So you ever tried running iTunes, and it tends to crash in Windows 7. Most likely you ended up here because of this issues. Here is a simple step-by-step solution that will guide you of using iTunes in Windows 7.

1. Right click on iTunes and go into "Properties"

2. Go into the "Compatibility" tab

3. Remove the "Run this program in compatibility mode for:"

Go here apply a Microsoft Windows 7 hot fix.

Microsoft Hot Fix

4. After you install and apply this hotfix

5. Make sure iTunes is not running and it's not plugged in

6. Click Start type in "regedit" without quotes you will now be in registry editor.

7. Navigate to this path on the left side of Register Editor.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers

8. Look at the main page and delete an entry refereeing to iTunes.

8. Now iTunes should run fine after the following steps. It should sync good with Windows 7 and everything should work like gravy!

Note: Remember to know what you are doing, don't delete any entry in your registry by accident which might be important, I am not resposible or liable if you screw your computer up!

Windows 7 laptops/netbook/notebook users are experiencing "Windows 7" battery issues. Users might receive a message "Consider replacing your battery" even if their battery is new and there was no issues with it before. The problem with this Windows will shut down your machine within 20-30 minutes as reported.

Microsoft is claming people should be updating their BIOS, but even when you obtain the latest BIOS and upgrade it (for some people a difficult process to update a BIOS) the problem is still there. This is impacting some laptops, I know for a fact my Lenovo U330 has not been impacted some of the laptops/netbooks/notebooks impacted that I know off are:

• Asus Eee PC 900
• Asus Eee PC 701
• LG Xnote R500
• HP DV6000
• HP FV6000
• HP DV9207US
• HP DV9787eg
• Gateway FX6831
• Lenovo Y510
• HP Pavillion DV6242US
• Gateway M-6750
• Gateway MT-6840
• Toshiba Satellite L40-14D
• Toshiba Satellite U205
• Alienware Area-51 M5550
• Dell XPS M1530
• Dell XPS M1330
• Acer Aspire 5100
• Acer Aspire 5920G
• Dell XPS1530
• Acer Aspire 6920
• Dell Precision m6300

The list goes on and on... this is to name a few, it seems like it's having inssues with the following manufactuers:

• LGLenovo
• Samsung
• Acer
• Asus
• HP
• Compaq
• Dell
• Sony

There is people claiming there is a temporary solution to this by going to device manager and disabling "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery".  Aslo there is another method to disable your laptop from shutting down do the following steps:

SOLUTION 1:

1. Go to start type cmd in the Windows 7 search box.

2. Right click on "cmd" and select Run as Administrator

3. Hit Yes when Windows 7, UAC pops up.

4. You should be in DOS

5. Type in

powercfg -setdcvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_BATTERY BATACTIONCRIT 0

6. Now this is a temporary solution from you laptop/notebook/netbook from shutting down until Microsoft has an update to this.

Ok, to make this long story short Microsoft has not yet fixed the issues (January 31, 2010).  Some Windows 7 users, are claiming that this battery problem has permantyl demaged their battery. All this user frasturation can be found at:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprohardware/thread/c6c043e6-eeb1-4e61-870d-896ca2f865d6?prof=required

Other problems reported laptop can go into hibernation mode without warning. Another possible workaround is to:

SOLUTION 2:

1. Fully Charged Up the Laptop Battery to 100 % , then unplugged power cable, and I let the battery drain. Upon reaching 99 % drainage you will start to get the message … consider replacing….
2. When the battery is fully drained, laptop goes into hibernate. Power it back on but then it shutdowns completely.
3. Checked Bios to confirm if there was any power was left; it had 2 % left.
4. Wait 15 minutes to completely drain the laptop of any battery power and confirm that it can not be powered on.
5. Remove the battery; then in this condition while the battery is out press the power button this will drain the system of any power left in the laptop.
6. At this stage the laptop should be fully drained now.
7. Plug in the A/C adapter cable to the laptop and wait 5 minutes. Power up the laptop.
8. Under this process while charging the laptop you should not get the error message.

(thanks to windows7news.com, for this process)

The response by microsoft so far is that they acknowledged the issue, but the problem is not yet to fixed. Please comment with any updates or news regarding this problem. Thanks!

OK, so  Microsoft has made a little boo-boo. If you are running Windows 7 X64 based system, you might be not able to get some updates even if your Windows 7 (x64) is Completley Genuine.

Brief Description from Microsoft's Site:

Brief Description

OK, Windows 7 has really put something that is extremely cool when it comes to parental controls. Do you have kids?

Kids go on the computer all the time, if you are home and if you are not home what parental controls allows you to do is remotely monitor your child and setup account restrictions, all this can be done remotely. Check from work what websites your child has been going on!

This is what you need:

1. Windows 7 (with parental controls)
2. a hotmail, msn, live, account

So let's get started on Windows 7 parental controls: (Before you begin make sure you have "System Administrator Privileges")

STEP 1: Click Start -> Control Panel and go into

STEP 2:Click "User Accounts and Family Safety" You should see the following screen:

(Click pic to enlarge)

STEP 3:Once there click Add or remove user accounts, that is if your child does not have an account on the computer already. (if there is an account already you will simply select "Setup parental controls for any user" under "Parental Controls"

(Click pic to enlarge)

STEP 4:Select "Create a new Account"

STEP 5:Select a "Standard user" account. Type in a name in the New Account Name box. and hit Next. (We created an account called CHILD as an example)

STEP 6:Now since we have our account created, we will now Click on the account and we will see the following menu.

STEP 7:Click on Setup Parental Controls Select the user child and Click on it

STEP 8:Now you will see the following box you can login with your hotmail, messenger or live account.(with in there you will have a interface to block certain websites and stuff, I will explain more later)

You will also now see another windows that looks like this:

STEP 9:From here make sure you select On, En fore current settings once this is enabled Time limits, Games, Allow and Block Specific Programs will become enabled. Click on each one to set them up.

Time limits is a simple grid of the hours they are allowed to log into their account. In the games options you can specify if the child can play games, set game ratings, and block and allow specific games. There is also the Allow or block specific programs (from here you can block Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger and other programs you don't want them running)

After you are done make sure you turn them on on the right side of the panel:

This is pretty much in for setting up from the Windows 7 side, further down this post I will explain the live.com management options available to you remotely to restrict your child from certain things!

Now going back to Step 7, when you supplied the hotmail, live, msn, or xbox, account we will now login to look at the various parental controls from there, the account CHILD should be linked with those credentials you provided in Step7.

STEP 10:Open up a browser and go to http://login.live.com once there login with the information you supplied in step 7. and You should see the following interface.

STEP 11:Click More in the Top bar you see once you login and select Family Safety

Once family safety loads you should see the "Family Summary" and "Your Computers" under "Your Computers" the name of the current computer you have set up for family safety should be there:

Click on the account that has Family Safety on in our example the account was CHILD (but in our example we will see Claire, because I didn't link CHILD to my live account), You should see the following screen.

From here click each one and setup the following items. Play around with these various options. For example "Activity Reporting" will show you the website your child is going on alot you can block them or allow them from that menu. I think this is a pretty exciting feature of Windows 7. The part I like about it the most you can remotely view what your child is doing no need to be home!

OK anyone running Windows 7, should get Windows 7 Manager. The full version is only $39.99 and it is worth it!. Let me put it this way this program is packed with options, in this post i am going to try to explain each one and the basic functionality of these options.

Get the Full scoop of Windows 7 manager in a nutshell! Read More....

http://www.yamicsoft.com/windows7manager/index.html - take a look here.

I don't work for yamicsoft and I am not getting paid by them for this. I use it and I like the program because of some of the features it has.

One of my favorite feature is, when you first start the program it comes up at a screen where you can: Create a Restore Point and Restore your System

Windows 7 Manager supports the following features:

Information - Utilities under information tab consist of:

System Information - shows you some nice in-depth "System Information"
Process Manager - I really like this one it allows the following functionality for running processes:

• Refresh Process
• Set Priority
• Cancel Preventing
• Details (which gives you allot of details
• Go to Folder (which will take you directly into the process, I like this one for Trojans and Viruses easily find that process with a click!)
• Query Internet (Which will Google the process for you, also saves time if you see anything suspicious!)

Optimization Wizard - tries to look at processes which are causing you problems, and tries to resolve those issues there.

1 Click - Cleaner - will scan registry and clean, items that should not be there!

Optimizer - Some of the options under the optimizer tab are as follows

System Speed - consist of the following options

• Enable SATA disk advanced function to improve performance (this is of course if you have a SATA enabled motherboard and are using SATA)
• Restart the shell automatically (I assume this will restart explorer if there is any freezes without logging in and out)
• Force *.DLL unload from memory
• Automatically close non responsive application ( this is a good feature, and will close everything that is not responding!)
• Disable Automatic Restart when you get the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) this way you can read the message and see what it actually states.
• Turn off the search indexer in Windows 7, this might speed things up but it will slow you down when you actually want to search for files

You can set the File System Caching Memory, this over rides the amount of ram that can be used for I/O (Input, Output operations). I would not increase this too much, you would not want to run out of ram for other tasks.

CPU (Level 1 and Level 2 caching) - Here you can set the amount of cache to use from your CPU. The option i like here if you don't know what your CPU supports you can hit (Query) - check image below and after set the following CPU cache from there.

We move into a startup Tab now, here we can do all of nifty things like:

• Disable Auto-Detection of IDE drives during start up
• Disable Updating Group Policy during start up (this will speed up booting up, because group policies will not be updated!)
• Disable Windows Logging on System Crash (I am not sure why would anyone want to disable this, I think this should be enabled)
• Disable Prefetcher (I would not disable this also, as prefetched programs will start up faster, this might come usefull if you are fighting with Trojans or viruses to disable them prefetching in the system)
• Disable creation of Last Known Good Configuration (Basically as it says you disable this you won't have a good last working windows configuration!)
• Turn off Windows start up sound (maybe some of us are annoyed by the start up sound
• Cancel scanning disk during start up (maybe we don't want the disk to be scanned every time we start up!)

Shutdown Tab offers 3 slide bars from Slow - Fast with the following options:

• The time to wait when program hangs ( for the impatient ones we can set this to Fast!)
• The time to wait for services to end before killing (how long we will wait until we kill a service!)
• The time to wait before ending programs with errors

This concludes the Optimizer - System Speed tab.

Under the Optimizer tab we also have various utilities which include

• Startup Manager (Here we can remove some of the programs we don't want to start up at boot time, this is very useful instead of going to the actual program and looking for the start up at boot time option that is if the program has this option in the first place!)
• We have service manager which we can (Verify Signature of the Service, Disable It, Stop It, or hit Optimize it to answer a set of questions to see which services you are really using.)
• Task Scheduler allows us to create two types of tasks: (Shutdown base on CPU usage, Create a scheduled shutdown or reminder task) here we can go more in-depth and do various things like set a task of running an exe file or  just a text reminder pop up or simply shut down) etc.

Cleaner

Under the cleaner tab we get into different functionality:

• Disk Analyzer (Analyzes folders and files and determines which ones you might not be using anymore and gives you the option to clear out those files)
• Smart Uninstaller shows you all installed programs as icons you can simply click on them and have the following options
  
• Junk File cleaner (This program scans for Junk Files on your computer, OK so you ask what is Junk Files according to Windows 7 Manager junk files include the following: *.DB files (windows thumbnail cache) , *.CHK files (You might need those if a windows program crashes and the program supports recovery most likely it will look into these files!) *.TMP files etc. I would be extra careful cleaning out junk files.
• Dup Files Finder ( I really like this one, it will find duplicate files and you can remove them from there!)
• Registry Cleaner
• Registry Defrag

Now let's get into the Customization tab:

We got the following options:

• Customize System - from here we can change various things and in other settings we can even build a custom OEM tag (when you right click "computer" properties all the nifty info there)
• Boot Configuration - this comes in handy when we are dual booting and want to add more operating systems to the boot record
• Context Menu - here we can customize what happens when we right-click a certain file (this option gives allot of flexibility when we want to add some special command to a program or a file)
• Run-Shortcut Creator - we can create shortcut command that will execute a certain program
• File Type Icon - we can change the icons for certain file types, I think keeping this default is a better idea!

Now let's jump into the Security tab

We got the following options in the Security Tab

• System Security(System tab) - We can do various things here like: clear Page file at shutdown, disable task manager, disable control panel. etc.
• System Component Tab (we can disable windows sidebar here and disable sound recorder)
• User Account Controls (UAC) - this is those annoying messages you get when you try doing something that requires admin privilages you can disable this, if you are more of a power user so you don't get annoyed by those security UAC popups!
• Log in - now this is really cool, when users logon display a message to them, hide the welcome screen, or maybe enable additional password protection for login in.
• Update Error Report - here windows updates can be disabled and disable various error reporting for applications such as IE, Office 2007. etc.

Now Jumping into System Restore Tab!

From here you can setup basic restore options and delete all system restore points and setup a cool little option.

Mine is setup to create a restore point every 7 days (one full week)

Now Jumping into Drives and Programs Tab!

From here you can hide some drives not to have them show up. Restrict access to removable storage devices (restrict reading or writing)

Restrict Programs: This is good when you don't want your child going on MSN too much, simply add the executable program file into restricted programs and they won't be able to access it.

Image Hijack check for any Hijack entries in the system.

Now Jumping into the Files and Folders tab

You can move system folders into different folders and enable file security, where you can shred a file or decrypt or encrypt a file (comes in useful if you have important documents on your desktop!)

Now Jumping into the Privacy Protector tab

This is handy let's say you watched some videos you should of not have, here you can disable Windows Media Player to store recently open files. This mostly has to do with recent files that Windows remembers you can tweak the settings from here.

(many other options when it comes to privacy Click the picture to see the screenshot)

Window Locations:

Here is a few nifty Windows 7 Tricks:

Windows key + Left: docks current window to the left side of the screen.
Windows key + Right: docks current window to the right side of the screen.
Windows key + Up: maximizes and/or restores foreground window.
Windows key + Down: minimizes active window.

What Exactly is Windows 7 God Mode?

God mode allows you to basically access all Windows 7 major and minor administrative features which are by default in the control panel in Windows 7.

How do I do it?

1. Create a new folder anywhere on your desktop.
2. Right click on the newly created folder and rename the folder to:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

3. The folder should look like this now

Double click on the newly created folder and you should get the following screen. From there you can change various options in one place instead of looking around in the control panel.

Click the image below to expand the view of GOD mode.

You can essentially create folders and rename them to the following to make quick short cuts in your Windows 7 environment.

Default Location - GodMode.{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33}
Biometrics - GodMode.{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428}
Power Settings - GodMode.{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}
Notification Area - GodMode.{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9}
Manage Credentials - GodMode.{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70}
Get New Programs - GodMode.{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4}
Default Programs - GodMode.{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966}
NET Framework Assemblies - GodMode.{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43}
Wireless Networks - GodMode.{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87}
Network Neighborhood - GodMode.{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}
My Computer - GodMode.{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
Printers - GodMode.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}
RemoteApp and Desktop - GodMode.{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B}
Windows Firewall - GodMode.{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423}
Performance - GodMode.{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC}
GodMode - GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}