What if you are working away on your computer and suddenly your aunt calls and says that her computer has a virus and wants you to wave your magic wand, through the telephone line and make it all better? Well, you would probably do the same thing I did and start walking her through the steps to download and run some virus scan and malware protection software. I even went as far as running the scan on my system too, so that I could actually walk her through each step. Imagine the terror in my eyes when something in the process made my computer crash, hang, and refuse to boot. Fortunately, there is...

This is the last article in my series on virtualization using Windows 7. With Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate, you have the option of running XP mode. Based on virtualization technology using Windows Virtual PC you can have a virtual XP environment to run your legacy applications. Why is XP mode only available with the Ultimate and Professional versions of Windows 7? Because Windows 7 already has a built in compatibility feature which should enable most home users to automatically run their older applications. XP mode is designed specifically for legacy business applications, which usually have...

This is my second article in my series on Virtual PCs. Last time I talked about installing Virtual PC 2007 on Vista. Today I installed Windows 7 Enterprise on this Virtual PC. If you are involved in the IT industry and would like to test Windows 7 Enterprise you can download an evaluation copy until December 31st 2010. If you haven’t already installed Virtual PC 2007 you can get it here. Now I would like to talk a little bit about installing and configuring in general. Often times when it comes to computers there are several ways to do different things. It is also true that depending on your...

I got my first Microsoft Certification back in 2000. In those days, in order to run more than one operating system on the same machine, we would have to partition our hard drives and then install the operating system on the new partition. This was commonly referred to as a dual boot system. Tools such as Partition Magic and Boot Manager helped make the process of dual booting easier, but it was still a process that most chose to only run on their extra practice machine. Today things are much easier thanks to Virtual PCs. A Virtual PC is a software tool that you can install on your current machine. The...

If you have more than one computer at home running Windows 7 it is very easy to share files and printers using Windows Home Groups. When you first start Windows you will get a screen to set a network location. Click on Home network to set a Home Group. Select what you want to share including pictures, music, videos, documents, and printers. Then click on next. As this Home Group is created a password will be generated, write it down so that you can add other computers to this Home Group. Click on Finish. You can now browse your library and see the files in your Home Group. When you click on the...