Extract & Backup Drivers from Widows XP & Vista with Driver Magician Lite

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Often we forget where we have kept driver CD's for variouse computer hardware and at the end we are stuck without drivers while reinstalling Windows. Incase if you are planning to format and install windows operating system then you may first extract & save already installed drivers from your existing windows operating system.

Once you have extracted and saved drivers you can use it in subsequent windows installation. Driver Magician Lite is freeware application which can used to extract and save drivers from your existing running windows operating system.

Driver Magician Lite identifies all the hardware in the system, extracts their associated drivers from the hard disk and backs them up to a location of your choice. Then when you format and reinstall/upgrade your operating system, you can restore all the "saved" drivers just as if you had the original driver diskettes in your hands.

Driver Magician Lite is lite version of paid Driver Magician software which costs $29.95 per license but this version is absolutely free for use.

Screenshot of Driver Magician Lite

Download Driver Magician Lite 3.5 to Extract and backup drivers from Windows XP and Vista.

Fix Low Hard Drive Windows Experience Index (WEI) Score in Windows 7

Windows 7 is more or less like windows vista and many feature of vista has been extended to windows 7 like windows experience index to assess your hardware and system component. Based on Windows Experience Index (WEI) score many feature of Windows 7 are enable or disabled.

Even one of best windows 7 Aero glass effect is enabled only if your WEI score is more then 3. Many users have reported that after upgrading Windows Vista to Windows 7 their Hard Drive score is drastically lowered then they had on windows vista. Here is quick fix to resolved Low Hard drive Windows Experience Index score.

Fix Low Hard drive Windows Experience Index Score/Rating on Windows 7

1. Right Click on My Computer and Select Properties from context menu.

2. Select Device manager from left pan

3. Locate your Primary Disk Drive and right click select Properties

4. Now Uncheck Enable Write Caching on Drive and Press ok

5. re-run your Windows Experience Index

This should fix your low hard drive score on Windows Experience Index.

Create, Delete & Rearrange Hard Drive Partitions with Free Active Partition Manager

You have recently bought a new hard drive and got it partitioned from your computer engineer but after some time you felt to rearrange your hard drive partition but don't have proper software or you can not shutdown your machine which is required when you want to create or delete hard-drive partition.

Here is one good Freeware application Active@ Partition Manager to help you in above scenario. The advantage of using Active@ Partition Manager over other partition utility is you don't need to shutdown your system while Creating, Deleting or Formatting Hard Drive Partitions.

Active@ Partition Manager is an application that helps you manage storage devices and the logical drives or partitions that they contain. You may create, delete, format and name partitions on your computer without shutting down the system. Most configuration changes take effect immediately.

Features of Active@ Partition Manager

1. Create a partition or logical drive

2. Format a logical drive or partition (FAT16, FAT32, NTFS)

3. Assign or change partition attributes

4. Format a Flash memory as NTFS

5. Delete a partition or logical drive

6. Create FAT32 partitions greater than 32GB in size (up to 1Tb)

7. Mark partition as active.

8. Create several partitions on a USB flash memory device

9. View the properties of a partition, logical drive or hard drive device

Screenshot of Active@ Partition Manager

Download Free Active@ Partition Manager 1.2.012

Download New and Improved Build of Chrome OS

Google had launched the most hyped Chrome OS some months back, and also announced and showed us a demo though an official press release. But since then we have not heard a lot about any updates or developments on the Chrome OS.

But recently, an enthusiastic web developer known by the alias Hexxeh, has released a new and improved build of the Google Chrome OS. This new release of Chrome OS is code-named ZERO. It is based on Chromium build 4.0.2.89/0.5.25.

The major improvement in this new build of Chrome OS over the previous builds is that it supports most of the WiFi chipsets. This new build also has a slight improvement in speed and a new boot time splash screen.

This new build of Chrome OS is available as a download of 250-MB tar.gz archive, which contains a contains big 1GB image file. These are instructions on how to install it on a pen drive from within Windows, as given on the official website.

1. If you downloaded the OS image via Bittorent, make sure that you have extracted the .img file from the compressed .tar file (You can use open source archiving software 7-Zip to do this).

2. Using the Windows Image Writer, select the image (ChromeOS-Zero.img) and your USB drive letter from the drop down box.

3. Click "Write". The install image will then be copied to the drive. Note : The USB flash drive will be reformatted to fit the Image.

4. Once it's done, close the program and you can then boot from the USB drive.

You can know more about the new build of Chrome OS from its official website.

You can download this new and improved build of Chrome OS from here.

If you just want to try out Chrome OS in your virtual machine, you can download the Sun Virtual box image, as well as the Vmware image.

Check out : How to Install Chrome OS on USB Drive

Instantly Set/Reset Screen Resolution with ResolutionKeeper

Every user has their own resolution and desktop settings also the way they arrange icons on desktop. However if multiple users uses same pc the it become really inconvenient to set & rest resolution and other settings manually every time you login or logoff.

In past we had covered Resolution Master tool to reset & automatically adjusts the screen resolution when a user logs on.

Now here is yet another similar tool ResolutionKeeper small tool that you can use to set the screen resolution under in a simple way that it will be reset to your settings upon every logon or upon a fast user switch.

ResolutionKeeper

Download ResolutionKeeper.

Avast - the world's most popular free antivirus - version 5.0 now available for download

I figured the big day was nearly at hand when checking Google Pack for the switch to Avast - the spherical 'a' logo was orange instead of the blue which accompanied version 4. It's now official: Avast 5.0 is now available for download.

As with previous versions of Avast, there are both free and pro versions - as well as a a full internet security suite. It's Alwil's first suite, and a relative bargain at $59.95 per year for three computers. Norton - still the big dog in paid antivirus - charges $69.99 for a single machine.

What's new in version 5? Like many other AV developers, Alwil has made the new version lighter on system resources. They've cut down the total number of system processes Avast creates and boosted scanning speeds. The new behavioral shield provides solid heuristic detection for threats not yet included in Avast's definitions.


The professional version also adds sandboxing - which you can leverage outside the antivirus program itself. Want to run your web browser in Avast's sandbox? Go right ahead. It's an excellent way to add another layer of protection to your system and it's not coming at a premium price -- Avast Pro goes for $39.95.

In AV Comparitives December 2009 rundown, they had this to say about Avast:

"This year, Avast! showed big improvements in its detection rates and reduced its number of false alarms. Its on-demand scanning speed is one of the fastest."

One other big change in v5? The default interface. Gone is the blue and gray, gone is the tape-deck styling. Take a look at our Avast 5 beta version gallery to see what the new version looks like!


Once the v5 download links are live (and they should be after 8am EST today), you'll find the new free version on this page.

edit: It's up! As noted in the comments, you'll find Avast version 5 here:http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download. Thanks, chocholo!

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Screenshots Leaked

We had reported about Windows 7 Service Pack 1 back in May 2009 that was five month prior to Windows 7 official release which was on October 23^rd 2009. Though that rumor looked false that time but is it definitely not false now as the first leaked screenshots of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) are up on internet.

The Spaninse website MuyWindows has published screenshot of Windows 7 Pre SP1 (Service Pack 1) build which will be handed to the pool of private testers in coming weeks.

Windows 7 Pre SP1 has build number between: 7600.20500 and 20,700 and claimed to have 150 fixes of varies level (Important, Critical & Optional). Windows 7 SP1 is expected in late 2010 and should come along with Office 2010 release.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Screenshots