Operating System Posts

Whenever someone ask me to help format and reinstall their machine, I would request him or her for two items. photo credit: jesus_leon

1. The operating system installer CD and

2. The CD which contains all drivers for the machine.

Problem arises when they tell me that they don’t have the CD containing drivers for the machine.

This doesn’t indicate that their machine cannot be installed to its original state, but rather I need to find, download and update the machine with its latest drivers using the manual way.

The manual way here means having to find out the model of the devices and downloading the latest drivers from the Internet.

After I complete reinstalling the OS for the machine, the first driver that I’ll install is the wifi or the lan ethernet driver. This is so I could get access to the Internet. I usually get this driver by using another computer with Internet access to download, then transfer the installer to the new machine.

Once the machine has Internet access, this is what I’ll do. I’ll install this neat little application - Driver Robot.

Driver Robot basically helps us to automatically find and update our drivers. So instead of spending time trying to locate the right driver for your machine devices, driver robot does it for you, at a COST!

The following is my version of a Driver Robot Review: Continue Reading »
How to easily find, download and update latest drivers

There are many reasons why we need to sometimes reinstall our operating system (Windows XP or Vista).

photo credit: B Rosen

Some of the common reasons include:

• It’s slow to start up.
• There are bugs in the OS caused by viruses or malwares.
• Certain common applications like the browsers just won’t work anymore.
• The windows registry is messed up and I don’t know how to fix it.

In fact, all the above are happening to my friend’s Prestigio laptop right now.

I’m pretty sure that by formatting the hard disk and reinstalling the OS would do the trick.

However, reinstalling takes up a lot of time. One of the most time consuming task is finding which files to backup. If you’re like me, a bit unorganized, I put my documents everywhere. A few here and a few there.

One solution for you is to just take an image of your entire partition. I did this yesterday via Easeus Todo Backup 1.1 and it managed to capture my 140GB C partition in within 2 hours. The only thing to do now is to test the restoration on a new and empty hard disk. Will write a post on that once done.

So, if you’re not into reinstalling your OS because you can’t afford the half a day downtime having to:

• Backup files
• Format the hard disk
• Reinstalling the OS
• Patch and update the OS
• Install drivers
• Install common applications like Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader and Skype

Then you might want to consider this alternative to reinstalling your XP or Vista OS. Continue Reading »
An alternative to reinstalling your XP or Vista OS

Have you seen or even tried the developer version of Google’s Chromium OS?

When I read news about this new OS by Google being released and made available to download as an Image (.vmdk file), I couldn’t wait to try it out.

All I know about the Chromium OS is it’s supposed to start up very fast and allows us to gain access to our common applications such as email, web browsing, YouTube, google docs without much delay.

If you’re like.. wait a minute, I’ve heard of the Google Chrome browser but what is Chrome OS? Is it supposed to be an OS which replaces our Windows or Mac OSX?

Check out this video below if you’ve just heard of Google Chrome OS: Continue Reading »
A sneak peek into Google’s Chromium Operating System

Let me ask you this. How long does it take for your PC to start up every day?

Depending on how powerful your machine is and the number of software and service which needs to be started on your operating system, the time it takes for you to actually begin working on your PC could vary from 20 seconds to 2 minutes.

On my older DELL notebook, I would usually click on the power button and then go make myself a cup of coffee. By the time I return, I can start work immediately without having to stare at the screen for it to boot up.

This situation is OK if we’re not in a hurry to access an important email or website. Imagine if you just got to work and your boss calls you on the phone to immediately reply to his urgent email. That 30 – 40 seconds wait before everything starts up feels like its taking forever.

Every morning after I wake up, I want to check my emails and my site for some important stats. Starting up the notebook does take a while, which was why I went for a Garmin Asus G60 – a Navigation Phone which allows me to get access to the web within a few seconds. Of course, the web browsing capability is just one of the many reasons why I got the navigation phone. Continue Reading »
Load up your PC faster with an instant on software