Bahramov's Personal Blog » Windows 7

3 Ways to Enable the Built-In Windows 7 Administrator Account

Zaur Bahramov — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:59:30 +0000

There’s a great article on Petri IT Knowledgebase “3 Ways to Enable the Built-In Windows 7 Administrator Account” that presents 2 different ways to enable Administrator account. What I particlarly liked in this article is the third method.

Method #3 (Advanced Users) – During the Installation Process

There is a 3rd method which advanced users can use. This method can be used during the installation process itself.

During the installation, after being prompted to configure the new user account, you will be able to set the new account’s password.

At that phase, press SHIFT and F10 keys together. A Command Prompt window will appear.

In the Command Prompt window, type:

net user

Note how the Administrator account is there, yet the new user account has not been yet created.

To set the Administrator’s account password:

net user *

Then enter the required password and confirm it.

To enable the Administrator’s accoun:

net user administrator /active:yes

Close the Command Prompt window and continue with the installation process.

If you log off you will now see the Administrator’s account as a valid logon option.

Read the full article and other two methods here.

Free e-book: Windows 7 troubleshooting tips

Zaur Bahramov — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:08:48 +0000

Mitch Tulloch, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and lead author of the just-published (and hot-selling) Windows 7 Resource Kit (Microsoft Press, 2010; ISBN: 9780735627000; 1760 pages), has created a short e-book called “What You Can Do Before You Call Tech Support.” Here are the opening paragraphs:

Your sound card has stopped working, your computer seems sluggish, the network is down, your hard drive is clicking, you can’t view a website, your monitor is hard to read, your new webcam isn’t working, your favorite program won’t run, and a funny burning smell is coming from your computer. What can you do on your own to try to troubleshoot the issue before you pick up the phone to call tech support?
If you’re running Windows 7, quite a lot. Microsoft has included a lot of self-support tools in Windows 7 that you can try using before you seek the help of others, and we’ll examine these in a moment….

You can download the e-book in XPS format here and in PDF format here.

Windows 7 Explorer Old Style view

Zaur Bahramov — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:28:58 +0000

When you pass to Windows 7 from Windows XP you will notice that the Windows Explorer doesn’t explode by default the folder you’re currently browsing in the left pane.

To bring back this functionality you can do the following:

Click ALT button on your keyboard to bring the menu.
Click Tools => Folder options…
Enable ‘Show all folders’ and ‘Automatically expand to current folder’.
Enjoy!

How to move virtual hard disk of XP Mode virtual machine

Zaur Bahramov — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:14:20 +0000

When you install XP Mode on Windows 7 by default all the virtual machine files are saved under “%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\”. The file that has *.vhd extension is a virtual hard disk file. Recently, I had to move the vhd file to another drive and I accomplished it this way:

1) Run Windows XP Mode virtual machine and go to Tools –> Settings

2) Then select Close and in the right side click “Prompt for action”

3) Click OK and close virtual machine. This time when you close it the following window will appear:

4) Select Shut down and click OK. The virtual machine will shutdown.

5) Now, click Start button, enter the following path:“%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\” without quotation marks and hit Enter.

6) This will open the folder where the virtual machine file reside. Move the vhd file to desired location by cutting and pasting.

7) Once done moving the file, open the ‘vmc’ file with Notepad, which is a configuration file of the virtual machine. VMC file is an xml formatted file containing configuration of the virtual machine. Find the line that refers to vhd file location. For example “XP Mode.vhd” with the full path in front of it. Modify the path accordingly to point to a new location:

Now you may start the XP mode virtual machine.