At my church our server’s UPS (uninterruptible power supply) has gone belly up.

After year’s of daily abuse from the poor building power supply it has finally died. The room it is housed in (which I have noted my displeasure to the management many a time) goes from freezing cold to way too hot. Every time a light or a PC is turned on or off on the same ring main, the UPS emits a loud clunk as it kicks in and protects the server.

No more. It is dead. It has shuffled off it’s mortal coil. It has joined the choir invisible… anyway, since technology in this area has moved on apace since it was first bought how does one narrow down what we need at a price we are happy to pay?

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Welcome to the third edition of my sporadic Windows 7 tips …

This one covers backups and some more stuff to make life simpler.

One of the ways I’ve read over the years that folks should backup their system is by ‘imaging’ it. Why, well in short it allows you to setup your system the way you want and then you can take an exact ‘bit by bit’ replica of it and store elsewhere.

It’s been this store elsewhere that has caused problems over the years. But with Win7 you get a clean and elegant process. As with previous versions the backup icon is in your Control Panel. Once there click the “Create a System Image” in the top left corner and then Windows runs off and identifies where it can backup too (see image).

After selecting your appropriate image destination (I recommend not using a had disk built into your system) simply click next and follow the prompts. Note the hyperlink that takes you to a help page that tells you how to restore your image.

- Talking of images, did you know that Win7 is the first Microsoft O/S that allows you to burn ISO’s direct instead of having to use a third party application? Simply double click the ISO in question, pick the drive with your blank CD / DVD and burn. However, I still by far prefer to use ImgBurn.

-  To round up this set of tips here’s one for any who have ever struggled to work out what key combination works with external screens / projectors. Well fret no more as Win7 provides a ‘standard’ (I hesitate to call it this) way to access them. Simply press “Win+P” and all is revealed. There’s also a command line of “displayswitch.exe” that will do the same job.

Well sort of ….

So be truthful, who really likes this abomination that is supposed to be an upgrade and intuitive?

I admit I’m a creature of habit with certain things and whilst one expects interface changes with newer versions of software, one doesn’t really expect to have to re-learn how to use the software from scratch!

This is certainly how I felt when I upgraded at home to Office 2007 and then my works place did the same a day or so later. I felt like a fish out of water but now I have the solution.

Two of them…..

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In data recovery 101 I made the statement “Don’t Panic” when referring to data recovery.

Tonight I had the opportunity to get my son to put that into practice. For those unaware, my eldest is at University studying for a Comp Sci degree and it leaves me with a warm feeling that he asked me first rather than his CS mates or professors.

But I digress.

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This is the second post in what I see as being a long running series on Windows 7 tips and hints and ones that I hope prove useful to you or your users.

• One of the beauties of XP was that you could do a “clean install” using upgrade media. This wasn’t meant as a means to cirumvent paying full price but to deal with the need to occasionally wipe clean and do a fresh install of XP. Well now that facility is also available for Windows 7. However, rather than repeat the article I’ll simply point you at Paul Thurrot’s fabulous site. (more…)

I’ve been asked a couple of times, if we had the money, what would be the five things I’d do to improve the performance of our network.

Each time, the asker is left almost speechless at my instant response. I don’t know why they think I need to consider these as they are always at the back of my mind. So, today I share my list with you – you’ll note I’ve added in a sixth which I personally don’t often think about because of the size of the network I’m usually dealing with.

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I recently posted this post on another blog I occasionally write for. My thinking was that it is a bigger read blog than mine and as I’m not into blogging for gaining fame or similar I had no qualms with that. That said, that blog does seem to respond slower than mine and after seeing recent stats that showed it jumped 59 ranking places in a week, I thought let’s stick it here as well and see what happens.

[Copy Starts]

I’m taking no credit for this – I was allowing myself to be sucked in by a public wave search and it literally felt like I was drowning – but I discovered this wave in the process.

If you haven’t tried viewing the live public wave feed then I dare you.

Anyway, the info below is the stuff I keep referring back to so thought where better to stick it than on one of the blogs I write on.

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As a person that makes a living being a network techy there’s something I often wonder.

How many folks actually undertake any form of network maintenance? And by network I am meaning the bits of kit that allow your computer to talk to another for whatever reason. A quick google search would seem to imply that most folks think network maintenance to be checking on your PC’s, printers and servers.

I don’t, and here’s a list of some of the things I think you should do or have in place.

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