Please wait while loading the page. You need to enable javascript to show the content.

Here is what a friend of mine discovered yesterday.

You cannot restore a Windows Complete Backup to a smaller partition than the backed up partition even if the data can fit well within the new partition.

This is what he was trying to do. He got a new SSD which is 160GB. He wanted to use it as a replacement for his Windows drive which is 320GB. He only had about 80GB of data on it. So he did a complete backup to an external drive and then tried the restore to this new drive. It won’t let him do that because it said the partition was not big enough.

The solution is to shrink the partition on the original drive to equal or smaller size as the new one. Sometimes you may not be able to shrink because there is more data or there are immovable files like page file and hibernation files. Disable these options and reboot the computer to get rid of those files and you should be able to shrink the partition.

In my opinion, the backup should have stored information about how much real space was needed based on the last sector that was used or something like that. The backup could even give an option to defrag and move the files to the beginning of the partition so that the restore wouldn’t need the same size hard drive.

Do you hear the fan running loud after shutting down Windows 7?

Do you have ASUS motherboard?

Your Windows 7 computers’ cooler or fan won’t stop after shutdown?

Here is what happened to me and what a user found out as the solution.

During the beta days I experienced a strange problem on my computer. When I shutdown, I still would hear the fan running loud. I didn’t know where it was coming from. I had Windows 7 beta on two computers and the problem occurred only on one computer. I think what I have done was opened up the computer and then shut down Windows 7. I think the fan that was running was the power supply fan.

This was a computer I assembled and had ASUS P5B-E motherboard. I posted an article on this blog about this problem. It turned out that a lot of people with ASUS motherboards had the same problem. There were posts at Microsoft and ASUS forums asking about the same problem. No one had a clear solution.

Then one day a reader on my blog posted a solution in the comments. It worked perfectly for my setup. Since then lot of people have been able to use the same solution to resolve their problem.

Since then I have changed motherboards on all my computers to Gigabyte. They are not known to be as advanced as ASUS. But I like them now for two reasons. First, they are cheaper. Doesn’t mean they are cheaper in quality. So far I haven’t had any problems or regrets about their quality. Second, all the ones I have purchased have dual BIOS. All my motherboards were bricked at some point by BIOS upgrades. A dual BIOS is very welcome feature for someone like me.

So, about the solution. A user named lemon75 (that’s all the information I have about this user) posted this comment with the solution in that post: Click “Start”, on “Computer” click right mouse button and select “Properties”, click “Device Manager”, select “IEEE 1394 Bus Host Controllers” group, only contains one device called “VIA 1394 OHCI Compilant Host COntroller” on that click right mouse button and select “Properties”, select “Power Management” tab, and finally check the “Allow the computer to tur off this device to save power” box!

Even today I am getting a fairly large number of hits on this page and people are searching for the same symptoms I and others were facing.

If I was in charge, I would scramble to get a multi touch navigation mechanism to Window 7 for multi touch enabled screens. Current start menu sucks for multi or even single touch. Not even for bigger screens. Forget about small screens of smart phones or MID.

That would be step number one. Once you have that, third party developers can fill in true multi touch applications. At least single touch applications. The OS itself should do basic multi touch gestures. I haven’t used a lot of multi touch on Windows 7. My only experience with Windows 7 multi touch is the HP touch smart all in one PC at Fry’s Electronics.

It is not that Windows 7 is bad for tablet. But there is no good hardware out there. A keyboard is always good to have. Built in is even better. It doesn’t have to be out all the time. Anything more than 1/2 inch thickness including the keyboard is not acceptable for the small form factor tablet.

Get a better screen resolution. I went to NewEgg.com  to check the resolutions of all Windows tablet PCs. Many of them have screen resolutions of 13+ but the resolutions are maxing out at 800 lines vertical. That’s lame. That is much lower than HP touch smart desk top. Google Nexus One has a vertical resolution of 480. That’s for a 3.7 inch screen. And all those tablets are old school.

Use almost all of the devices height and width for screen. Don’t leave bars on all the sides. That makes the device bulkier than it need be.

Get some serious content. One of the problems with Windows Media Center all along was that it lacked content. Even today, the excitement wears out in a day. I didn’t want to go to Windows Media Center after seeing that BP ad over and over again after each video.  All the partners on Windows suck big time.

Apple can find partners for books, videos and music. On Windows there seems to be a decent content for Zune users. Integrate it with Windows. If that requires a separate Windows 7 SKU, let it be. A tightly controlled SKU built on top of some version of Windows 7.

Have 3G/4G and get at least one partner for unlimited data. This will lead to things like NetFlix streaming along with Zune streaming. Why not extend Zune pass to videos and movies? May be buy NetFlix and integrate it into Zune ecosystem. One pass to rule them all. How about books? If I have a Zune pass I can listen to all the music, watch all videos and movies (only streaming) I like and read all books and magazines in the store. I could also decide that I only need music and the price will $10, add videos at $15, movies at $25 and everything at $50.

Disclaimer: I do not have all the information to prove this is exactly how the problem occurs or even there is a real problem.

Yesterday when I went home my wife said she no longer has a password for her Windows 7 account. Then she explained how it happened.

When she tried to login, Windows 7 said her password expired and needed a new password. Since it is just a home computer she tried to enter the same password. I am guessing she missed the second box where you need to enter it again to confirm. So, Windows 7 said the passwords do not match with the OK button. She clicked on the OK button and Windows proceeded to login. She didn’t seem to have realized that the password did not change or something wrong happened. Next time she tries to login, there was no password prompt. It went ahead and logged in with no password. She didn’t know how to use the control panel to set the password. It was obvious that she did not use control panel to clear the password as well.

If this is exactly how the events happen, then there is obviously a problem. I tried going in to control panel and do the same thing and did not have the same effect. My guess is that it could only happen through the expired password interface.

If anyone thinks Windows 7 got the disk activity under control, here is one example showing otherwise. Disks are still the bottlenecks in consumer computers and there is no way you get a better performance out of the computer when there is a lot of disk churning going on.