Configure a USB flash drive for Windows 7 installation: Revisited

In my August 18th blog post, Configure a USB flash drive to be a Windows 7 installation platform, I showed you how to use the DiskPart utility to configure a bootable USB flash drive that you can then use to install the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system.

In the Discussion Thread stemming from that blog post, I was asked several questions that prompted me to revisit this technique.

The Evolution of Windows Icons

As the Windows operating system has evolved, so too have many of its icons. As Windows 7 comes on to the scene with new user interface features, I recently began looking back at the changes in the icons that we all click on every day. While I discovered that many icons have changed with each new version of Windows, I also discovered that many stayed the same over several different versions.

In this gallery, I’ll take a look at some of the Windows icons that have evolved over the years.

Dinosaur Sightings: Microsoft Arcade for Windows 3.1

In 1993, Microsoft released a game package called Microsoft Arcade that contained re-creations of 5 classic Atari arcade games from the 1980’s:

Asteroids
Battlezone
Centipede
Missile Command
Tempest

Take a trip back in time with this picture gallery of five classic arcade games.

Save time and keystrokes with the Windows Vista IP Configuration Tool

When you’re troubleshooting TCP/IP connectivity problems, chances are good that you shell out to the command line and use the IPConfig command. While this is indeed a powerful tool, using it can be a painstaking operation that requires you to type the IPConfig command over and over again with a different switch for each operation.

To alleviate some of that tedious labor, I created the Windows Vista IP Configuration Tool, which presents each of the IPConfig command-line tool’s switches in one dialog box.

Microsoft adamant we use the Ribbon interface in Vista and beyond

Rumors are running rampant on the Web that Microsoft is planning to ribbonize Windows Vista’s built-in applications — WordPad and Paint. If you have been using Windows for a while, you surely recognize this as an extremely odd play for Microsoft. When have they ever taken a new technology designed for new applications and put it in older applications? Unless, it was supposed to have been there all along? If Ribbons had appeared in WordPad and Paint before Office 2007, would the UI transition have been as tough?

In this edition of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Report, I’ll analyze the rumor that Microsoft is planning to add Ribbons to Windows Vista. As I do, I’ll explore the idea that it could be possible that Ribbons were supposed to have been a part of the Windows operating system’s built-in applications before they appeared in Office 2007.

Weird Error Messages

When something goes wrong in Windows, you would hope that the error message dialog box would contain some helpful information to assist you in finding the solution to the problem. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. In fact, sometimes the error messages are downright confusing or at the very least, simply weird. In this gallery, we’ll take a look at 24 confusing or weird error messages.

10 ways to get the most out of Bing

Using Google to search for everything is so ingrained into our computer-user personas, it’s hard to imagine using anything else. Even so, Bing does offer a lot of features that make it a worthy addition to your Internet browsing toolkit, once you learn more about what the site has to offer. Here are 10 things you should know about using Bing.