from your image or you can set criteria for the data that you want to back up (in case you don’t actually want to include everything in your disk image). Acronis True Image costs $50 and a 15 day trial version is available.


Carbonite (Shareware)
Carbonite is an online backup solution similar to MozyHome. For $50 a year, Carbonite provides unlimited online backup and is another set-it-and-forget-it solution which offers off-site backup to remote servers. The biggest difference between Carbonite and Mozy is the price: Carbonite is $50 per year upfront compared to MozyHome’s $5 per month, which adds up to $60 a year but doesn’t lock you into a year. Carbonite does not offer a free version like MozyHome Free’s 2GBs, but there is a 15-day trial. For more user comparisons, check out the Carbonite vs. Mozy faceoff.

[via Lifehacker]

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Windows XP SP3 Continuous Reboot Fix

Posted on May 17, 2008 by | Comments Off

If you are suffering from the continuous reboot problem that seems to be plaguing AMD users that installed SP3 then I can help, I hope.

I have an AMD 64-Bit processor, I was using 64-bit Ubuntu but I decided to switch back to XP for a little while. After I got finished installing things looked good until I installed my nForce drivers. After the reboot I couldn’t get back into Windows.

After doing some research it turns out this was also a problem when SP2 came out and somehow made its way into SP3 as well. The way I fixed it though is by renaming a file, c:\windows\system32\drivers\intelppm.sys to intelppm.bak. Unfortunately if you’re experiencing this problem you won’t be able to get into safe mode either. I had to boot into a pre-installation environment to rename the file. Once I did though I was able to boot up the computer without any errors.

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