As the author of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” I get asked all manner of questions all the time on how to fix or diagnose problem A, B or C.  To help with this I run a regular series of live webcasts through the O’Reilly website.  The latest of these is by far the most popular and requested.  Diagnosing and Repairing Difficult Problems in Windows 7.

Windows 7 is by far the most stable and reliable version of the OS that Microsoft have ever produced, but as a piece of software it contains millions of lines of code and it’s a huge and extremely complex beast.  This can make diagnosing any difficult problem an extremely daunting experience.

In this live webcast, which if you miss it you can view afterwards if you have pre-registered, I’ll show how you don’t even need third-party tools to complete complex diagnostics, with a tour of a plethora of helpful diagnostic utilities that are already a part of Windows 7.

The webcast is completely free, live and starts at 10AM PT – San Francisco | 6pm – London | 1pm – New York | Fri, Jan 13th at 5am – Sydney | Fri, Jan 13th at 3am – Tokyo | Fri, Jan 13th at 2am – Beijing | 11:30pm – Mumbai on January 12th 2012.

It can be difficult enough finding out what’s gone wrong with windows 7 or a program, but some problems can be a nightmare to diagnose. In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out talks you through how to diagnose really stubborn and hidden problems in Windows 7, and explains how you can go about fixing them.

The webcast will last for approximately 60 minutes and is part of a regular series that, from February, will return to its regular First Thursday spot.  You can register for this free webcast here.  The next webcasts will be…

February 2^nd 2012 – Using Virtualisation in Windows 7

Despite Microsoft’s best efforts, Windows 7 won’t run every piece of software and some of it you might really want or need.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out explains how you can use free virtualisation tools in any edition of Windows 7 to keep valuable and useful older software working in a safe and secure way.

March 1^st 2012 – Building a Bomb-Proof Backup Strategy

Backup, Backup, Backup is a common mantra, but often it’s easier said than done maintaining a good backup strategy due to the time and effort involved long-term.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out talks you through how you can build a simple, hands-free backup strategy that is quite literally bombproof.

April 5^th 2012 – Manually Removing Viruses and Malware from Windows 7

Getting a virus on your computer is a pain and they’re becoming ever more difficult to remove.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out talks you through the process of manually and safely removing viruses and malware from your computer without damaging your files or Windows itself.

May 3^rd 2012 – Building and Upgrading a PC

With computers now more powerful than ever before, and with wallets being squeezed, there are more and more reasons to hang on to your existing equipment.  But how can you breathe new life into an ageing PC on a tight budget?  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out shows you how to quickly and simply get extra life and performance out of your PC, fix common hardware faults and what to look for to build a fantastic new PC from scratch.

June 7^th 2012 – Managing Family Safety in Windows 7

The Internet is a dangerous place and every parent worries about what their children might be doing, and what they might be exposed to online.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out walks you through the process of keeping your children and your family safe online from viruses, criminals and inappropriate content with simple to use free tools.

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.

Tis the season for people to buy you all manner of new technological goodies; at least you hope so.  I’m running a special pre-Christmas webcast on Tuesday December 13th on the subject of Setting up and Configuring a new PC.  The webcast is free for everybody and you can book your place on the O’Reilly website.  Better still there’s a special Christmas present for everybody on the day, so make sure you sign up (and have been a good boy or girl throughout the year).

Tis the holiday season bringing gifts of new computers for young and old. In this webcast, Mike Halsey the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out cuts through the mess of pre-installed bloatware and shows you how to set up your computer system so that it will give you a trouble free, and performance-boosted life. This webcast comes with free downloadable easy guides you can print and keep.

The webcast takes place at 10AM PT, San Francisco | 6pm – London | 1pm – New York | Wed, Dec 14th at 5am – Sydney | Wed, Dec 14th at 3am – Tokyo | Wed, Dec 14th at 2am – Beijing | 11:30pm – Mumbai.

My monthly O’Reilly webcasts are now booked for the first half of 2012.  You can get more information at OReilly.com/webcasts and each one will take place at exactly the same times listed above.  Put these in your diary and join me for these great live events.

January 12^th 2012 – Diagnosing and Repairing Difficult Problems in Windows 7

It can be difficult enough finding out what’s gone wrong with windows 7 or a program, but some problems can be a nightmare to diagnose.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out talks you through how to diagnose really stubborn and hidden problems in Windows 7, and explains how you can go about fixing them.

February 2^nd 2012 – Using Virtualisation in Windows 7

Despite Microsoft’s best efforts, Windows 7 won’t run every piece of software and some of it you might really want or need.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out explains how you can use free virtualisation tools in any edition of Windows 7 to keep valuable and useful older software working in a safe and secure way.

March 1^st 2012 – Building a Bomb-Proof Backup Strategy

Backup, Backup, Backup is a common mantra, but often it’s easier said than done maintaining a good backup strategy due to the time and effort involved long-term.  In this webcast,
Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out talks you through how you can build a simple, hands-free backup strategy that is quite literally bombproof.

April 5^th 2012 – Manually Removing Viruses and Malware from Windows 7

Getting a virus on your computer is a pain and they’re becoming ever more difficult to remove.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out talks you through the process of manually and safely removing viruses and malware from your computer without damaging your files or Windows itself.

May 3^rd 2012 – Building and Upgrading a PC

With computers now more powerful than ever before, and with wallets being squeezed, there are more and more reasons to hang on to your existing equipment.  But how can you breathe new life into an ageing PC on a tight budget?  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out shows you how to quickly and simply get extra life and performance out of your PC, fix common hardware faults and what to look for to build a fantastic new PC from scratch.

June 7^th 2012 - Managing Family Safety in Windows 7

The Internet is a dangerous place and every parent worries about what their children might be doing, and what they might be exposed to online.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out walks you through the process of keeping your children and your family safe online from viruses, criminals and inappropriate content with simple to use free tools.

Here is 4½ hours of video I made for Microsoft Press from the Microsoft Word 2010 Step by Step book.  There are 16 video lessons in total that do on occasion refer to the practice files that come with the book.  These are not always necessary to follow the exercises however.  All videos are available in HD.

21:26    Exploring Word 2010 (Chapter 1) by OreillyMedia

21:15    Editing and Proofreading Text (Chapter 2) by OreillyMedia

27:09    Changing the Look of Text (Chapter 3) by OreillyMedia

17:35    Organizing Information in Columns and Tables (Chapter 4) by OreillyMedia

18:38    Adding Simple Graphic Elements (Chapter 5) by OreillyMedia

19:28    Previewing, Printing, and Distributing Documents (Chapter 6) by OreillyMedia

11:56    Inserting and Modifying Diagrams (Chapter 7) by OreillyMedia

12:35    Inserting and Modifying Charts (Chapter 8 ) by OreillyMedia

13:40    Using Other Visual Elements (Chapter 9) by OreillyMedia

11:19    Organizing and Arranging Content (Chapter 10) by OreillyMedia

13:30    Creating Documents for Use Outside of Word (Chapter 11) by OreillyMedia

11:02    Exploring More Text Techniques (Chapter 12) by OreillyMedia

11:54    Using Reference Tools for Longer Documents (Chapter 13) by OreillyMedia

21:07    Working with Mail Merge (Chapter 14) by OreillyMedia

16:52    Collaborating on Documents (Chapter 15) by OreillyMedia

14:37    Working in Word More Efficiently (Chapter 16) by OreillyMedia

Here is 5½ hours of video I made for Microsoft Press from the Windows 7 Step by Step book.  There are 12 video lessons in total that do on occasion refer to the practice files that come with the book.  These are not necessary to follow the exercises however.  All videos are available in HD.

43:55    Explore Windows 7 (Chapter 1) by OreillyMedia

12:24    Manage User Accounts (Chapter 2) by OreillyMedia

13:50    Manage Your Network (Chapter 3) by OreillyMedia

33:07    Navigate Windows and Folders (Chapter 4) by OreillyMedia

32:09    Manage Folders and Files (Chapter 5) by OreillyMedia

21:08    Connect to the Web (Chapter 6) by OreillyMedia

12:28    Work with Web Pages and Sites (Chapter 7) by OreillyMedia

14:49    Manage Internet Explorer (Chapter 8 ) by OreillyMedia

16:24    Change Visual Elements (Chapter 9) by OreillyMedia

40:51    Change System Settings (Chapter 10) by OreillyMedia

29:22    Work with Programs (Chapter 11) by OreillyMedia

30:24    Set Up Hardware Devices (Chapter 12) by OreillyMedia

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.

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.

We need to get one thing out of the way immediately with ASUS’ new Windows 7 tablet.  This is not a competitor to the iPad or even any other Windows tablet currently on the market.  With an Intel Core i5 processor and 4Gb of memory powering it, this is definitely a tablet that’s aimed at professionals.

I was delighted when this machine arrived at my door, I’d been curious just what this tablet was like for a while now and wondering just how it would compare to my own Windows 7 tablet an ExoPC (sometimes known as a ZooStorm).  My own tablet runs a dual core Atom running at 1.6GHz and has 2Gb of memory with a 64Gb SSD.

The EP121 also houses as 64Gb SSD and while the processor speed might be just 1.33GHz it powers along with four cores visible to Windows (two of them supported through hyper-threading).  So what else does this tablet have on the hardware front?

The Ram is fast DDR3 and there’s 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n wireless and Bluetooth 3.  The screen is 12.1 inches with a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels, though it’s not a new IPS panel.  There’s a 2MP webcam, stereo speakers on either side of the screen and a microphone.  On the left side there’s a volume rocker switch, a mini HDMI port, a combined headphone / microphone port, two USB 2 ports (though they have plastic covers over them that can be fiddly to remove) and an SD/MMC card reader.  Alas there’s no SIM card slot, which I think is essential for any mobile device these days and there’s no support for USB 3.

On the top of the unit next to the power button sits a keyboard button and a rotation lock switch for the in-built accelerometer.  At the far end of the top is a flap which, when opened, pops up a handy stylus.  Finally there’s a button on the front that acts as CTRL-ALT-DEL and that also activates Windows 7′s Flip 3D feature for switching between applications.

The screen itself is just two point touch sensitive and feels a bit washed out when it comes to colour reproduction.  In all I wasn’t as impressed with the screen as I would have liked to have been though the covering of gorilla glass gives it an air of quality.  Indeed there’s quality built in everywhere on this product with an metal surround that just oozes chic and a white textured back that, while it might be an acquired taste, just adds to the overall luxury feel of the tablet.  All told, the build quality of the EP121 is absolutely first rate, and it’s one of the best mobile products I’ve yet seen.

Finishing off this quality build is an included thick leather case with fold out flaps that act as feet to angle the tablet on a table in either portrait or landscape mode, and a rebranded Microsoft bluetooth keyboard.  The tablet is 312 x 207 x 17 mm and weighs in at 1.16Kg.

Battery life is middling for a Windows 7 tablet but excellent for something with this amount of power.  Light use will get you 4.5 hours before needing a recharge, and watching HD video will drop that to 2.5 hours.  This is roughly equal to some tablets running on Atom processors so stacks up very well considering.

The EP121 powered through everything I could throw at it.  Complex Office documents were taken in it’s stride and you can easily edit HD video on this device, though you might have to shackle yourself to the mains power for that.  It left me wondering why ASUS had attached the Eee brand to this tablet when that is normally associated with low-power computing.  Even a friend of mine, who hates my ExoPC, admitted that the EP121 was quick enough to make using Windows enjoyable on a tablet for him, though he added the inclusion of the stylus helped as well.

All this power comes at a price however.  The EP121 costs $1,200 (£1,000) which is double the price of the iPad (even though we mustn’t make that comparison) when it provides a screen that’s not as good and only a quarter of the battery life.

On the face of it then this is a product looking for a market, but there will still be people to whom the EP121 is hugely appealing.  For starters you get a tablet, not just with the ability to run full Windows desktop applications, but also with the power to do so.  Illustrators and professionals who give a lot of presentations might be some of the takers as well as tech enthusiasts who simply want the best.

It makes sense too to have a Windows tablet with the power to run full Windows apps properly and fully with fast response times and speed.  Running some apps on any Atom processor can feel like you’re chugging along trying to do a hill start in second gear.

Only certain people will want to buy this tablet then, despite how much it will appeal to a much broader audience.  These people will be absolutely delighted with their purchase however as the EP121 is a fabulous machine from the excellent build quality to the power on offer.  If power and responsiveness is what you’re looking for in a tablet that has the ability to run full Windows desktop applications then look no further than the EP121, you’ll need deep pockets but you won’t be disappointed.