Unlock New Themes in Windows 7

By DustinPosted on

Windows 7 has a few default themes, one of which is for your specific country to show off the nice scenery. Microsoft has made the other countries themes available, but hidden. Here’s how to enable these themes, and view some of the great world scenery.

1. Go to the Control Panel. If you have the basic view, click on Appearance and Personalization. Then click Folder Options. If you have the advanced view, you can just click Folder Options.


2. Click the View tab, scroll down and uncheck “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended).

3. Click OK.

4. Browse to the path C:WindowsGlobalizationMCT. You will have 5 folders in there. You can open each one and browse to the “Theme” directory, and double click the theme file in there to install and switch the themes (once it is installed, it will be available in Themes, you don’t have to go to the directory each time).

Available themes: Australia (AU), Canada (CA), Great Britain (GB), United States (US), South Africa (ZA).

What are the minimum specs for Windows 7

By DustinPosted on

The minimum system requirements are direct from Microsoft. Remember, though, that these are the minimum requirements to install and use Windows 7.

The minimum system requirements are direct from Microsoft. Remember, though, that these are the minimum requirements to install and use Windows 7. It will no doubt be sluggish and you probably shouldn’t install it on something this lite. Although, it has been reported that installations on netbooks have gone remarkibly well with enough performance for daily use.

– 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor or higher
– 1 GB of system memory or more
– 16 GB of available disk space
– Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)
– DVD-R/W Drive
Please note these specifications could change. And, some product features of Windows 7, such as the ability to watch and record live TV or navigation through the use of “touch,” may require advanced or additional hardware.

Microsoft Kodu: Game Programming for Kids

By DustinPosted on

My son enjoys playing video games, but like myself at his age, he isn’t content is just playing them. He want’s to program his own. My argument for owning a TI/99A and Commodore 64 back in the day instead of an Atari and NES (although, I had both, along with a few others) is that if you didn’t like a game, you could try your hand at making a better one. I didn’t do too bad, and I really wish I would have stayed in programming, but stopped just after high school after learning the basics of C.

Microsoft has had their Kodu programming system out for a while, and I have looked at it briefly. How To Geek has a nice writeup on how to get started in this simple to use game programming (very little code, if any, is needed) and design software. If you have kids that want to design games, this is a great place to start.

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S. Korea Pushing Gigabit Internet By 2012

By DustinPosted on

Who cares really that South Korea is going to have most of their internet customers on gigabit connections, the world is going to end in 2012, anyway… I care. I live in the US where internet speeds crawl compared to the rest of the world. 56k dialup is still a recent memory. Even our fiber optic connections are under 50Mb, and that is rare to find fiber unless you live in a MAJOR city. The MAX I can get is 7Mb DSL. No cable internet, no fiber. Previously, ironically in a much smaller town, I was able to get 10Mb. That’s not that fast compared to many other countries. The US is putting money into bailing out private business but has no plans on updating their communications infrastructure, which in turn would bring in more skilled jobs. Sorry to get political here, but with a lot of major technology companies in the US (Cisco, Microsoft, Intel), and the founding place of the Internet to begin with, we sure are lacking in the technology department lately.

It is not aiming at 100, 200 or even 500 megabits per second (Mbps). Instead it has devised a national plan for 1,000Mbps connections to be commonplace by 2012.

Inside Story On Kinect

By DustinPosted on

Wired has the inside story on how Kinect came to be, from Project Natal until today, just weeks away from being available. Kinect looks like a great accessory, even with the high price tag. You know it takes a lot of technology to get all this accomplished!

The problem wasn’t vision. It was the task’s sheer impossibility. Finding cameras that could map a living-room in 3D was easy. Getting one reliably to decode the flailing limbs and shouts of 40 million Xbox users was a whole other dream. To pull this off, the hardware would require software “brain” capable of interpreting what the team calculated was a crushing 1023 spatial and aural variables at any given moment. And it would have to do this on the fly, with no perceptible on-screen lag.

First x64 Rootkit in Wild

By DustinPosted on

The TDL3 rootkit was labeled “the most advanced rootkit ever seen in the wild” several months ago. That in itself was bad news. Now, the rootkit has been found in the wild with an x64 variant. Make sure to keep your anti-virus updated, and don’t go to sites that normally drop these kind of attacks.

The dropper is being dropped by usual crack and porn websites, but we soon expect to see it dropped by exploit kits too, as happened to current TDL3 infections.

Microsoft Kinect Supplies Running Low

By DustinPosted on

Fears of a Christmas holiday shortage of Kinect devices for the XBox 360 comes as many retailers are sold out of their pre-order allocations. While Microsoft is surely trying to keep up with demand, shortages usually cause a lot more hype for a product, and people want it more. Very similar to WiiFit, Elmo, and many others, regardless of the quality.

The high price of the system – which retails for around £130 and doesn’t include an Xbox 360 console – was expected to put many consumers off, particularly those who had already invested in a “casual” gaming system such as the Nintendo Wii, or Sony’s rival format, the PlayStation Move.

Pirates Crack Windows 7

By DustinPosted on

Pirates have finally cracked and created an installation disk for Windows 7. They have tested it on computers from 28 OEM’s. They come pre-activated, no key required. They also come with new, unsupported security vulnerabilities. I never trust a program that comes from a pirate, as they use their own code to hack it to do what they want. That code could be malicious, or just sloppy, introducing a new security hole. You never can tell. Microsoft is probably cooking up a Windows Update to patch the hack.

It appears that users can simply download the pirated Windows 7 Ultimate SKU, extract the ISO, burn it onto a disk, and then install it, without ever being required to enter a product key, or to activate the platform.

More Ray Ozzie Docs

By DustinPosted on

Ray Ozzie has added some new documents on his webpage, this time some personal notes from Windows 1.01. Some nice little notes there, and some proof that they were using Macintosh as their inspiration. These blasts from the past are pretty awesome to look at.

Your response to my previous post was overwhelming; thanks.  While on the subject of 1985 nostalgia, I’ve uploaded one more final scan – some personal notes of mine from that era related to Windows.  I frequently traveled to Microsoft because I’d known Bill since my Software Arts days.  Our startup, Iris Associates, had also been doing very early work with Windows as one of its first ISV’s.