How To Prevent A Program From Running In Windows 7

Sometimes the system admin, or parent may not want a particular program from running on a computer (ie.torrents and other downloading programs) for obvious security reasons. This little guide will show you how to prevent a program from running, and will still apply even if the program is uninstalled and reinstalled.

1. First off go to your registry editor by pressing Winkey+R and typing in regedit

2. Then you want to navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

3. Next right click on the right handside pane and choose New->DWORD (32bit) Value and name it DisallowRun.

4. Once it’s created, double click on it and change its value to 1 and then hit Ok.

5. Now right click on Explorer and choose New->Key. Name the key DisallowRun aswell.

6. Then right click on the right handside pane and choose New->String Value

You can now enter any name you like, ie. Block Bittorrent and then double click on it and  in the value data field you want to insert the exe extension.

(You can find the .exe extension by right clicking on the program and going to properties in all programs)

7. Finally restart your computer and next time you try to launch the disabled application you will get an error message like this.

To disable more than one program, you need to repeat steps 5,6 and 7 for each .exe you want to disable.

To re enable the program, simply delete the registry entry that you made in steps 5,6,7 and restart

How To Install Windows 7 To USB External Hard Drive [Must Read]

While one can install Windows 7 from an external hard drive or USB, one can’t install the same to an external hard drive. For all those users waiting for a workaround to install Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to an external hard drive, here is a complete solution.

 

Even though Windows recognizes and displays the USB hard drive in the installation screen, it doesn’t allow you install Windows on the same. So, if you want to install Windows 7 on an external hard drive you need to follow the steps given below.

 

The procedure is simple but you need to install Windows Automated Installation Kit first to get some files. We would like to thank fujianabc @ boot-land forum for this workaround.

Requirements:

# An external hard drive formatted with NTFS

# Windows 7 installation files (if you have Windows 7 ISO use Virtual Clone Drive freeware to mount it)

# Windows Automated Installation Kit (free download from Microsoft)

 

NOTE: Make sure that you have a minimum of 15 GB free space on your external hard drive before starting the procedure. Although we are not going to delete the contents of external hard drive, we recommend backing up your external hard drive contents before trying this guide.

Procedure:

1. Create two folders named Windows Files and WAIK Files on your desktop or any other drive which has a minimum of 5 GB free space.

2. Download the ZIP file from here and extract the contents to WAIK Files folder. Before starting the actual installation procedure, you need to have three files: Bcdboot.exe, Bootsect.exe and Imgex.exe. These files can only be obtained by installing Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 on your Windows PC. After installing WAIK, simply search for these files in the Windows installation drive to get them. Once you have these three files, copy them to WAIK Files folder that you have created in the above step.

3. Copy all the contents of Windows 7 installation DVD to the Windows Files folder.

 

4. The next step is to run Installer.cmd file as Administrator (Right-click on installer.cmd and select run as administrator). In the first screen, you will be asked to press Enter to continue.

 

5. Press Enter key to browse to the install.wim file present in the Windows Files folder. The Install.wim file can be found under Sources folder (Windows Files/ Sources/ install.wim).

6. Now, you need to select the Windows 7 edition that you want to install on external hard drive. You can select the edition by entering the index number shown in the screen. For example, type "5" (without quote) and hit Enter key to select Ultimate edition.

7. The next step is to enter your External drive’s drive letter. Enter the drive letter (ex: L) and press Enter key.

8. Now, type in the drive letter of your ACTIVE partition and hit Enter key. Generally "C" is the active partition. You can find the active partition by opening Windows Disk Management tool (type diskmgmt.msc in Start menu search area and hit enter to launch it).

9. Finally, the installer will ask you the drive letter that you have entered to install Windows 7 is a USB hard drive or not. As you are installing Windows 7 to an external hard drive simply type "Y" without quote and press Enter key.

 

Finally click Enter key again to start extracting the Install.wim files. This might take a few minutes. Once done, you will be asked to reboot your PC to continue the normal Windows 7 installation procedure.

 

10. Reboot your PC and follow the usual Windows 7 installation procedure to complete Windows 7 installation on external hard drive. Your PC will be restarted twice or thrice during installation.

 

Please note that the installation procedure might be slower as you are installing Windows 7 to an external hard drive.

 

11. Once done with the installation, you are good to go. You can install all drivers and other software to start using the best Windows version on your PC.

 

Note: We have tested this method to install x86 flavor of Windows 7 to Seagate USB external hard drive. But should work fine with x64 as well. Users who would like to carry Windows 7 on a USB flash drive can follow our how to carry Windows 7 on USB flash drive guide.

List Of Language Interface Packs (LIPs) Available For Windows 7

Microsoft has released several Language Interface Packs (LIPs) for Windows 7 over the last few months. Language Interface Packs translate most widely used parts of user interface and are available for all editions of Windows 7.

If you want to see the Windows 7 user interface in your native language, you can download and install LIPs from Microsoft Download Center.

To get the full list of Language Interface Packs available for Windows 7, please visit the official LIPs page.

Download Acronis True Image For Free (Only To Seagate & Western Digital HDD Users)

Acronis True Image is a truly professional and the best backup application available for Windows. But, as you may know, one need to shell out a minimum of $49 to purchase it.

 

Now let’s see how can one get this application for free. As you know, Seagate and Western Digital (WD) are the two popular hard drive manufactures. Most of the PC manufactures use HDDs from one of these manufactures. If you are using a PC with a Seagate, new Maxtor or Western Digital HDD you can get the Acronis True Image for free. Yes, both Seagate and WD allows you download the Acronis True Image software for absolutely free.

 

While Seagate has rebranded the True Image to DiscWizard, Western Digital is offering the software without a change. So, you can download Acronis True Image for free from the below mentioned links.

 

 

Key features of Acronis True Image WD edition:

# Clone the drive to a new WD drive

# Drive migration

# Drive deployment

# Drive image backup

# Drive image recovery

# Create bootable standalone recovery manager

 

key features Seagate DiscWizard:

# Drive migration

# Create bootable media

# Manage image backups (explore,mount, & unmount image backup)

# Image backup and image restore

# Disc utilities

 

 

Above mentioned features are good enough for your day-to-day backup needs. So, if you are looking for a trustworthy professional backup solution for XP, Vista and Windows 7, just download the software from below mentioned links.

 

Download For Seagate & Maxtor

Download For Western Digital

How To Bypass Windows 7 Logon Password In Three Steps

Have you forgot your XP, Vista or Windows 7 logon password? Sure, there are a few workarounds to access your account using a bootable Linux CD but they are time consuming and boring as you need to go through a long procedure.

 

In this guide, we will show you how to bypass a Windows 7 logon password in just two steps. And we are using a free tool to make this happen. So, here is the procedure to bypass Windows 7 logon password:

 

1. Download the Kon-Boot CD-ISO ZIP file (it’s a tiny file) and extract it to get the ISO file. Burn the ISO file to a CD/DVD to create a bootable Kon-Boot CD/DVD.

 

2. Before inserting the CD/DVD make sure that you have made necessary changes to boot priority setting in the BIOS so that you can boot from CD/DVD. Insert the CD/DVD into the optical drive and restart your machine. In a few seconds you will see the following screen of Kon-Boot.

 

Simply hit Enter and wait for a few seconds.

 

3. You should see the logon screen and with a password prompt. Simply press Enter key to bypass the forgot logon password. That’s it!

We have tested this tool on Windows 7 Ultimate x86, but it should work fine on XP and Vista too. Good luck!

 

Note: Use this method and tool for your personal use only.

How To Maximize Battery Life On Windows 7

Windows 7 has been touted as a great power saver and several reports have revealed that it can help large organisations save a fair bit off their electricity bill. However Windows 7 also had its fair share of minor battery complaints. Now it wasn’t that it was draining the batteries, more that it didn’t appear to understand the health of the battery and would tell users to replace it. These complaints have all dissipated now, so let’s have a look at how you can maximize the battery life of your Windows 7 laptop.

First things first, let’s identify what the biggest battery hog is. Could it be your processor? Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radio? Speakers? No, it is in fact your display.

Windows Vista was continually slammed for it’s battery life, so Microsoft have really worked hard on improving it in Windows 7. But to be honest, if you’ve got a really old laptop battery, that sees it’s life draining in just a couple of minutes after its been charged, its probably seen better days and it’s time to invest in a new one. But if your battery is fairly healthy, these tips should extend its life a bit.

Windows 7 has a great power plan control panel built into it, it allows you to quickly adjust your screen brightness and choose a preset power plan. You can access it quickly by pressing Win+ X and this will allow you to change the brightness or select a pre-determined power plan. If you want more advanced options, you can click on the battery icon in your task-bar and go to more power options.

Now here you can change all sorts of things like when you want the display to dim, when to go to sleep mode, your screen brightness for when your laptop is plugged in and unplugged. Once unplugged it will automatically revert to these settings for you.

Of course the most important setting here is to reduce the brightness of your display right down, you will see a dramatic improvement in your battery life if you do this.

But there’s more settings that we can play around with. If you go to change advanced power plan settings you can change things like your processor speed,system cooling and set what your power button does as well as many more settings.

Play around with these and set things like the harddrive to turn off quickly, the wireless adapter into low power mode and reduce your processors maximum state. Some systems will have a “System Cooling Policy” and this will allow you to select whether or not you want your system to cool with fans, or to let it cool naturally and reduce processor power to prevent it from getting to hot.

Play around with all these settings, they’re fairly simple and straight forward and you should know how to optimize for the best battery performance.

Another big drainer on the battery is your wireless and Bluetooth radios. These use a fair bit of battery life, particularly Wi-Fi. Even when your not connected to a network, it’s constantly scanning and looking for one to connect to. If you’re just typing a word document or something, and don’t need Wi-Fi, be sure to turn off your wireless.

Some laptops have a switch for this, others have a keyboard shortcut, but you can also do it via your Control Panel.

An important thing to remember is kill any unnecessary programs and process that may be running in the background. You’ll find with more and more programs these days, just because you “X” out of them, doesn’t mean their closed. If you go to your system tray notification area, you will often find their icon, which means they’re still up and running. Right click and exit these to make sure they’ve closed. Of course you can also go to your task manager Ctrl+Alt+Delete and have a look at what’s going on there as well.

If your system is low on RAM, and your running a couple of programs, your machine will have to keep switching around programs from your harddrive, which causes unnecessary usage of it, therefore using more power, so make sure you have plenty of RAM, it’s not that expensive to get hold of these days anyway.

So there’s a couple of tips that if you follow, will definitly result in better battery life.

Have you any more suggestions to add? Let me know in the comments

Download Building A Custom Image Of Windows 7 Step-By-Step Guide From Microsoft

Users following Into Windows closely know that there are exactly five free tools available to customize the Windows 7 installation ISO by including your own applications and tweaks.

Most of these tools use Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK),  a free download from Microsoft, to  tweak and customize Windows 7 installation files. A free step-by-step guide is available to download from Microsoft that covers building a standard image of Windows 7 with the help of WAIK.

 

This step-by-step guide explains how to install a custom image by using an operating system image that includes your customizations and applications. This guide comes in handy for small and medium business that may not have prior experience with Windows deployment or do not have enterprise deployment infrastructure.

 

Also read our how to create unattended Windows 7 installation setup by using vLite tool.

 

Download

Get the Recycle Bin back in My Computer

Ever since Windows XP  Microsoft have been encouraging us to keep our desktops clean and uncluttered but they still leave the Recycle Bin there.  So what if you want to remove it and put it somewhere else?  a month ago I wrote about RecycleBinX, a small utility that can add the recycle bin to the Windows 7 Taskbar.

Now, HowToGeek have published a handy little guide on how to get the Recycle Bin to appear back in your My Computer view, like it used to in earlier versions of Windows.

It’s a simple registry hack too, these things commonly are, simply go to…

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace

…and add a new Key called {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

After restarting Windows Explorer the Recycle bin should now appear.  Even better they’ve provided the hack as a downloadable .reg file that you can simply run to get it working.

The downloadable file and a series of screenshots on how to implement this can be found at their website.  As with anything when it comes to working in the Windows Registry, we do suggest that you’re very careful and that you back up a full copy of your registry before you make any changes.

5 Free Tools To Customize & Tweak Windows 7 Installation Setup

Several free tools available to customize and tweak almost every part of Windows 7, from installation setup to UAC (user account control) to Media Center. We have already covered almost all good tools her at Into Windows.

In this post, we will share the best free tools available to customize Windows 7 installation setup. If you don’t know, these tools allow you create unattended installation setup, add/remove native, Windows programs, integrate drivers, tweak registry, add new themes and more.

 

There are a total of five free tools available to customize and tweak Windows 7 installation setup. You need to have installed Windows Automated Installation Kit (free) to install and run these tools.

 

1. vLite: Though this was developed for Windows Vista, you can use it for Windows 7 as well. The tool lets you create unattended Windows 7 setup, integrate hotfix, language packs and drivers, tweak Windows settings, and create bootable ISO.

 

Download and review

 

2. RT Seven Lite: A tool specially developed for Windows 7. This tool packs-in more features compared to other tools. You will find several tweaks under Customization tab.  The tool lets you add new themes, gadgets, screensavers, desktop background, icons, new OEM logos and more.

Download

 

3. 7 Customizer: Another simple tool to customize and create unattended Windows 7 installation setup.

Download

 

4. Se7en Unattended: With Se7en Unattended you can disable services, include add-ons, add third-party applications, add Windows updates, integrate drivers, and add other tweaks to create a customized Windows 7 ISO.

Download and review

 

5. Win Integrator: This tool is pretty much similar to vLite. Other than above mentioned features one can also turn on or off one or more Windows features. Overall, a nice tool with simple user interface.

Download and review

 

Tip: Use RT Server Customizer tool to customize and tweak Windows Server 2008 R2 setup.

How To Change Then Windows 7 Logon Background [1] July 26, 2010 | Robert Boland

I know many of our readers like to be able to customize their OS, so this little guide will show you how you can change your Windows 7 logon background.

Now just a quick note: The background that you want to change to must be a .jpg file and smaller than 256kb. One more thing, there is different directions based on which version of Windows 7 you have, so make sure you  follow the right ones.

For Windows 7 Home Premium Users please see page 2 of this post

For Windows 7 Ultimate

1.Open the run dialog box (that’s the Winkey+R) and type in gpedit.msc and hit OK.

2.This will open up your Local Group Policy Editor. You then want to go to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon

3.Then double click on Always Use Custom Logo

4. The next thing you want to do is choose enable in the new window that pops up, then click Ok to close the window. Then close Local Group Policy Editor.

Then finish it off  follow the instructions on the last page of this post.

For Windows 7 Home Premium users, see page 2
For Window 7 Home Premium

1. Once again, open up the run dialog (Winkey+R) and type in regedit and hit Ok.

2. Now navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\

Authentication\LogonUI\Background

3. Double click on OEMBackground and in the box that pops up, change its value to 1 and hit Ok

4. Now navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\

5. Right click on Windows , now choose New-> Key and name it System. (sometimes this key may already exists, if it does, skip to page 3.)

6. In the white panel on the right, Right click and choose New->DWORD (32-bit) value and rename it to OEMBackground. Now double click on UseOEMBackground and change its value to 1.

7. Now exit your registry editor and go to page 3 for the final step

Download Colors Of India, NASA Spacescapes & Wolves Windows 7 Themes From Microsoft

The Windows 7 personalization gallery has been updated again with three fresh themes. This time Microsoft added Colors Of India, NASA Spacescapes & Wolves themes to the official gallery.

While the Colors Of India & NASA Spacescapes contain 14 beautiful 1920 x 1200 resolution wallpapers, Wolves features 11 high-definition wallpapers for your Windows 7 desktop.

As usual, download and double-click on the theme pack file to install and apply it.

 

Download Colors Of India

Download NASA Spacescapes

Download Wolves