Ask Leo!: Windows 7

How do I monitor network activity on my Windows 7 machine?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:00:00 -08:00

When my laptop is turned on, it starts downloading from the Internet - BUT - nothing is supposed to be downloading! How do I figure out what's happening?

]]> My normal response for this type of problem is to turn to Process Monitor, a free SysInternals utility from Microsoft. The problem is that it's a pretty geeky tool and it requires a little patience and understanding to get useful results.

Of late, I've found myself firing up a completely different utility included in Windows 7 that quickly displays a lot of information about what's going on. It actually can monitor several areas of your computer's activity, but I'll focus here on networking.

How do I disable live taskbar previews in Windows 7?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:27:51 -08:00

My question is about the annoying (in my opinion) pop-ups that come up whenever you hover your mouse over any open icon on the task bar (they show a thumbnail of the open page). I would really like to know how to safely disable this feature. I have searched Google, but the solutions given seem a bit scary. From my searches, I know that this is a problem for many users.

]]> I did some looking around (as you did) and I found that you're definitely not alone.

Personally, I find it handy and appreciate it.

But as we've seen time and time again, one person's feature is another person's annoyance.

Unfortunately for this particular feature, there's no simple switch to throw to turn it on or off (Which I can also understand, because there's no way that Microsoft could possibly introduce a UI setting for every possible feature or tweak).

So, we have to improvise.

How do I upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 08:00:00 -08:00

I'm using Windows 7, 32-bit Home Premium on a computer with 64-bit hardware. Can I buy a copy of Windows 7 64-bit and install it on my system? I have 10 GB of RAM on a Gateway computer.

]]> Yes, you can. And in fact, you'll really want to in your case, for reasons which I'll explain shortly.

Unfortunately, the path to get there from here isn't nearly as easy as we might want.

How do I repair Windows 7 with a re-install?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:28:22 -08:00

You told me that one of the ways to recover from my current situation may be to perform a "repair" reinstall of Windows. Great. How do I do that? Windows 7, by the way.

]]> Windows 7 made this interesting.

In previous versions of Windows, such as XP, "Repair your current installation" was one of the options at setup time.

Not so with Windows 7 setup. At least, not explicitly.

However, if you meet a few criteria, you can in fact perform a repair install that's very similar to the older Windows XP repair.

How do I set a custom icon for a desktop URL shortcut?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:41:00 -08:00

I recently purchased a new PC - HP with Windows 7. I would like my shortcuts (ex. Google) to show the Google square as red, white, and green, as opposed to the IE world. I ran Windows XP previously, and they had a place to change icons with several from which to pick. It's the same with files; it shows just an open manilla folder on the desktop, which I would like to change. Any info on this would be appreciated. I love your newsletter - I read it from top to bottom and could not find this anywhere.

]]> That functionality's still there, but Windows 7 has thrown a curveball into the mix; this makes one of the most common ways to create desktop shortcuts result in a shortcut that's much harder to customize.

I'll show you what changed.

Then, I'll show you how you can still create a desktop shortcut with an icon that can be customized.