October 27, 2011
With the release of the Windows 8 Developer Preview, my curiosity could not let me wait and I rushed to install it right then. But not having an optical drive on my netbook could hinder my installation and hence I had to come up with this alternative of installing it via a pen drive. And to my surprise, when I tried to make a Windows 8 bootable pen drive using the Microsoft’s very own Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.
System Requirements for Windows 8 are:
- 1 Gigahertz or faster 32-bit or 64-bit processor
- 1 Gigabyte of RAM for 32-bit, 2 Gigabytes of RAM for 64-bit minimum
- 16 Gigabyte hard drive for 32-bit systems, 20 Gigabyte for 64-bit systems
- Direct X 9 graphics card
The prerequisits for the installation are as follows:
- Firstly, you need to download the Microsoft Windows 8 Developer Preview Image from here.
- Next, you need to have with your self the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, which can be downloaded from here.
- You need an USB pen drive with at least four Gigabytes of free space.
With both the softwares downloaded we are now ready to make our own bootable pen drive with Windows 8. Though it does require few tweaks other than making the pen drive bootable, you can follow the steps as given below:
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| Formating the Pen Drive |
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- Firstly, we need to format the pen drive to the FAT32 file system. This can be done by connecting the pen drive to the computer, right-clicking its drive icon and selecting Format from the drop down menu. The Format window pops up where you need to make sure that Fat32 is the selected file system. Other details need not be changed.
- Once this is done, open the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.
- Then just select the Windows 8 ISO when asked to pick an ISO image from the computer.
- Next, select to copy the contents to an USB drive. The program will copy all files to the drive and make that drive bootable at the same time.
- Once this is done, restart your PC, get into the BIOS by pressing F8/F12 as per your manufacturer and goto the Boot Configuration section and enable the USB Booting as well as make USB Booting primary in the booting preference.
- Save the settings and exit the BIOS.
- On restart, the computer should now automatically boot through the pen drive and begin the installation.
Posted by Alice. Posted In : Hacking Windows
October 27, 2011
Friends, this post is specifically for people who are using Windows XP and want to repartition their Hard Drives without formatting them. All the Windows 7 & Windows Vista users can do it in a simpler way using Disc Management tool. For more info. you can visit the link: Repartition your Hard Drive w/o formatting it.For all XP users, here's the procedure:
When you buy a new computer, the hard drive partitions are usually already set up for you. If you put in a new hard drive, you need to decide on the partitioning at set up time. The problem with both of these situations is that things change. You may decide you don't want everything in one big partition for a variety of reasons, but Windows gives you no options for changing your partitions other than reformatting and losing all of your data. There are excellent programs, like Partition Magic, that will let you resize and create partitions without losing data. But Partition Magic costs around $60 and it isn't a program you are going to use everyday.
There is a way to change your partitions without reformatting and without buying any additional software.
It uses a Linux live CD to boot your computer and prepare for a Linux installation. Don’t worry; you are not actually going to install Linux. Every Linux CD includes a program to resize your Windows partition to make room for Linux because Windows usually takes up the whole hard drive. Once we create the space for Linux, we can actually format it as a Windows partition, either NTFS or FAT32.
First, you need to download the Linux live CD. I recommend Simply MEPIS 3.3, available here: http://iso.linuxquestions.org/distro.php?distro=11 . These directions will assume you are using Simply MEPIS. Download the ISO and burn it to a CD as an ISO image. Check your CD burning software for info on burning an ISO. Once you have your CD, you are ready to begin. Before you start- it is recommended to do a disk clean up, get rid of unnecessary files and defragment your hard drive to create as much continuous free space as possible. If your drive is very fragmented, you may want to defragment twice.
WARNING- backup all important files. Although unlikely, it is possible to lose data. Even the programs like Partition Magic give you this warning.
Set your computer BIOS to boot from the CD drive as the first option. Most computers get into the BIOS by hitting the DELETE key during start up. The start up screen will usually tell you what to hit to enter set up. Look for something that deals with boot options; it is often under advanced bios options. Boot from the Simply MEPIS CD, choose the 2.6 option unless you have a CPU under 1Ghz. It will take a couple of minutes, but you will eventually have a sign in screen. Sign on as root with the password as root. It will boot to a red MEPIS Linux screen (actually running from the CD)
Click the K gear wheel (lower left). Move the mouse to System, File system, QTParted
Click on QTParted, that will open the program you are going to use.
Click on the drive you want to change. If you have only one drive, it will probably be /dev/hda. That will open a window with info about your hard drive. (My screen shot shows several partitions because I have Linux installed)
RIGHT click on the partition you want to resize and choose “RESIZE”. The free space will be created after the existing partition. Fill in the amount of free space you want. Remember to leave enough space on the existing partition for anything you may save in the future plus about 20% extra for free space. Then click OK.
No changes are being made to your hard drive yet, so you can change your mind. To make the change- click on FILE, the COMMIT.
The changes will be made to your hard drive. Click on your hard drive again in the left column. The free space should now show in the display in the right column. Right click on the free space, choose FORMAT, then either NTFS or FAT32. Click on FILE, COMMIT. The partition will be formatted as a Windows partition.
Shut down by clicking on the K gear wheel, logout, and restart.
Before it reboots, you will need to remove the MEPIS CD, it should now reboot to Windows, your computer will probably give you a message about new hardware being found and require you to reboot one more time. The new partition should now show up and be fully usable.
Posted by Alice. Posted In : Hacking Windows
October 27, 2011
If you install Windows 7 on a clean disk with no existing partitions, it creates a System Reserved partition at the beginning of the disk and uses the remainder of the unallocated space to create your system drive.That small partition isn’t assigned a drive letter, so you won’t even know it exists unless you look in the Disk Management console or use a low-level utility, such as Diskpart, to inspect the disk structure.
This “stub” of a partition, which is new in Windows 7, serves two functions. First, it holds the Boot Manager code and the Boot Configuration Database. Sec¬ond, it reserves space for the startup files required by the BitLocker Drive Encryption feature. If you ever decide to encrypt your system drive using BitLocker, you won’t have to repartition your system drive to make it possible.
If you’re confident you’ll never use BitLocker and prefer to do without the additional complexity of this System Reserved partition, your best bet is to make sure it’s never created. For a truly clean installation starting from an unformatted hard drive, you must use a different disk-management utility, such as the setup disk available from many hard-disk manufacturers or a startup disk from Windows Vista. Create a single primary partition using all unallocated space, and then point the installer to the newly created partition as the setup location. (Note that you cannot use the graphical disk-management tools available from the Windows 7 DVD to perform this task.) After you use the alternative tool to create a partition on the drive, you can point the Win¬dows 7 installer to that location and it will proceed.
If you’re comfortable with command-line disk management tools, you can use the Diskpart utility from the setup program to create the necessary partition. At the begin¬ning of setup, before you select the location where you want to install Windows:
- Press Shift+F10 to open a Command Prompt window
- Type diskpart to enter the Diskpart environment
- Assuming you have a single clean hard disk, use select disk 0 and create partition primary to manually create a new partition
- Proceed with the Windows 7 setup, using this new partition as the setup location
Posted by Alice. Posted In : Hacking Windows
October 27, 2011
If you need to connect two computers but you don't have access to a network and can't set up an ad hoc network, you can use an Ethernet crossover cable to create a direct cable connection.
Generally speaking, a crossover cable is constructed by reversing ("crossing over") the order of the wires inside so that it can connect two computers directly. A crossover cable looks almost exactly like a regular Ethernet cable (a "straight-through" cable), so make sure you have a crossover cable before following these steps.
Before buying a crossover cable, check your network adapter. Some newer network adapters automatically "cross over" when they detect that they are connected directly to another network adapter using a regular Ethernet cable.
To connect two computers with a crossover cable
This works best if both computers are running this version of Windows.
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Plug each end of the crossover cable into a network port on the back of each computer.
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On one of the computers that is running this version of Windows, do the following:
Open Network and Sharing Center by clicking the Start button  , clicking Control Panel, clicking Network and Internet, and then clicking Network and Sharing Center.
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In the network map at the top of Network and Sharing Center, double-click the Unidentified network icon. (If you have more than one network, this icon will be labeled Multiple networks.)
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If network discovery and file sharing are turned off, in Network, click the Information bar containing the following message: "Network discovery and file sharing are turned off. Network computers and devices are not visible. Click to change...," and then click Turn on network discovery and file sharing.  If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. -
In the Network discovery and file sharing dialog box, select one of the following options:
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No, make the network that I am connected to a private network
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Yes, turn on network discovery and file sharing for all public networks
The first option is usually the best choice because it only affects the network that you are connected to.
Notes
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Networks created with crossover cables are automatically set up as "Public place" networks, which means that network discovery, file sharing, and printer sharing are off by default.
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For Gigabit Ethernet or token ring networks, you will need a slightly different kind of crossover cable. For more information, contact a cable manufacturer.
Icons for both computers should now be visible in the Network window. Double-click each computer icon to share printers and other resources.
Note
If one of the computers is running Windows XP, it can take some time for that computer to appear in the Network window. You might need to move both computers to the same workgroup. You can do that by changing the workgroup on either computer. To change a workgroup, see Join or create a workgroup. You might also need to turn on file and printer sharing on the computer running Windows XP.
Posted by Alice. Posted In : Hacking Windows
October 27, 2011
If you are logged in as an administrator, you can repartition your hard disk by using the Shrink feature in Disk Management. You can shrink an existing partition or volume to create unallocated disk space, from which you can create a new partition or volume. (Note that the terms partition and volume are often used interchangeably.)
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Open Computer Management by clicking the Start button  , clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Security, clicking Administrative Tools, and then double-clicking Computer Management.  If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
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In the left pane, under Storage, click Disk Management.
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Right-click the volume you want to shrink, and then click Shrink Volume.
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Follow the instructions.
Posted by Alice. Posted In : Hacking Windows
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