1. Download and install WinSetupFromUSB.

2. Create a new folder with any name of your choice and extract the Windows XP ISO file into that folder. You can use programs like UltraISO.

3. Connect the USB Flash Drive to your PC and start WinSetupFromUSB. If drive is detected properly it should appear in the USB Disk Selection drop down menu. If you don’t see it there  this may be because it is not formatted yet.

Don’t worry, just press the RMPrepUSB button and select the options as shown in the picture below. Then click Prepare Drive.

Important! Using NTFS will significantly accelerate the installation process but may cause problems with certain models of flash drives. Therefore in such cases it is advisable to use FAT.

4.Answer OK to the following questions displayed by the program.

5. Now your device is ready and the only thing left is just to copy the Windows XP files to it. Click the browse button to specify the full path to the folder where you extracted the Windows XP ISO file.

6. Click GO to start the process. On the bottom of the screen you will see a progress bar showing the current status of the process. You can also monitor the number of copied files as well as the space they occupy on disc.

When the process is complete you can connect the flash drive to your notebook or netbook, enter the BIOS and set the computer to boot from USB. Installation will begin with the following window where you just press enter to continue.

At the next window you can see that the installation process is divided into two parts. Press Enter again to continue with the first part that runs in text mode. Proceed as usual with selecting the partition where you want to install and then wait until  windows files are copied on the hard drive.

After the first restart installation will start again, but in the second window you have to select the second part in order to cuntinue with the GUI-mode of XP Setup. Actually, it will be selected automatically by the program and you can just press enter.

Perhaps you know, that every time you download or install a new software or drivers, you make changes to your operating system. However, sometimes these changes can make your system unstable. In case of change Windows XP records a snapshot of your computer which is stored to your hard disk. These snapshots are called restore points. For example, restore points are created at the time of significant system events like the installation of new devce drivers or software updates. You can use these restore points to return your computer to a previous state, when it was functioning correctly. Microsoft also offers users the ability to create a new restore points manually, or change the System Restore configuration.

But no matter how useful this feature, it has some shortcomings, one of which is, that if a virus infects your computer, it may be accidentally backed up and included in a restore point by the System restore feature. Here is the time to mention that most antivirus programs will detect the infected files but will be unable to clean them because the System Restore feature protects all files and folders in the Restore folder. This means that if you want to completely remove a virus from your operating system, you should disable System Restore before cleaning the system.

Follow the instructions below to disable System Restore. Note that you must be logged in as an Administrator to do this.

1. Right-click the My Computer icon on the Desktop and click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.

3. Place a check mark next to Turn off System Restore on All Drives.

4. Click OK.

5. You will receive the following message saying that all restore points will be deleted if you continue.  Click Yes.

To re-enable the System Restore feature, repeat the steps above, but in step 3 uncheck the Turn off System Restore on All Drives option.

Some of you probably know that to create a partition image you will need special programs like Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost. Of course these programs may cost you some money, but they have many useful features and work perfectly. Today I will show you how to create backup image of hard disk partition in Windows 7 without installing any additional programs. Unlike commercial softwares the backup tool, that comes with Windows 7 is completely free and actually works well.

1. Go to Start Menu > Control Panel > System and Security > Backup and Restore and then select Create System Image.

2. Now the system will ask you to decide where you want to save the image. There are three options available. System image can be saved on different hard disk partition, on a multiple DVD’s, or on a network location. In addition the system will offer you the possibility to backup any other partition along with that containing your Windows system files.

3. On the next screen you will have to confirm the partititons that will be backed up as well as the target location.

4. Finally, to start the backup process just press the ‘Start backup’ button.
5. Now wait for the backup process to complete.

6. After the process is complete you will be prompted to create system repair disc, containing  recovery tools, which can help you to recover your system from the image you have created.

That’s all.

Windows XP.

Go to Start > Control panel > Security Center and click on Change the way Security Center alerts me.

Then select the type of messages to be displayed by Windows.

Windows Vista.

In Windows Vista you can disable security notifications by accessing the security center from Windows Vista control panel. Use the following path Start > Settings > Control Panel > Security Center.

Select “Change the way security center alerts me” from the left side bar.

Now select the third option, that says “Don’t notify me and don’t display icon”.

Windows 7.

In Windows 7 the Security center has been replaced by the more useful Action Center, which brings not only security, but also maintenance and other alerts that need user attention.  Action Center is also intended to combine security settings and actions with system maintenance and recovery functions. It shows up as an icon in the system tray, displaying little white flag with red X if there are security problems with your system. Messages are very informative and can help you easily take the appropiate action, but sometimes those messages may seem somehow annoying. Fortunately, Microsoft makes it easy for you to turn the various types of notifications on or off, as you can see below.

Go to Start > Control panel > System and Security > Action Center and then click on the Change Action Center Settings.

Now select the components to be monitored.

1. Right click on My Computer icon on your desktop and Click Properties.

2. System Properties window will appear. Select Computer Name tab and click Change to change computer name and workgroup. As an option you can also enter a computer description.

3. Enter your new Computer Name and workgroup, and Click OK.

4. System will prompt you to restart computer. Click OK and restart your computer in order for the changes to take effect.

5. After computer is restarted, go to System Properties window again and check whether the new changes are active.

The following steps will show you, how to create a bootable USB Flash Drive with minimal effort, using small program called WinSetupFromUSB. I’ve tested this guide on my ASUS N10JC with a 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate and a it worked perfectly.

All you need is:

• a USB Flash Drive with at least 4GB of storage.

• the original Windows 7 ISO file.

• WinSetupFromUSB which can be downloaded from here.

Let’s  start.

1. Download and install WinSetupFromUSB. The default installation path is C:\WinSetupFromUSB.

2. Create a new folder with any name of your choice and extract the Windows 7   ISO file into that folder.  For this purpose you can use programs like UltraISO.

3. Start WinSetupFromUSB and connect the USB Flash Drive to your PC. If drive is detected properly you should see a window similar to the following:

4. Now you have to prepare your flash drive (e.g. select file system and make it bootable).  All you have to do is press RMPrepUSB button and select the options as shown in the picture below. Then click Prepare Drive.

5.Answer OK to all questions displayed by the program during the process.

6. Your device is prepared and now the only thing left to do is just to copy Windows 7 files to it. Select the checkbox next to Vista/7 setup/PE/Recovery ISO field, and then using the browse button specify the full path to the folder where you extracted the Windows 7 ISO file. WinSetupFromUSB should now look like the following:

7. Click GO to start the process.

8.WinSetupFromUSB will copy all of the Windows 7 files from your hard drive to the USB drive, which can take about 20-30 minutes.

9.After the process is complete your Windows 7 USB drive will be ready for use and you should see a window like this:

You can now connect the USB drive to your netbook and boot from it in order to stat the installation. On ASUS netbooks you can choose the boot device by entering the boot menu. Do this by holding down the “ESC” key immediately after turning on the computer. Then select the USB drive and press Enter. The installation process will begin.

Important: If you have Win XP already installed, it’s better to select “Custom (Clean)” at the beginning of the installation process, instead of “Upgrade”. Otherwise your existing Windows XP partition will be overwritten.

Don’t remove USB Flash Drive during the installation.

Edit:  If your flash drive has a higher boot priority than hard drive ( e.g. depending on your  BIOS settings it is possible flash drive to be listed before hard drive in the boot device priority list ) then most likely your computer will continue to boot from the USB drive after every restart and the installation process will start over each time. If this happens just remove flash drive after the first restart of installation process.

1.  Go to Start >  Control Panel, and then double click Security Center.

2. In the Windows Security Center window click Windows Firewall.

3. Windows Firewall window will appear, click Off (not recommended) radio button to shut down Windows Firewall and then click OK .

You can also disable the Windows Firewall with right click on network icon in the lower right corner and then select Change Windows Firewall settings.

Create shutdown shortcut.

1. Right click on your desktop and choose  New > Shortcut option.

2. After that enter the following:  shutdown -s -t 00

3. Click Next. In the  “Type a name for this shortcut:”  textbox you can rename your new shortcut.

4.  Click Finish.

Create Log OFF shortcut.

Repeat steps 1-4 but in step 2 enter:  shutdown -l -t 00

Create Restart shortcut.

Repeat steps 1-4 but in step 2 enter:  shutdown -r -t 00

After you have created your shortcuts, now it’s time to customize them. To do this right click on the shortcut and select Properties > Change icon.

If you see the following message just click OK.

You can select an icon from the Icon library offered by Windows or click Browse to select icon from another location.

Now close any remaining dialogs by clicking on the OK buttons.

Your finalized shortcuts should look like the image shown below.

A wide variety of icons can be found here.

NTLDR is missing
Press Ctrl Alt Del to Restart

and you can’t start Windows, then maybe the file ntldr or ntdetect.com is corrupted or deleted.These files are always located in C:\ . Note that they are hidden system files so if you want to see them, just read this.

Now just follow the steps below.

1. Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.
2. When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.
3. Now that you are in the Windows XP setup menu press the “R” key to repair Windows.
4. Log into your Windows installation by pressing the “1″ key and then Enter.
5. You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password or if you dont have an active password just press Enter.
6. Copy the files  ntldr and ntdetect.com to the C:\ ( root directory of the primary hard disk ) . In this example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive, which in this case has drive letter “F”.  Note that this letter may be different on your computer. For example :  if your hard drive has 3 partitions (e.g. C , D , E ) then most likely your CD drive will be F. Just keep in mind that the drives  are arranged in alphabetical order.
7. Perform the following commands:                                                                            copy F:\i386\ntldr C:\

   copy F:\i386\ntdetect.com C:\

8. Once both of these files have been successfully copied, remove the CD from the computer and reboot.

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Click the Tools menu from the toolbar.
3. Click  Folder Options.
   
4. Click the View tab.
5. Within the view tab, select the option Show hidden files and folders.
6. Click Apply.

Note: to see hidden system files you have to uncheck the option Hide protected operating system files.

Now the hidden files should be visible. You can distinguish a hidden file from other files quickly just by looking at the icon. Hidden files will appear as if they are slightly grayed out. You can also look at the file properties to see if it is a hidden file.