Subscribe

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Windows 7 Themes



It's been a while since my last post, but I thought this was useful enough to share. I'm running Windows 7 64bit on a spare drive that I loaded into my macbook. I chose 64 bit because I was tired of paying for 4GB of memory that was not being fully used in Vista 32bit. I love Windows 7. It's fairly stable once I found the right drivers for my macbook and decided to install onto a new drive (actually an older WD USB drive that I caniballized and installed, but that's another story).

A new feature in Windows 7 is the ability to have a slideshow as your desktop background. You control how often the pictures change. I thought that it would be nice to be able to create my own theme. It wasn't very obvious how to do this. It is easy to do once you know how. Here are the steps with my pictures.




First, open windows explorer and browse to your Public Pictures directory. I created a new folder named "Wallpaper".




Open the new directory and copy whatever wallpaper files you'd like. I went to DeviantArt and found a few new Windows 7 wallpapers that people have created and saved them to the new folder.



Next, right click on the desktop and select "Personalize". This will display the new theme page.



On this page, you'll see an area for the desktop, windows color, sounds, and screen saver. Click on the words 'Desktop Background'. You'll be able to browse to a directory to pick pictures to be used as your background. Pick the directory that you just created.



Once the directory is selected, you'll be able to select the pictures and set some options.



Set the time to change your pictures. This is defaulted to 30 minutes but can range from 10 seconds to 1 day. You can also change the window border color, standard sounds, and screen saver. I won't go into them since they are very straight forward. You will now see a screen that allows you to save the theme.



Save the theme and you are done.

I guess I brought up a few more blog entries that I need to write about. One is how to repurpose a Western Digital drive as a new disk for your laptop. The other would be how I got Windows 7 64 bit onto the macbook. (Hint, search apple.com for bootcamp 2.1). You'll need the original OS X disk that you got with your machine.

Labels:

continue reading»

posted by gregmcg at 1:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post digg

Monday, May 26, 2008

Been a while....


It's been a while since I last posted to this blog.... a lot has happened. I started a new job with neudesic llc. A great consulting company based in Irvine, CA. Founded by exMSFT folks and lots of exMCS people like me there. I'll try to be better being more timely.. I noticed that my hits have dropped a bit, but not much.
continue reading»

posted by gregmcg at 8:55 PM 0 Comments Links to this post digg

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Chumby!!!



Hopefully this won't crash Vista... Since I don't have to attach it to the machine, I don't think it will.
continue reading»

posted by gregmcg at 11:24 AM 1 Comments Links to this post digg

Thursday, November 29, 2007

HP MediaSmart Home Server - You'll want one.


I just received a HP MediaSmart home server EX470. I was on the beta for Microsoft Home Server for about a year and have been anticipating the hardware from HP to be released. The whole story in on my new blog dedicated to this very cool system.

Check it out if you're interested in a device that will automatically backup all of the systems on your home network while you sleep, host and serve up all (non-DRM) songs in all the iTunes directories, centralize all of your digital photos, or access all of your data, including iTunes, remotely from any internet connection.

Read all about it here.
continue reading»

posted by gregmcg at 11:59 AM 0 Comments Links to this post digg

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

What to do when Windows Vista Crashes


Information Week has a great article on Vista Backup and Recovery strategies. Seven pages of great information about how to repair a boot record, do a total backup of your system, and even crash Vista by pressing the Windows key and E, the shortcut to bring up Explorer, for about 10 seconds. This floods with Windows queue with Open Explorer in a New Window command and quickly swamps the system. I'm sure if you waited for 30 minutes or so, it would come back and you could close all the windows. Another tip to recover your system, KEEP THE ORIGINAL INSTALL DISK. I don't know why anyone would throw it out, but I guess some people do.
continue reading»

posted by gregmcg at 3:38 PM 0 Comments Links to this post digg

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Antitrust Complaint by Google Prompts Changes to Vista


WASHINGTON, June 19 — Microsoft has agreed to make changes to its Windows Vista operating system in response to a complaint by Google that a feature of Vista is anticompetitive, lawyers involved in the case said today.



OH NO.... maybe Vista is a good thing. If Google cares, then maybe the government will start looking harder at Microsoft again. Shades of 1998 and that Janet person.



read more | digg story

Labels:

continue reading»

posted by gregmcg at 2:47 PM 0 Comments Links to this post digg

Thursday, May 17, 2007

ReadyBoost doesn't really "Boost" Vista all that much.


Windows Vista's Windows ReadyBoost sounds too good to be true, and based on our extensive lab tests, it is. The technology promises to let you speed up Windows by plugging an inexpensive USB flash drive into your PC. But we found that while ReadyBoost may speed up Vista a tiny bit, it can also slow it down in some instances.



According to the article, about a 4% to 6% increase depending on the speed of the device you have. The problem is that it's difficult to determine the speed of usb flash drives until.you actually buy one and test it. As always, the more RAM the better but you MAY see a boost in performance in theory with an easy to install usb or flash drive.



read more | digg story
continue reading»

posted by gregmcg at 3:59 PM 0 Comments Links to this post digg