DIY – Free Windows XP Facelift – Part 1

Since its release in October 2001 to much fanfare, hundreds of millions of people have adopted Windows XP as the choice of operating system. Even with the release of its successor, Windows Vista, a lot of people still continue to use XP. Most people know how to change the desktop wallpaper and have changed it to something more personalized from the default wallpaper. But some of you still use the same bland start, taskbar and windows, and you have to agree that it’s looking a bit dated. There are programs that you can purchase such as TGTSoft’s StyleXP and Stardock’s WindowBlinds that allow you to do such. But if you’re cheap like I am, and don’t mind doing a bit of extra work, read on.

Here’s your typical desktop:

And here’s one of a thousand themes you can choose from after following the instructions:

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Using Windows Vista – Help Yourself

Most of you coming to this site are here in hopes of obtaining an answer to a problem with your system. Sometimes the answer may already be on your system. For Windows users, it’s just a matter of accessing the ‘Help and Support’ on your ‘start’ menu. The new and improved Vista help menu offers a new feature, which shows up in some responses to your questions, called ‘Guided Help’. ‘Guided Help’ can be easily identified by the blue compass and presents two visual methods that may help you with your situation

Just click on the straightforward options and watch it work. It works either automatically while you sit back and watch or works like one of those late night infomercials hawking educational software where the tutoring CD walks you step-by-step and waits for you to complete the step. A Youtube video posted by czh88 provides a visual example of the feature at work.

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Why Does My New Hard Drive Show Between 127 GB to 137 GB When it’s Much Larger?

You add a brand new hard drive to your new system. You’re all happy of all the new space but the operating system tells you that there’s only somewhere between 127 GB to 137 GB available even though it’s much larger. You’re probably thinking that you got a defective drive or someone’s trying to rip you off. Take a few deep breaths and read on. This limitation affects both Windows and Mac based systems. An article provided by Seagate Technology, a leading manufacturer of disk based storage solutions, provides an explanation and details as to how this issue can be overcome. A link to the article is below:

Seagate Article

Make special note of where it says “IMPORTANT: Always Back Up First”

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You receive an error “STOP 0×0000000A” installing Windows Vista or “STOP 0×0000007e” when rebooting a machine installed with Windows Vista

When you go to install Vista, you get a “STOP 0×0000000A”. This occurs if the following conditions are true:
- You have more than 3 GB of RAM in your system
- The computer uses a storage system that is running the Storport miniport driver.
- The computer uses a controller that uses 32-bit direct memory access (DMA).
- You have a Vista DVD which does not have SP1

Furthermore, when rebooting the system get a “STOP 0×0000007e” error after installing the nVidia or ATi Catalyst driver for your video card.

The way to fix this problem is to remove any extra RAM from the system to get you to 3GB or less of RAM. After doing so, complete the installation of Vista and install the Windows Vista hotfix from the link below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777/en-us

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I Lost (Can’t Find) My Product Key………

OK, we’ve all been in this position. Either Windows or another program you’re using has become corrupt and you need to reinstall but you can’t find the packaging or card with the product key to reinstall. You’re either a victim of your own ‘controlled anarchy’ that you call your living space or you’re just very good at putting stuff in a ‘safe’ place so that you don’t accidentally throw it out. Although, not perfect, there’s a good program that’s been around for a while that has been doing a very good job of finding product keys and it goes by the unusual name of Magical Jellybean finder. It’s a mere 331 kB in size and requires no installation and best of all it’s FREE. All you have to do is unzip the file and run the keyfinder.exe file. Here’s a screenshot of the program in action.

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The Operating System Reports a Hard Drive Size Much Smaller Than What the Manufacturer States

So you just purchased a new hard drive and when you go to format it, the size reported is smaller than what you expect. Or maybe you got bored and looked into the hardware information and were surprised to see the hard drive being reported in a smaller number. Before you pick up the phone to call your lawyer, you might want to read on.

Basically, the problem exists due to the fact that during the infancy of computers, people in the industry decided that they would call 1024 bytes a kilobyte although the prefix ‘kilo’ should refer to 1000 in the manner a kilometer refers to 1000 meters and kilogram refers to 1000 grams. At first the difference was negligible as drives were still only a few hundred megabytes in size but as they got into gigabytes the difference in size became much more apparent. To make it easier to understand, let’s use beer as an example. A standard can is 355ml. Using the calculations used for bytes (355/1024); it would mean that you’re getting only 347ml. That’s only a difference of 8ml…. not a big deal. Now let’s say you buy a 50 liter (50,000ml) keg. Once again, using the byte calculation, it would mean you’re getting 48.828 liters. That’s a difference of over a liter. This kind of difference would probably be a big issue if you just spent a pretty penny on a keg of your favorite beer. More details on the hard drive size calculating methods can be found from the link below:

Seagate Article

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Why Does Windows XP / Vista show less than the 4GB (or more) of memory I have installed on my system?

So you just plugged in that brand new system with 4GB+ of memory or installed some more RAM in your current system. You go to check your System Information (Vista) or System Properties (XP) and it only reports 2.2 to 3.3 GB of memory. Unfortunately that’s normal if you’re running a 32 bit version of Windows Vista or XP.

32 bit means 2 to the power of 32 which is commonly denoted as 2^32. For those of you that were not very good at math in school, it looks like this:

2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2x2×2 = 4294967296 bytes
4294967296 bytes / 1024 bytes/1 kilobytes = 4194304 kilobytes (kB)
4194304 kB / 1024 kB/1 MB = 4096 MB
4096 MB / 1024 MB/1 GB = 4 GB

Therefore a 32 bit OS can only support up to 4GB of RAM.

Some of you thought you had done your homework when you read up that Windows Vista/XP 32 bit supports up to 4GB of RAM. Unfortunately, Windows Vista and XP reserve higher memory addresses for other devices in your computer. An example in Microsoft’s Knowledge Base Article 929605 explains it well:

”if you have a video card that has 256 MB of onboard memory, that memory must be mapped within the first 4 GB of address space. If 4 GB of system memory is already installed, part of that address space must be reserved by the graphics memory mapping. Graphics memory mapping overwrites a part of the system memory. These conditions reduce the total amount of system memory that is available to the operating system.”

Further reading on the 4 GB RAM limitation of 32 bit Vista:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us

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What do I need to play Blu-ray movies on my computer?

With prices on Blu-ray drives making its way to mid $100 range, some of you are probably considering purchasing one. Or maybe you’re just putting together a list of components that you’re going to order in that new system which you plan to have a Blu-ray drive. Before you do, you need to consider if the other parts of your system are adequate enough to properly play the disc. If you’re looking to find out what you may need to upgrade, here’s a helpful tool from Cyberlink that I found that should help you out.

Cyberlink BD / HD Advisor (Beta)
http://www.cyberlink.com/english/support/bdhd_support/diagnosis.jsp

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past year, you know there’s really no reason to scan for HD DVD support. HD DVD’s are suffering the same fate as Laserdisc and Betamax players (for those old enough to remember what they are).

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So why can I not see my new hard drive in Windows Explorer?

A lot of people are able to determine how to install a hard drive in their Windows based PC through reading their motherboard manual, a hard drive installation manual, or have a ‘techie’ friend / neighbor do it for them. That’s all fine and dandy, but it’s not just a matter of putting cable A into connector B. It’s a bit more involved, but many people, not knowing any better, often blame it on the hard drive as it fails to show up in Windows Explorer on their PC. Well without sounding any further condescending, which often seems to happen when I try to write helpful tips, let’s see if I can help out. The fact that you’ve read this far suggests that’s what you’re here for.

The steps below show an example on a Windows XP system but the steps are virtually identical in Vista and will work for Vista users as well.

Step 1: Hopefully you’ll boot into Windows and you’ll see, or already have seen, a little notification bubble on your taskbar informing you that its ‘Found New Hardware’. It’ll generally first pop up a notification bubble with the model/part number followed by a second. If it doesn’t, that’s a subject I’ll consider tackling in another tech tip in the future.

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