Troubleshooting Guide to Windows 7,8 or 8.1 installation

Did you experience some problems during Windows installation? If yes then this guide may help you better understand Windows installation.

Microsoft build Windows installation procedure with easy to use user interface that is very easy to use for any normal user. But sometimes due to some reasons it may cause some errors or troubles that makes installation of Windows somewhat complicated. Every normal computer user experience such type of problems and not able to solve them easily but here you will able to solve your problem.

If you have installed any other operating system on your system or want to dual boot Windows with Ubuntu or other OS then you have to face some problems related to partition. Before we begin you should know about the commonly used partitioning methods that are used by different systems or OS.

There are two types of partitioning methods that are used by different operating systems. First one is MBR and another is GPT. Now modern Windows operating system uses GPT partition only and some old Windows version and Linux distribution operating systems use MBR partition scheme.

What is MBR and GPT?

MBR that stands for Master Boot Record is the old standard for managing the partition in the hard disk. The MBR resides at the very beginning of the hard disk and it holds the information on how the logical partitions are organized in the storage device. MBR uses 32-bit to record the partition, each partition can only go up to a maximum of 2TB in size. MBR is the only place that holds the partition information. If it ever get corrupted , the entire hard disk is unreadable.

GUID Partition Table (GPT) is the latest standard for the partitions of a hard disk. Unlike MBR that limits each partition to only 2TB in size, each partition in GPT can hold up to 2^64 blocks in length because it uses 64-bit. In Microsoft Windows, that size is limited to 256TB.

Steps to install and handle trouble?

Now you are somehow familiar with basic partitioning schemes. So now let us start the procedure of Windows 8 installation.

*. Make a bootable DVD or USB pendrive with Windows 8, 8.1 setup and restart your PC to make your system boot from external device i.e. DVD/USB pendrive.

*. After booting you have to normally choose the language, timezone and keyboard layout.

*. Then click on install now and accept terms and conditions as you usually do.

*. Now you will be presented with partitioning wizard. If you have a valid GPT partition scheme then you can directly choose next and follow the instruction but if you are facing problems with partitioning scheme like as following screenshot then follow the next step.

*. Press Shift+F10 and a Command Prompt window will appear.
Enter the following commands one by one:

   
DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK #

(# is the number you saw in the previous step.)

CLEAN
CONVERT GPT/MBR
(You may use GPT or MBR it depends on your partition type if it is of GPT then yoy have to use MBR and if it is MBR then GPT)
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY SIZE=50000

(The size is in MB, so enter the amount that you want to use for your main system partition. i.e. C:\ drive)

FORMAT FS NTFS LABEL "SYSTEM" QUICK

*. After this click on refresh and then select the partition you just created and click on Next.

That’s it…! Now follow the wizard for installation and your Windows 7,8 or 8.1 OS will be installed without any trouble.

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How to change Startup sound of Windows

Are you a long time Windows user? Surely you are not new to the Windows OS. Most of the computer users make you of Windows OS.

Some or all the users were annoyed with Windows Startup sound. Windows doesn’t provide default setting to change the Startup sound. But you can change your Windows system’s Startup sound with some methods. First method you can use to change startup sound of Windows is by hacking or you may say tweaking registry setting but it is very complicated for a normal user.

There is another method to change the startup sound with the help of a free program named Startup sound changer. This is very is to use program and you can easily change your system’s startup sound.

How to change Startup sound?

*. Download Startup sound changer from here.

*. Run the downloaded file with administrator privileges. You will be presented by the following interface.

 *. Now click on Replace and select the .wav audio file that you want to set as the default startup sound for Windows.

*. Finally click on play to hear the changed sound.

Note: The file size should be less than 1 MB and the file format should be .wav.


That’s it! The startup sound for Windows would be changed. Restart your computer and you would be able to hear the new startup sound set by you. In case you want to revert back to the default startup sound, simply click on Restore.

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How to hide Drives from Windows Explorer

Sometimes you have a private data that you needs to be hidden so you use hidden feature of Windows to hide some private files. But if you need to hide entire drive then you may face some difficulties. You are very well aware of hiding files in Windows but, did you know you may also hide your drives from appearing in the Windows Explorer.

For protecting your privacy in this post you will able to know about hiding drives in Windows.

How to hide drives ?

There are certain tricks by which you can hide drives from Windows explorer but from these tricks you will have to edit windows registry. For any advanced Windows user this is an easy task but for a normal user it is somewhat tough.

Fortunately a tool that doesn’t needs to tweak registry is available for you. This tool is NoDrives manager which is a free and simple to use and and can help you hiding your logical drives in Windows Explorer. But note that if you type the name of the drive in the Windows Explorer then it will be shown to you, so keep your drive name private for make it inaccessible to others.

Following steps will help you more.

*. Download and install NoDrive manager from here.

*. Run NoDrive manager and select the drive you want to hide and click on Save changes to hide the drive.

*. Now you will be prompted with a dialog box instructing you to restart your PC or log off and log in it again for the changes to take effect.

*. Now just restart or log off your system and your drives will be hidden.

*. To recover hidden drives uncheck the checked hidden drives and click on save changes and restart or log off your system.

Along with the drives on windows, the tool can also be used to hide CD / DVD drives. You can also assign a password protection to NoDrives Manager application for your security after assigning password nobody can access the application or hide or unhide drives without your permission.

That's it from the easy tutorial for hiding drives from your Windows explorer to protect your private data from others. Hopefully you should enjoy doing it.

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How to find out details of website for safe browsing

Everyday we deal with different websites for different kinds of information. Mostly we don’t care about a website and don’t know how safe it is to browse. Sometimes some websites may be infected with suspicious content that can harm your system. Although you trust the site you must identify about it’s protection for your own safety.

In the past it is very easy for the user to find out the harmful websites because of the poor designing of websites and annoying notifications but nowadays with the mastered improvement in the designing of such harmful websites may confuse anybody and they may not easily detectable for a normal user.

Fortunately for a user there is an easy solution in the form of a browser extension named WOT.

What is WOT ?

WOT is a browser extension that is available for all popular browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera. WOT notify users about a website whether it is safe to browse or not. Once installed, the extension icon appears on your browser and changes color of it according to ratings provided by millions of users for that website around the world.

 

Download links for WOT

For Google Chrome
Download Link 

For Firefox
Download Link

For Opera
Download Link

If a website is harmful, the extension will show a red light and in case it is completely safe, it will display a green light. 

Apart from the browser icon WOT also displays a icon near search result links to alert you before you click on that link. It’s also a very amazing feature of WAT that help you protecting yourself before clicking any link.

Being an experienced web user or a newbie to the Internet all the users can protect themselves with this extension. So enjoy safe browsing on the Internet.

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