If you’ve purchased a new computer in the past few months it likely came with Windows Vista installed AND an offer for a free upgrade to Windows 7 when the new operating system is released. It’s almost a certainty that if you purchased a new system sometime after June 26, 2009 then you qualify for an upgrade. Some refurbished systems will also be included. You will have to check with the manufacturer of your computer, or maybe with the retail store that you purchased it from, for the terms of the deal and for the specific details on how to get the upgrade package.

Windows 7 officially comes out today, so don’t forget to take advantage of the upgrade opportunity. By all accounts Windows 7 is a much improved operating system over Windows Vista so this is one upgrade that you don’t want to miss.

Just to make your life a little bit easier, I’ve compiled a list of websites that should help you to get your upgrade package faster and easier. You will need to have your Proof of Purchase dosucments as well as the make, model, and serial number of your computer ready before you apply for your upgrade. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it does include all of the major PC, Laptop, Notebook, and Netbook vendors, and even a few of the smaller ones as well:

• Acer – http://www.acer.com/windows7upgrade/
• ASUS – http://event.asus.com/2009/windows7/
• Averatec – http://www.trigem.com/us/event_win7.asp
• Compaq – http://www.hp.com/go/windows7upgrade/
• CyberPower PC – http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/LandingPages/win7/
• Dell – http://win7.dell.com/
• eMachines – http://www.emachines.com/windows7upgrade/
• Fujitsu – http://www.shopfujitsu.com/Windows7Upgrade/
• Gateway – http://www.gateway.com/windows7upgrade/
• HP / Hewlett Packard – http://www.hp.com/go/windows7upgrade/
• iBUYPOWER – http://www.ibuypower.com/Info/Windows7Upgrade.aspx
• Lenovo / Thinkpad – http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/windows7/
• LG Electronics – http://lg_upg.gmd.co.kr/
• MSI / Microstar – http://www.win7msi.com/
• Samsung – http://support-us.samsung.com/windows7/
• Sony – http://www.sony.com/ca/windows7/
• Toshiba – http://www.toshibawindows7upgrade.com/
• Trigem – http://www.trigem.com/us/event_win7.asp
• Velocity Micro – http://www.velocitymicro.com/windowsupgrade/

Note that in most cases these offers are totally free, but in some cases there may be an administrative or a shipping & handling charge.

Windows Vista has a really annoying habit of changing the way that it displays files in folders in Windows Explorer (or My Computer) based on the content in those folders. For example if a folder contains pictures it tends to show small icons (or thumbnails) instead of a simple list of files. And the default view for other file types tends to be a list of file names that doesn’t display any of the other details about the file, such as that date that it was changed or the file size.

Even more annoying is that Vista doesn’t respect the file folder view that you have selected (in the Folder Options dialog) if the contents of a folder changes. For example, if I have a folder that contains only text files that is set to show “All Details”, and then I add some pictures to that folder, Vista will automatically change the view to the “Pictures” view.

I honestly don’t know anyone that prefers to see their files as icons, and I personally want to see all the other details (sometimes called metadata) about my files all the time.

I finally found a permanent fix for this problem. Instead of detailing it here, I’m just going to provide a link to the source of the solution. They even provide a downloadable REG file that you can execute to automatically fix it for you. So, click the following link if you want to see the “All Details” view for all of your folders on all of your drives, all of the time.

Note that this is another Vista tip that I assume will also apply to Windows 7, but I haven’t been able to test that yet. I’ll get back to you sometime on or near October 22nd!!

UPDATE Oct 27, 2009 – This trick is definitely still applicable to Windows 7, and it works perfectly!

Windows 7 is due out on October 22nd and many people will be planning to install it as soon as possible after it arrives. I know I will be as I’ve completely had it with Vista! In order to try to help make your installation day go a little bit smoother I’ve compiled a list of 7 things to do before inserting the Windows 7 program disc into your computer’s drive:

1. Check for Viruses
2. Backup your System Hard Drive
3. Backup your Data Files
4. Update your System BIOS
5. Find your Hardware Driver Discs
6. Find your Software Installation Discs
7. Consider Dual Booting Windows

1. Check for Viruses: You should be doing this all the time anyway, but if you are planning to upgrade your existing Windows installation to Windows 7 (rather than performing a clean install) you will definitely want to ensure that your system is clean of viruses before proceeding. This is not quite as important for a clean install, but it’s still not a bad idea. If you don’t have a virus scanner check out the free version of AVG Antivirus
2. Backup your System Hard Drive: You will want to be completely prepared to recover your computer just in case the worst happens. It probably won’t, but better safe than sorry. The best way to do this is to make a complete backup of the system drive (ie. the drive that contains your operating system, usually the C: drive) onto a brand new spare hard drive. Hard drives are very cheap these days and it’s always good practice to have a complete backup drive sitting on the shelf anyway, just in case. I generally buy bare drives and install them in USB enclosure to connect them to my computer. I do this rather than buying dedicated External USB Drives so that I can take the disc out of the enclosure and insert it directly into my computer when my installed drive fails (because eventually it will fail). I use Acronis True Image backup software to clone the drive. There are other good software programs out there too, but I’ve successfully used True Image many times.
3. Backup your Data Files: If you have important files stored on your computer, such as legal documents, photographs, music, videos, and financial information, you will want to ensure you have spare copies of those files handy for use in an emergency. USB thumb drives are a good choice here (they are small, fast, cheap, AND easily writable in case you make changes to your files), but burning a CD or DVD would also work in a pinch.
4. Update your System BIOS: Check the website for your computer manufacturer to see if they have any BIOS updates available for your system. Sometimes these updates are required to ensure that your system will even run with newer operating systems, and immediately prior to an upgrade (and immediately after backing up your hard drive) is a great time to do this.
5. Find your Hardware Driver Discs: Windows 7 has been out in the wild in a release candidate version for a long time, so it’s likely that the installer will be able to find the drivers for most of your hardware devices. But sometimes printers, scanners, etc. really need the OEM installer before they work properly. Unless you are uber-organized your discs are probably not all together in one place, so it’s a good idea to find everything and have them ready in one convenient location.
6. Find your Software Installation Discs: Unless you are doing a direct upgrade of Vista to the corresponding version of Windows 7 (ie. Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium) you will actually be doing a clean install of windows and you will need to reinstall all your software, so you’re going to need your installation discs (or setup files if you downloaded them from the web) and license information. Again it’s a good idea to gather all of this stuff into one convenient location in advance. You should also take some time to go through everything you already have installed under Vista to be sure that you aren’t forgetting about some of your rarely used programs (as long as it is still relevant and important).
7. Consider Dual Booting Windows: If you’re really scared about losing everything when you install Windows 7, you might consider “Dual Booting”. Basically that means installing Windows 7 beside your existing OS without killing the existing version. There’s an easy step-by-step guide on how to do this over at Lifehacker, so I’ll leave it to them to help you make this work.

Well that’s it. If you do these things then you should be pretty safe to go ahead and install Windows 7 without worrying about losing all of your important files and data. There’s still likely to be a lot of work to set up the OS the way you like it, and to install all the software you need, but this is a great first step. Good luck!

I’ve noticed this issue for as long as I’ve been running Windows Vista… I’ll be happily typing along when all of a sudden my keyboard starts spewing out random characters instead of what I’m expecting. The most annoying switch is when I get an accented e (é, from French or Latin) instead of a question mark (?).

Well it finally annoyed me one time too many, so I figured out the solution. I’ve long known that it has something to do with the keyboard layout that you have selected. This selection is buried in the Control Panel under the “Regional and Language” settings. Of course it would be too much to ask for this to be included with the “Keyboard” settings… It will only occur if you have more than one installed keyboard layout AND if you have a shortcut enabled to switch the keyboard layout.

By default the keyboard shortcut to change the input language is enabled with the key combination “Left Alt + Shift”, and the keyboard shortcut to change the keyboard layout is enabled with the key combination “Ctrl + Shift”. That makes total sense because I’m sure nobody ever presses Alt and Shift or CTRL and Shift at the same time. (Editors Note – Sarcasm Applied)

Fortunately if you disable either one of these things then your random keyboard troubles will disappear. Let’s do both:

Remove Unused Keyboard Layouts

• Go to your Control Panel and open “Regional and Language Settings”
• Switch to the “Keyboards and Languages” tab and select “Change Keyboards”



• Before doing anything else, ensure that you have the desired keyboard selected. For most of my readers that is most likely to be “US“, but if you are in a different country or use a different primary language, your preference will be different.



• Select all other keyboards layouts other than the one you wish to use. The default installation of vista seems to include the “US” Keyboard as well as one or two other layouts specific to the country you told Vista that you live in when you first installed it. I’m Canadian so all of my computers have “Canadian French” and “Canadian Multilingual Standard” installed.
• Click “Remove” to delete these keyboard layouts.

Delete the Hotkey combination that changes Keyboard Layouts

• Click on the “Advanced Key Settings” tab
• Select the “Between input languages” setting in the Actions window, then hit the “Change Key Sequence…” button



• Choose “Not Assigned” for the “Switch Input Language” AND for the “Switch Keyboard Layout” settings, then click “OK”
• Click “OK” all the way out. You may need to reboot your machine to lock in this change

Well, that’s it. It may seem like a lot of steps (and it is for such a ridiculous setting), but it’s fast and easy to do and it will eliminate lots of headaches!

This is another one that I assume will be the same in Windows 7, but I haven’t been able to test it yet. I’ll get back to you sometime on or near October 22nd!!

UPDATE Oct 27, 2009 – This trick is definitely still applicable to Windows 7, and it works perfectly!

I’m the type of guy that uses keyboard shortcuts all the time. It’s simply faster and more efficient, and it works for me. So back in the Windows XP days I got very used to using Win+L to change users (ie. to log into a different account) when working on a computer with multiple user accounts. This is a very common situation in common areas in offices or more likely around the home. This nifty little key combination automatically took the user from the current application or the desktop directly to the welcome screen where you could select the account you wanted to use.

Along came Windows Vista and they added an intermediate step to the process. Hitting Win+L now locks current user account rather than going to the welcome screen. The user is presented with the option to enter their password to access the recently active user account, or to hit the Switch Users button to bring up the welcome screen. Aside from adding a step (which is often time-consuming as Vista has to think about who-knows-what after each selection is made), this change is also pointless and is definitely not an improvement over going directly to the welcome screen. Chalk this one up to the massive list of “what-were-they-thinking” developments that arrived with Vista.

(If you hadn’t figured it out already, in Vista the term “Fast User Switching” really only means that more than one user can be logged in at the same time; however, only one user can actually be connected at any one time. Switching between those users is not necessarily very fast. This is not intuitive and what most users really want is a way to switch between users quickly, or even instantly!)

There a couple of options to getting around the Locked screen:

1. The first option is free, and it comes courtesy of Quinn Lewis: Quinn pointed me to a hack using a utility that comes with Vista called TsDiscon.exe. Creating a shortcut to this utility and adding a custom keyboard shortcut will allow you to automatically jump to the welcome screen. Apparently this trick doesn’t work for everyone, but it worked perfectly for me. If you want to give it a try there is a tutorial on how to do it over at The Winhelponline Blog.
2. The second option is to buy an app called DUST (Direct User Switching Task). This app gives you the option to cycle through the currently logged on users, or to disconnect your session, by hitting Win+S. The beauty of this app is that it takes you directly to any other user accounts that are already logged in, bypassing both the Locked screen AND the Welcome Screen. The only negative is that it is not free. At only $15 it’s not all that expensive, but the $15 only entitles you to use it on one computer. If you have several shared computers then you will need to purchase a license for each machine.

If anyone has any new or better (eg. free) ways to make this work, I’d love to hear about. Please leave a note in the comments. Let’s all hope that this process is streamlined in Windows 7…