1. Open windows explorer.
2. Press alt + F (do not release the alt key upon pressing the letter F).
3. Select Tools on the menu then Folder options.
4. On the general tab make sure the following option is ticked.

5. Click on Apply or OK and you are done!

Open an explorer window and whenever you choose a folder the tree will automatically expand and reveal the directory structure towards the current folder. Hope this helps. ^_^

Good thing though my upgrade to 64 bit was less dramatic than my installation with the 32 bit version. I couldn’t say that it was an upgrade as the term implies because I had to reinstall everything after backing up all my data pre 64 bit and doing a clean install.

So this were how things went when I did the installation:

1. Made a backup and imaged the whole laptop drive.
2. Reboot, formatted the install drive (C: in my case) and let the installer do its thing.
3. After the installation this was what was left on the device manager interface were the following:

4. The three Base System Device requires the ricoh card reader driver, the two Unknown Device is the atk100 and infrared module respectively. The Fingerprint Sensor requires the authentec fingerprint driver. Please note this is for my ASUS F8 series which is an F8SG-4P03A.

5. Then I proceeded to install the following.

6. The Nvidia video driver for 9300M G. Rebooted after install.

7. ATK100 driver for Windows 7 64 bit. This is for the extra buttons and indicators (wifi, bluetooth) to work properly. Rebooted after install.

8. Installed the ATK hotkey software rebooted, then installed the ATK Media software.

9. Installed the RICOH Card Reader driver then rebooted.

10. Installed the fingerprint software/driver then finally the infrared module driver.

After I installed all the drivers of course I went ahead and updated my system via Windows Update. Then went on to restore my archived backups. Like I said its not much but hopefully somebody will get an idea of how easy it is to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit on a  laptop (ASUS F8SG). Please do leave your question at the comment box. Hope this helps. ^_^

1. Click on the Windows Start Icon (which is now a rounded button) and type in “windows login” without the quotes.

2. Choose Use your fingerprint with Windows.

3. You’ll be prompted for a password to enroll your finger prints on the Authentec TruSuite software.

4. Click on a finger and swipe it 3 times. This will register your chosen finger for the finger print reader.

5. When you are done, you should see a green mark on the registered fingers.

You can opt to register all your fingers or just a few, I chose two fingers on my right hand since I’m right handed.

Now close the authentec software and press the switch user shortcut (Window Key + L). If you don’t see the prompt for the finger print reader click on the Other Credentials button just underneath the password field.

Once you see a big icon with a finger print on it, swipe your registered finger and it should log you in. Hope this helps ^_^

1. Click on bluetooth icon on taskbar.

2. Once the bluetooth manager window is open click on add a device.

3. When the bluetooth manager (on Windows 7) searches for a device, press the button beneath MSI BM500 mouse, you’ll need a pen to press the button.

4. After pressing the button underneath the mouse, your system should be able to “see” the mouse.

5. The operating system will then search a suitable driver and install it automatically. Once you see the following dialogue window, your mouse should be ready to use.

And oh, here’s an updated review as well of the MSI BM500 mouse on Windows 7. Seems like with Windows 7 the mouse has been behaving a lot better compared to Windows XP. Hope this helps ^_^

After installing Windows Mobile Device Center 6.,1 I plugged in my smart phone and I got this error on my device manager: unknown RNDIS device. Tried to look for drivers on the internet but no joy.

After a couple of tries though, I finally got my phone to communicate with my PC. Here’s what I did:

1. Installed Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1.
2. Plugged in my Windows Mobile smart phone (via usb).
3. An error appeared saying that my system can’t find a suitable driver for my device. I unplugged the phone and enabled the option to automatically find a driver online and install it automatically (or something like that as far as I can remember).
4. Went to Device Manager and uninstalled any undetected devices (the one with the yellow icons).
5. I reconnected my phone, this time a prompt appeared saying that its downloading the respective drivers online.
6. Followed the rest of the prompts and my phone worked fine with Windows Mobile Device Center with no problems at all.

I wish I had attached images to make it easier for some of you to understand, but I was such in a hurry to get my contacts from my phone to my pc that I forgot (oh well). Hope this helps ^_^

I upgraded my wife’s laptop to Windows 7 first, an Acer 4730z just to make sure the switch was worth it. After I got convinced with her laptop’s performance I made the upgrade as well.

Here’s how the clean install went:

1. Formatted drive C: and installed Windows 7 Ultimate (my laptop has 2 partitions).
2. Waited for the installer to finish and installed the following in sequence.
3. Installed the vga (Nvidia 9300M G) and rebooted.
4. Installed the fingerprint driver (authentec) and rebooted.
5. Installed the atk100 driver and rebooted.
6. Installed the atk generic driver rebooted.
7. Installed the atk hotkey and rebooted.
8. Installed the the infrared (ITE) driver and rebooted.
9. Installed the card reader driver (ricoh) plus a few notes in the next section.
10. For the card reader driver installation I uncompressed the driver archive and for each unknown device that was left I chose Update Driver Software and pointed to the 83X32 folder from the ricoh driver archive.

I did another reboot and looked for updates and enabled the system to automatically install updates if there were any. The following devices were updated:

Motorola SM56 Speakerphone Modem
Atheros AR5008X Wireless Network Adapter

Welcome Windows 7 and good bye Windows XP. Its a bit sad to let go of an old buddy but its a relief as well to finally get in touch of Windows 7. Its just a few days with this new OS but so far so good. I’m happy with how well the system is running. Hope this helps ^_^

To do this press CTRL + ALT + DELETE in sequence make sure you don’t release any of the key until you see this window pop out:

You’ll see the Windows Task Manager, from this application you can actually do a lot:

1. Kill applications that hang-up or is just eating too much CPU cycle.
2. See how much CPU cycle is your system eating, if it reaches 100% expect your system to be rather hot.
3. See how much memory an application is using.
4. View a graphical representation of your CPU and network activity.
5. See users that are logged on (only true when you have a couple of profiles in your computer).
6. Shutdown, reboot or log-off from your computer.
7. View all the running applications on your profile and other profiles (if its currently logged on and you have switched to the current profile).

Its pretty handy actually and its something I use on a daily basis. To view how much CPU cycle is an application using click on the Process tab and then click on the CPU column twice until you see the high numbers of the CPU column at the top.

For this demonstration what you see on my system is that 98% of the CPU is idle and 2% is being used by firefox. exe (which is actually the Firefox browser). There’s a catch to this though, you need to know the exact Image Name of the application that you are looking for (the actual executable).

Actual image names don’t always match to the application’s title, like the World of Warcraft game, the actual image name that shows up on Windows Task Manager is wow.exe. ^_^

What do you do? Easy you just click on the Start button hit Log Off, then click on the Switch User button.

Now that is if you have fast switching enabled (which is by the way enabled by default). Now what if when you click the Log Off button and instead of seeing the option above you see this.

Click Log Off and you lose all your work, not a very good idea. This also means one thing. Fast user switching has been disabled. A program can disable it or somebody with administrative rights has disabled it, but regardless of reason  you need to enable it so that you don’t have to close all your applications just to open another profile.

To enable fast user switching:

1. Open the Windows Control Panel.

2. Look for an icon named User Accounts and open the application.

3. On the User Accounts window click on the Change the way users log on or off link.

4. On the next window make sure both of these options are checked. Use the Welcome screen and Use Fast User Switching.

5. Click apply and you are done. When you click on the Log Off button again you should see the Switch User button.

Oh and a tip, by using shortcut keys you can instantaneously switch to the Welcome screen. To do this press the Window key and the letter L simultaneously (make sure that you press the window key first).

Almost immediately you will be switched to the Welcome screen. One last note, if you are a bit short on memory (say your system only has 512 MB which kinda sucks), switching back and forth between profiles may take a long time. Even if it were me though, I’d rather switch slow than have to start all over again after I log off my profile. ^_^

What’s a guest account if you may ask. Its an existing (dormant) account on Windows XP that only has very limited user privileges. Anyone using the Guest account can do everything else except install/uninstall programs, delete files (not unless it was created from the Guest account) and change system settings.

Basically anything that administrators can do are disabled in the Guest user account. This however is disabled by default. To enable the Guest user account.

1. Go to the Windows XP Control Panel.

2. Look for the User Accounts icon and open it.

3. You should see the User Accounts window. Click on the Guest icon.

4. You’ll be asked if you want to turn on the guest user account. Click on the Turn On the Guest Account button and you are done.

5. Once it has been enabled, you can click the same icon again to either change the picture (icon) of the guest account or disable it.

Take note though that you can’t set a password for the guest account so practically anyone can use the account once its enabled. Oh, I almost forgot even though guest users can’t do anything to your system, they may still be able to view some of your personal documents if you haven’t set it to private. ^_^

To adjust your mouse pointer speed, do the following:

1. Click on the Start button and click on Control Panel.

2. Once the Control Panel window is open search for the Mouse icon and open the application.

3. This should open the Mouse Properties window. Click on the Pointer Options tab. Under this tab, you should see Motion options at the top. This is where you can change your mouse pointer speed.

4. Drag the indicator to the left if you want the pointer to be slower and to the right for the pointer to be faster. Make sure to test the result by dragging the pointer around the screen every time you change mouse speed to ensure its comfortable for you.

5. In any case though, always check the Enhance pointer precision option. This makes the pointer motion a bit more accurate. After you are satisfied with the mouse pointer’s feel, click OK and you are done.

Just a note, not all mice have the same sensitivity and resolution. Mouse resolutions today can vary from 800 DPI to as much as 2600 DPI. Which means, you may need to make adjustments every time you change your mouse. ^_^