Christmas is traditionally the time to give and receive technology, at least it is these days, so a few days ago I posted a free eBook guide to setting up and configuring a new PC which I hope you’ll find helpful and pass on to friends, family and colleagues.  Many people will get a new Windows Phone for Christmas, this includes myself as Nokia have just sent me a Lumia 800 for review.  Any new operating system presents its challenges though and so here I thought I’d publish a quick guide to getting started with your new WIndows Phone handset.

Setting up Accounts

You can set up all your online accounts, Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc in the settings panel from the main screen.  To get here, swipe from right to left on the screen and swipe your finger up the screen to scroll the all programs list until you see Settings.  These accounts are found in the Email & Accounts panel.

Here you can set up and manage all of your accounts.  Click Add an account to add additional accounts your your phone.  Remember you can have as many email accounts set up as you wish and each one will display its own live tile on the Start screen (there’s no integrated inbox feature yet).

You should click on your email accounts and select what content is synchronised (you may see Calendar, tasks and other options here that you can select) and how often you want the phone to check for new email.  If your data plan is tight you might want to set this to just hourly or perhaps even manually.

Managing Contacts

When you set up different accounts in your phone the handset automatically shows every contact you have on all those accounts in your contacts list.  In the People hub you can set the phone to only show you contacts from people who want to see and call.  To get to these settings swipe your finger up from the bottom of the screen in the people hub and you will see the Settings option displayed.

Here you can press the Filter my contact list button to show and hide people from different accounts.  If you want to choose who you keep up to date with though in the feed you can also tick the Only show posts from people visible in my contact list option.  This means then that you’ll only see Facebook, Twitter etc updates from the people you have chosen to appear in your contacts list, and from nobody else.

Other useful settings

A couple of other useful settings you might want to activate are the Battery Saver which can help conserve your battery when it begins to run low by automatically switching off data features (except for SMS which will still work).

The Find my Phone option is also extremely useful.  By using this you can log into your account at Live.com and track your phone, remotely ring it or even lock it and wipe it if you lose it.

Customising the Start Screen

You will certainly want to customise the Start screen on your handset and it’s not immediately obvious how you can do this to many people.  If you tap and hold on any Live Tile you will see an unpin option appears on it.  If you click this pin you will remove the Live Tile from the Start screen.

You can also rearrange the tiles on the screen and place them where you want.  Tap and hold the icon you want to move and then you can drag it around the screen to place it somewhere else.

You can also add other programs from your installed apps list to the Start Screen in the same way.  Just tap and hold on the app and a menu will appear giving you an option to pin it to the Start screen.

Lastly you will want to secure your phone with a password and I’ve written a guide to how you can do this here.  I hope you’ve found this short guide helpful and I really hope you enjoy using your new Windows Phone.

Search in Windows 7 can be difficult and awkward to use as in order to use it properly you have to remember a lot of, sometimes very obscure commands including  size:gigantic to find the files you’re after.  I even released the chapters on Windows 7 search from my free Windows 7 Power Users Guide as a free supplement long before I made the book itself free.  You can still download my free guide to Windows 7 search here.

Sometimes though you want a more natural way to work with search in Windows and you might be surprised that it does actually exist, but it’s hidden away.

Natural Language Search is an option hidden in the file options.  From a Windows Explorer window click the Organize button and then Folder and Search Options from the menu that appears.

At the next screen, under the Search tab, you can tell Windows 7 to Use Natural Language Search.   This system isn’t perfect but it can a decent fist of commands such as “files created by Mike” or “tiny music files”.

This is an excellent, albeit slightly flawed way to interact with search in Windows 7.  Since this system was designed by Microsoft we have seen great advances in search with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and we can sure that some, if not many of these advances will find their way into the next version of Windows.

It’s a shame really that natural language search, which Google has been tremendously successful with for a decade now, isn’t something we can yet properly use with our computers.  This is especially galling given the ever growing volume of files of different types we are accumulating.  It will be great to see not just improvements to this in Windows 8, but also the feature brought more to the foreground.

Windows Live Mesh is a great little program that can synchronise your files across multiple PCs. laptops and tablets as well as creating an online backup of up to 5Gb using Microsoft’s SkyDrive service.  It’s not without its flaws though and can fill up your hard disk with useless temporary files that it can forget to delete.  Commonly these files can take many gigabytes of space, especially if you are syncing photos and videos as well as your documents.

This fault was present in the beta of Live Mesh and was never rectified for reasons I can’t figure out as, frankly it’s a big one, especially if you’re using a computer with an SSD on which space comes at an expensive premium.  In the example here, taken from one of my own computers you can see that Live Mesh, after a complete sync has finished, is taking up a huge 12.2Gb of space.

It’s not difficult to rectify this problem though you’ll have to access a system folder in Windows.

1. First of all in Windows Explorer press the Organize button
2. Select Folder and Search Options from the menu that appears
3. In the dialog that appears click on the View tab
4. Change the Hidden Files and Folders option to Show Hidden Files, Folders and Drives
5. Make sure the Hide Protected Operating System Files (Recommended) box is unticked

Now Open your Windows drive on your computer and navigate to the following folder…

Users > YouUserName > AppData > Local > Microsoft > Windows Live Mesh

The temporary files (identifiable by the .tmp suffix) are stored by Live Mesh in the  Assembler folder and are usually found at the bottom of the file list.  If you select all these files, right click on them and select their Properties you may find that they are using up a considerable amount of space.  On my computer they were using up 10.8Gb on my 80Gb SSD and these files wre neither needed nor were they doing anything.

It is perfectly safe once your sync is complete to delete all of these files.  They won’t interfere with the operation of Live Mesh as they’re no longer required.  I went looking as the space was need to install a new game and clearly 11Gb of wasted space is something you want to reclaim.

If you have software such as the excellent CCleaner installed on your PC you may find that it cleans out these files, but again, depending on how your system is configured it may not.  Thus I find it’s always a good idea to manually drill down to the Live Mesh folder once in a while to see if there are any temporary files there taking up space.  You can even want to put a shortcut to this folder somewhere.

Once you have completed this task you’ll want to go back into the Folder and Search Options in Windows Explorer and re-hide system and other files.  This will prevent any more being accidentally deleted.

If you are having real trouble with Live Mesh, which can happen and can prevent the system syncing files at all, you can delete the entire contents of the Windows Live Mesh folder.  This will reset everything, though you won’t need to set the computer up on the Live Mesh system again, and assuming your syncing is up to date it doesn’t take very long to rebuild itself.  Just remember to check for those dreaded temporary files again afterwards.

NOTE: If you do delete the entire contents of this folder to reset Live Mesh and find that it then tells oyu it’s re-sending or receiving thousands or even tens of thousands of files, it’s actually not.  Don’t worry, it’ll only take about twenty minutes or so to sort itself out and report that it’s completely up to date.

One of the problems with Windows Phone when the operating system was first released was that while you could secure your phone with a passcode it was either all or nothing.  This meant that you either had to type in a passcode every single time you wanted to do anything on your phone or it never asked you for a password at all.  I know this was of great concern to many people, including myself.  Fortunately with the latest version 7.5 update Microsoft have fixed this issue with the operating now able to turn the passcode on after a period of inactivity.

This is not a widely advertised feature though and there’s no information before, during or after you update your phone to even let you know it exists.  I thought, with my new found ability to get screenshots on my own Windows Phone, that I’d write a short tutorial here for you on how to use this very useful, if not essential, new feature.

1)     Firstly you want to open Settings from the main apps menu

2)     When in the main settings panel, open Lock + Wallpaper

3)     You should now turn on the Password feature for the operating system

4)     Windows Phone will now ask you to enter a passcode, this will always be a numeric value.

5)     When you’re returned to the main Lock + Wallpaper screen, scroll to the very bottom of the screen and tab Require a Password After

6)     You can now select how long a period of time will pass, of up to 30 minutes, before Windows Phone activates the passcode.  Personally I prefer 30 minutes as the others are perhaps a bit short.  With this set you can check your phone regularly without having to worry it will lock you out and require the passcode to be entered every time.  However you will know that if you lose your phone it is very likely that the passcode will automatically turn on to protect your contacts, emails and files.

7)     It’s always a good idea to check the settings have been accepted afterwards.  Here you can see it’s accepted my 30 minute delay on the lock.

I can’t recommend enough that you turn on a passcode for your Windows Phone (or iPhone or Android Phone or Symbian Phone etc.) as we’re all now carrying around increasingly large volumes of data with us.

For example, Windows Phone 7.5 now allows you to easily access any files and documents you may have stored in Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service.  On mine I have all manner of word processor and spreadsheet documents, some of which contain personal and sensitive information.  It’s extremely useful being able to access these files on the move, but critical to know they’re also secure all of the time.  Even if this feature had been in the previous version of Windows Phone, I never would have used it without a good, strong password on the handset.

It can be royally annoying though when a phone asks you to enter your password every single time you pick it up, especially when you’re only doing something simple such as checking your email or updating Facebook.  With this new feature activated you can rest assured that your phone and data will always be safe… well, after 30 minutes anyway.

One of the most common questions I’m asked when people email me with PC questions is how they can find out exactly what it is that’s causing X disk operation or eating up Y memory or Z processor cycles.  The good news is that this is actually really easy to find out.

In Windows Vista and Windows 7 the new Resource Monitor is able to give you real-time information about just about everything going on inside your copy of Windows.  You can access it by typing the word resource into the Start Menu search box.

The Resource Monitor itself is split into different tabs and panels.  The tabs along the top will give you an Overview of your PC’s and Windows operations, but there are also tabs to give you detailed and in-depth information on your CPU, Memory, Disk and Network.

Each tab is split into collapsible panels that give you detailed information.  Where it comes in especially useful is in the following scenarios.

Scenario A – Your PC suddenly slows down at random moments and you can’t check why.  You have a look in the Task Manager but can’t see what it is that is chewing your processor cycles or memory.  Leaving the Resource Monitor open will give you much more detailed information than you will find the Task manager, including real-time graphs of exactly what’s going on.

Scenario B – Your network connection is slow and you don’t know why?  Using the Resource Manager you can see exactly what is using your network connection and how much bandwidth it’s using, not just overall, but split across your different connections and separating out Internet and local network traffic.

Overall I can’t recommend the Resource Monitor highly enough for helping diagnose and repair problems with slowdowns and bottlenecks on Windows PCs.  The Resource Monitor is very easy to use and understand and give you details of exactly what program or process is eating away at your valuable computer resources.

Just to show how seriously Microsoft takes us here at Windows7News.com (and our sister sites), they have selected five of my Windows 7 Troubleshooting videos to appear on the official Microsoft support website at support.microsoft.com.  The videos were made to promote my Microsoft Press book, Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out late last year and are the only Windows 7 video content currently on the site.

Microsoft have given them a prominent position, listing them third out of the 16 help sections for Windows 7 help and support, and personally I think they’ve done a fabulous job in the way they’re presented.  Microsoft does occasionally feature help and support content from MVPs but I am delighted that they invited me to submit my videos.  I will also be making new videos them into the future to include Windows 7 and Windows 8 among other subjects, which could yet include Windows Phone and, as you’ll read below, Office 2010 and Office 15 (when it is released next year or during 2013)

The videos cover the subjects, Using the Automated Troubleshooters, Repairing Corrupt Boot Files, Using the System File Checker, Using the Windows Event Viewer and the ever-popular Using Windows Startup Repair.

But the news doesn’t just end there! There are advanced negotiations currently underway between Microsoft and my publisher to host the Step by Step tutorial videos I made, and that have now been released for free on YouTube on the Microsoft support site as well.  These videos include Windows 7 and Word 2010 but also includes the as yet unreleased PowerPoint 2010 and HTML5, and any tutorial that helps teach people how to use PowerPoint responsibly has got to be good thing    There’s over ten hours of free tutorial videos for Windows 7 and Word 2010 alone.

And there’s more! My next eBook has been confirmed will be released in November by US publisher Fair Trade Digital Exchange (FTDX).  Need2Know Office 365 Security for Small Business will be around 100 pages and retail for around $5 (to be confirmed).  There’s no cover artwork as yet (and to be honest I have to crack on with writing it!) but I’ll share this with you in a couple of weeks.  The ebook will cover all aspects of maintaining good security, not just within Office 365, but it will also look holistically at every aspect of your computing infrastructure, covering everything from your web hosting and broadband connection to your PCs, laptops, smartphones and your approach to mobile working.

The hardware driver support in Windows 7 is just fantastic, especially with consumer hardware with more and more companies submitting their drivers for official certification from Microsoft than ever before.  This not only means driver support on the Windows 7 installation DVD, but also through Windows Update.  You can still find computers however for which the driver support is lacking, my own laptop, the Dell M6600 is a great example of this where the drivers for the graphics (both internal Intel and nVidia), USB3, biometrics, touch-panel, Wi-Fi, Ethernet and SD Card reader are not installed automatically by Windows, nor by Windows Update.  Each one requires a driver download from the Dell website (which is annoying!)

So how do you back up the drivers in your Windows installation and how can you use these?  In all versions of Windows the drivers are stored in the C:\Windows\System32 folder in the sub-folders Drivers, DriverStore and if your installation has one, DRVSTORE.  These folders contain all the hardware drivers for your operating system.  In the folder location, C represents the drive on which you have Windows installed, this may be a different letter on your system.

You can simply copy these folders out to seperate storage (DO NOT MOVE THEM) such as an external USB drive or Pen Drive.  When time comes to reinstall the drivers you can copy the folders back.

Now there are a couple of ways to reinstall the drivers.  The easiest way is to simply restart the PC when the driver folders have been copied back to see if Windows automatically detects drivers for uninstalled hardware.  This is possible, but won’t be the case for all your hardware.

To install drivers for the missing hardware you need to open the Device Manager.  You can do this by typing Device Manager into the search box in the Start Menu.  You will see all your uninstalled drivers highlighted with a small yellow warning triangle icon.  You need to Right-Click on each one and select Update Driver.  Because the correct drivers are already in the drivers folders on your computer, telling Windows to find the drivers automatically should always install the correct one.  You may however, in some cases, have to tell the Device Manager which folder to look for.  You can either point it directly to one of the two drivers folders, or just at the System32 folder; making sure you tick the box “include subfolders”.

There is an important caveat with this.  The drivers for 64 bit (x64) and 32 bit (x86) versions of Windows are usually different.  This means that if you copy x86 drivers into an x64 copy of Windows; or vice-versa, they will not install.  Windows will recognise them as being incorrect.  You cannot use this method therefore when migrating your system from the 32-bit version of Windows to the 64-bit version when, for example, adding more memory to your PC.

You CAN use this method to migrate drivers between Windows Vista and Windows 7 (and back again) as both operating system share the same driver model, but again not between x86 and x64 builds.  You CAN’T use this to migrate Windows XP drivers to Vista or Windows 7 however as Windows XP uses an older driver model and the hardware drivers for XP are not compatible with the newer versions of Windows.

Some months ago now I was commissioned by my publisher, Microsoft Press, to make some video tutorial versions of some of their Step by Step books.  Now they have decided to release these videos for free on YouTube for everybody and are beginning with two of mine, Windows 7 and Word 2010, and one by another author, Excel 2010.

In a press release Microsoft Press said…

We’re pretty excited to unveil nearly fifteen hours of free video instruction, based on three of our most popular recent Microsoft Press Step by Step title releases. The videos are based on, but not exact copies of, each book; there’s material in the videos that you won’t find in the books, and vice versa.

Why free? We’d like to know what you think of these and if you find them helpful. We all learn in different ways, and if there’s enough demand for video editions or companions to existing Microsoft Press books, we’ll certainly consider making the commitment to produce more. We’re even open to the possibility of creating learning resources exclusively in video.

Each video series is around 4 hours long, and frankly I lost count of how many actual tutorial videos are included for Windows 7 and Word 2010, but there’s an awful lot.

I have to say that personally I’m extremely proud of these videos and am absolutely delighted that they’re now free for everybody to access.  I’ve not been able to say they even existed until now, and nine months sitting on a secret as cool as this hasn’t been easy :/

You can find the videos available on the link below, and if you like them I urge you to comment as this may mean that Microsoft Press make a lot more how-to, step by step and other tutorial videos available for free in the future.

Mike Halsey: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Step by Step
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE70E63A6B2DFD196
12 video lessons, totaling 5 hours, avg 30 minutes each
Book authors: Joan Lambert and Joyce Cox
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780735626676/

Mike Halsey: Microsoft® Word 2010 Step by Step
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEC59ED056A5F1C58
16 video lessons, totaling 4 hours 24 minutes, avg 18 minutes each
Book authors: Joan Lambert and Joyce Cox
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780735626935/

Curt Frye: Microsoft® Excel® 2010 Step by Step
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBB8F203F33525925
15 video lessons, totaling 4 hours 35 minutes, avg 20 minutes each
Book author: Curtis D. Frye
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780735626942

One of the best ways to improve security when you’re online is to use Windows’ onscreen keyboard to enter details into banking and other financial websites.  It might be slower than using a traditional keyboard but it’s far more effective at protecting what you type as keyloggers and other malware that might be present on your PC can’t detect your keypresses.

Unless you have a tablet computer though you’re restricted to pinning the onscreen keyboard to your Windows 7 taskbar.  This is fine, but it lacks the cool features that come with tablets such as spell-checking, word prediction and having a pop out keyboard available on your screen all of the time.

It is possible to get these features though even if you don’t have a tablet computer or a touchscreen, and here I’ll talk you through how to add these features to your Windows 7 desktop.

The first step is to type the word services into the search box in the Windows 7 Start Menu and run the Services program that appears.  You need the specific tablet PC functionality running to access these features, and they’re disabled by default if Windows doesn’t detect a touch screen on your computer.

With the Services panel open you need to find the Tablet PC Input Service.  Right click on this service and select it’s Properties from the context menu that appears.

Now a new panel will appear with the properties for the Service.  The next job is to change its startup type to either Automatic where it will start every time Windows 7 boots up, or Manual where it will start whenever you call it.

Finally we need to go back into the Start Menu and type the word tablet pc into the search box.  When the Tablet PC Input Panel appears in the search results, click on it to run it.

There’s just one more step now and that is to activate the two ways to easily access the on-screen keyboard.  In these options you can either turn on the option to Show the icon on the taskbar (this will be essential if you have set the service to start manually), activate the option to Use the Input Panel tab or, as I have done here, tick both options.  If you want to use the input panel tab you will also want to Show [the] Input Panel sliding open from the tab which you can set for either the left or the right of your screen.

Note here that if clicking this brings up the actual keyboard rather than the options for you, clicking the Tools button on the keyboard will display the options link.

With this done you will now have quick and easy access to the in-screen keyboard in Windows.  You’ll see in the image below that we now have an icon on the Windows 7 taskbar for activating the on-screen keyboard and that the keyboard itself is also docked at the side of the screen for when you need it.

This docked keyboard can be dragged around and put wherever you want it to be.

The on-screen keyboard in Windows really is a way to make your online banking and finance much more secure.  This is a very small change to Windows but one that, I’m sure you’ll agree, will be well worth doing for a great many people.