Step by Step Upgrade Path from Windows XP to Windows 7

With 90% of my company's computer still running Windows XP, I knew January was going to be a busy month. Support for Windows XP ends on April 8, 2014 meaning any computers that are still running the outdated operating system will be susceptible to large amounts of security holes and targeted attacks. I dreaded the migration, fearing users would not be saving their local files properly and lose their data, favorites, and issuing lots of complaints. Luckily I stumbled upon the amazing tools (actually built into Windows 7) called Windows Easy File Transfer.

The tool allows you to copy profiles from a Windows XP system to any other newer operating system, exactly what I needed. This allowed me to essentially migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 64-bit without losing user's local data, yet still refreshing all of the systems with a new copy of Windows 7. We use a custom image that is built through sysprep and Ghost. I won't go into those details of that here but if you are imaging the systems with your own custom image or installing Windows 7 fresh, the procedure remains pretty much the same.

1) Start by installing/imaging Windows to a hard drive.

2) Get the new system to the point where you are ready to deploy it to the user. For us, this means installing their custom software, updates, and the anti-virus program that we use.

3) Contact the user and ask if you can begin backing up their computer. They don't need to know the details of this, just that you are backing up their files so that they do not lose them when you upgrade their system.

4) Start the Windows Easy File Transfer tool on the Windows XP system. We actually deployed the software to all of the machines through a tool called PDQ Deploy, cutting out the step of installing the transfer tool

5) When the transfer tool starts it will scan the system for any local profiles. Select the profiles you wish to save, we exclude most except for the actual user who is using that computer, and the shared files.

6) Save the files to a network drive or USB flash drive. They can be rather large (ours range from 400MB to 3GB) so be prepared to have some extra space available.

7) When the easy file transfer file has been created, return to the Windows 7 machine and import the profiles into the system.

8) Swap out the Windows 7 hard drive with the current Windows XP hard drive and boot it up. When the user logs in they will see all of their Desktop icons, files, and some application settings will even migrate over. This saves us time as printers and Outlook settings generally are already there when they log into their new system.

It's saved my IT team a ton of time as we are able to essentially upgrade the systems to a new hard drive offsite, swap out the hard drives on site, and the user can login and start working. If I hadn't found and realized the power of the Windows Easy File Transfer tool this migration would be taking months. Today we are down to only about 20% XP machines and will be completed with the migration in the next two weeks. Thank you Microsoft for making something right, my time thanks you!

Take Control Over Your Keyboard's Number Lock

Having a number lock turned off, or on, automatically can be a great time saver. It could also be a huge annoyance when the number lock is enabled on a laptop as normal lettered keys may function as numbers with the lock enabled.

To enable or disable the number lock setting for a keyboard during Windows logon, follow the steps below.

1) Go to Start, then Run and type: regedit
!!This will open up the Windows registry. Be VERY careful when editing as incorrect changes can damage your computer!!
2) Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Keyboard
3) Double click the InitalKeyboardIdicators option
4a) To enable the number lock on startup, enter the value data of 2
4b) To disable the number lock on startup, enter the valud data of 0
5) Click OK on the Edit String Window
6) Navigate to: HKEY_USERS \ .DEFAULT \ Control Panel \ Keyboard
7) Double click the InitalKeyboardIdicators option
8a) To enable the number lock on startup, enter the value data of 2
8b) To disable the number lock on startup, enter the valud data of 0
9) Click OK on the Edit String Window

You have now change the startup settings for the number lock on your keyboard. Once you restart your computer and log back in, the settings will be applied.

Clearing a Fickle Printer Queue

Printers are a fickle thing. Honestly, they are my least favorite piece of hardware to troubleshoot. Often I come across a printer jam that is not actually a printer jam, but a jam of the printer queue. While canceling or deleting all the jobs from the queue does sometimes work, there are cases where a print job just will not go away.

To completely delete everything from the queue, follow these steps below.

1) Open a command prompt and enter: net stop spooler
2) Browse to C:\Windows\system32\spool\printers
3) Delete any file that you see in the folder from step two
4) Return to the command prompt and enter: net start spooler

After these four steps are completed, the queue should now be cleared and printing will (hopefully) resume.

What is the best anti-virus software?

I often get asked, both at work and by friends an family, what to use for anti-virus software? Most people are looking for a free solution but often end up paying for consumer grade AV that they don't really need. My first recomendation is always Microsoft Security Essentials. I've used it for a few years now and while yes, it is a Microsoft product, it really does work! Often, I've found that it works more efficitantly then some of the more beefier products out there. It is also very light weight, often non-obtrusive and honestly it just works.

Checkout Microsoft Security Essentials

For a more consumer/business related solution, Sophos would be my first choice. Their enterprise solution is very easy to use and does so much more then AV. I use it to block users from plugging in external drives, stop them from burning to disks and can even block programs from running on their computers. The GUI is clean and user friendly, but most users won't even notice it's there until they get a warning. I can't say how much it costs as it will vary from company to company, but it is definitly something to look into if you are gearing up for a new enterprise AV solution.

Checkout Sophos.com

DIY PC Tower Case Using LED Christmas Lights & USB Cable

Lighting up the internals of your PC may be a bit geeky but it doesn't have to be expensive. Taking advantage of post-Christmas decoration sales, you can light up your PC tower for under five bucks. After returning a gift to Target today, I checked out the Christmas section to see what they had left. Turns out they have a TON of left over battery powered LED strands and are selling them for only $3.50 each! I grabbed a blue and multi-colored strand and headed home to warm up my new soldering iron. I've been wanting to light up my tower for awhile now but figured it would be too expensive, but this really worked well. After cutting the LEDs off the battery pack and chopping a USB power cable in half; I soldered the two wires on the LEDs to the black and red wires of the USB. After testing it with a USB AC adapter (to not fry my PC), I strung them inside my tower, put the USB cable through an extra slot in the back and plugged them in. My case is now glowing blue after spending only a few bucks and 30 minutes of my time.

Sync Your Passwords with Keepass & Dropbox

Everyone has a lot of password and you most likely, like me, can't remember them all all the time. There is a great piece of software out there called Keepass that lets you keep all your passwords locked up in a digital "password safe" encrypted and all. Keepass is simple to use and works really well. Too well in fact, since you will most likely forget all your passwords once you start using it! Having a local copy is the way to start off, but when you have multiple computers you will most likely want your Keepass database to move along with you. This is where Dropbox comes in. If you're tech savy you most likely already have a Dropbox account. The way that Keepass and Dropbox unite is to allow your password database to sync between all machines as you update it. Before you start anything, make sure you have Keepass and Dropbox installed on all computers (and mobile devices) you want your database to sync to. Then just drop your Keepass database file into a folder on your Dropbox account and make sure all devices are set to sync that file. Once the database is there, just point Keepass to the new, Dropbox location of the database file and any changes you make will not be made to all machines.

Get Dropbox Here: Dropbox.com
Get Keepass Here: Keepass.info

Regaining Unusable Space On USB Drives

After playing around with a few USB-Bootable operating systems I found that some of my once 2GB flash drives were down tremendously in size. For instance I popped in a USB drive and was shocked to see it only had 250MB of space. Not just usableable space but 250MB TOTAL space. After reformatting a few times I checked Disk Manager only to find the space was still there, just "Unallocated". There was no easy way to expand the usable space or combine the two. So I did some Googling and found something that actually works: BootIt. It's meant to create a bootable USB drive but works just as well for regaining the space that was missing. Here's how to get it and how to make it work for you.

1. Download BootIt.exe from http://tinyurl.com/bootitexe
2. Plug in the USB drive that is having the issue
3. Unzip the file and launch the BootIt.exe file.
(If you are using Vista or Windows 7 make sure to run it as administrator)
4. When BootIt loads, select your USB drive under Devices
5. Make sure to select Non-Active under the Partition option
6. Press the Format button
7. When the formatting is complete, remove your USB drive and reinsert it into the PC
8. You will be asked to reformat the drive again, select Yes and your USB drive should now be back to full capacity