I’ve set my laptop to sleep after half an hour but sometimes I need to leave immediately and I want to sleep it right away, however for the nth time I’ve accidentally shutdown my computer instead of putting it to sleep.

Solution (which I’ve been putting off for a long time)? Change the default action on the start menu lower right button to sleep!

This is how it’s done:

1. Hover your cursor to the Start button and right click.

2. Click on Properties and you should see a tabbed window like this.

3. On the right side of the Power button action, you should see a drop down. The action you select will define what shortcut will show on the start menu. In my case I want to set it to sleep.

4. When you’ve made a selection, click on Apply and OK.

5. Done! Now when I click on the Start button, I’m a 100% sure I won’t accidentally shutdown my computer.

Hope this helps ^_^

I just find the default behavior of Windows 7 explorer to be annoying. The left navigation pane doesn’t automatically expand to the current folder. If you wish to change this behavior to expand the directory tree when a folder is selected, do the following:

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. ^_^

Yet another upgrade to my aging laptop. From 2GB my laptop now has 4GB of memory and what better way to exploit the use of this upgrade than to upgrade my operating system as well. Enter Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

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. ^_^

MS did a good job of integrating the finger print reader (software) for ASUS F8SG, well I guess it was too good because after it was installed on my laptop, I had no idea initially how to use it (or enable it). I didn’t realize some of you would bump on to the same problem so here’s how to enable the finger print reader to login to Windows 7:

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 ^_^

For those of you who wanted to know how to add a bluetooth device in Windows 7, specifically a bluetooth mouse (MSI BM500). Here’s how to do it:

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 ^_^

I had a problem earlier connecting my Windows Mobile 6 smart phone (daxian x999+) to my ASUS F8SG laptop with Windows 7. Whereas ActiveSync worked fine with windows XP, Windows Mobile Device Center seemed to have a problem detecting my smart phone.

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 ^_^

Just upgraded my ASUS F8SG laptop to Windows 7 32 bit Ultimate from Windows XP SP3 and it simply rocks. MS really did a good job improving their OS and indexing system. I use MS Outlook for my work mail and the difference between operating systems was definitely worth the upgrade.

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 ^_^