Blog: Windows 7

When I attempted to do an in-place upgrade on my Windows Vista system to Windows 7 it hung 62% of the way through the last step.  Everything seemed to be working fine up until the point that I noticed the install was not making any progress.  The installation screen was stuck at 62% and continuously switching between a message of “Please Wait…” and “Transferring files, settings, ect.. x out of x”.  It was around 5:00 and I wasn’t sure if it was just taking a long time or actually hung, so I let it run overnight.  The next morning it was still at 62% so I did a hard power shutdown of the computer buy holding down the power button.  When the system booted backup it recognized that the upgrade failed and automatically started rolling back to Vista.  The rollback only took around 20 minutes and then it booted into Vista without any problems.   [more]

I researched the problem and apparently many other users have had their upgrade stall at 62 % of the last step.  I found a Microsoft knowledge base article describing my exact problem and the work around: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975253.  The problem is caused when the Iphlpsvc service or possibly another service stops responding.  The KB had a “Fix it for me” option and also the manual instructions on how to add an environment variable that fixes the problem.  I added the environment variable and when I ran the upgrade again it worked great.

Windows 7 has a feature called Problem Steps Recorder that you can use to document a procedure or recurring error. From Start, run ‘PSR’, at which point you’ll notice a small, floating bar where you can start and stop recording, as well as add comments during the recording. This utility will take a screen-capture each time you click something or hit a function key, as well as document in text the action taken for each step. When you stop recording, it will prompt to save a zipped MHT file, which you may need IE to view. Here are a couple resources explaining how to use this feature: [more]

• How do I use Problem Steps Recorder?
• Windows 7 Walkthrough: Problems Steps Recorder

I installed a 64bit version of Windows 7 as a virtual machine and when trying to startup, it would hang in a loop of start and restart.  Amongst the loops as the vmware machine would cycle, an error would appear and disappear.  After watching closely I could read enough to see it referred to a bios setting.  That led me to the fix below.

I found out “Virtualization Technology” (VT) must be enabled in the bios settings of my laptop.  VT is an option for Intel CPUs.  This is a requirement VMware implemented for running 64bit virtual machines.  VT is not required for running 32bit virtual machines.

To enable VT, access the Bios Setup Utility on the computer which will host the virtual machine.  Typically, to get to the Bios Setup Utility you press the F1 key when you see the manufactures start up screen when starting or restarting the machine.  When the Bios Setup Utility starts, you will enter Config > CPU.  There you will see the option to Enable VT. [more]

Also, it is documented you must power down the host machine again after enabling VT.  Enabling VT, saving the configuration and continuing with the start up will not enable VT.  It takes and additional cold boot to enable VT.

After the second start, I launched the VMware workstation and powered on the Windows 7 without a problem.

Initial symptom:  After pairing an iPhone using Bluetooth, Windows 7 would show the phone icon with a yellow exclamation point stating it could not find a driver for Bluetooth Peripheral Device. 

To fix this and get tethering to work over Bluetooth, go to the properties of the phone in the Bluetooth devices and click on Services tab.  Uncheck “Wireless iAP” (wireless internet access point).  Windows will stop saying that it needs a driver and you can right click on the phone and select “connect using -> access point”.

NTFS Undelete is a free software utility that recovers deleted files that are no longer in the recycle bin.  Of course, you're hoping something hasn't overwritten any of the deleted file.  An ISO image is also provided if you want to run NTFSUndelete from a CD rather than installing the program after deleting a file.  (The ISO image is not bootable, just used to run NTFSUndelete from the CD.) [more]

http://ntfsundelete.com

The user interface is easy to understand and there are some helpful advanced search options (date, size filters as well as file names, etc.)

To use BitLocker in Vista, you had to create a separate active drive partition.  When Vista first shipped this had to be created manually, but Microsoft released a BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool later to help with the partitioning.

With Windows 7 this partition is still required but is created automatically when BitLocker is enabled.  However the Drive Preparation Tool is still supported as a command line tool, intended mostly for scripting the BitLocker setup for multiple systems.

More information is available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd875534%28WS.10%29.aspx

This seems to be something that my Windows Vista book did not mention about disk management in comparison with the past versions.  Windows Vista/7/2008 Server have an improved Disk Management feature in that it allows you to shrink basic partitions.  Whereas in the past we have had to use 3rd party utilities (such as gparted or partition magic) to resize drives, Windows has the option to shrink the partition size.  Simply open up disk management and right click on the partition you wish to shrink and select “Shrink”. 

Windows will calculate exactly how much it can shrink so that you can use the new unallocated space to make additional partitions.  Limitations to this of course depend on where the data is currently stored on the disk.  If it is scattered, you may be able to claim more by defragmenting and moving your data towards the first sectors of the disk.

In a News Press Release yesterday, Microsoft Corp. announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  Windows 7 should be generally available to customers around the world in mid to late October, and Windows Server 2008 R2 should be generally available on or before October.  To learn more, visit http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-22Windows7RTMPR.mspx

Many years ago, PC makers came out with the “enhanced keyboard” and the control key got moved.  It used to be located to the left of the caps lock key, but for some reason that is still unknown, it got moved to way down below the left shift key, where you really have to cramp up your hand to reach it. The most popular solution to this is to switch the caps lock and the control keys.  I use a nice GUI program, KeyTweak http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick.  Since NT, Microsoft Windows has had a registry key that lets you remap your keyboard. This lets you remap just about every key by setting this registry key.  It is the most complete utility I could find.  It works with Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/Win 7. Since this is a feature built into Windows, no kernel mode driver, service, or anything else needs to be running. You can edit the registry yourself, but this tool makes it really easy.  It has an option to show the registry entry and what all the bytes mean.