I have a Dell Quad Core 2.4GHz running Windows Vista Ultimate that I didn’t bother to use for several years now.

The problem? Even with such CPU power, the system boots very slowly, about 3-5 minutes before I can use it.  And once the system finishes booting, the harddrive keeps hammering for hours making things very slow and the harddrive sound gives me headache

It really bothered me to the point I stopped using it completely. Yesterday, I pulled it out => had it factory restored and loaded it with scrapebox; a software to do backlinks for websites.

Things went great but I experienced the same slow booting up and harddrive hammering issues.  I made a trip to Google and after about an hour of reading, I decided to make a Windows Vista Tweak and that fixed the problem entirely. The system now boots very fast, like Windows XP again! and the harddrive no longer makes annoying sound.

What Windows Vista Tweak did I perform? I disabled SuperFetch. SuperFetch is a program designed to give Vista users better computing experience. It preload the programs that we use often into memory so that when we need to run the programs, the programs can be started quickly.

It sounds great but it didn’t work that way. I am very happy now with SuperFetch disabled and I finally feel to have a useful computer again.

Here is how to disable SuperFetch:

• Click “Start” (or the Windows logo on the bottom left) => in the search box, type “services.msc” without quote and hit Enter
• You will see a whole bunch of lines => scroll down to find SuperFetch
• Once found, double click on SuperFetch => this would open up the SuperFetch Properties
• On the line  that says “Startup Type” => select “Disabled”
• Click “Ok” and restart your computer
• Done

That is it. In the many years of owning this computer, I finally feel that I have a useful computer again.

]]> http://www.unixnewbie.org/fixing-vista-harddrive-hammering-problem/feed/ 0 http://www.unixnewbie.org/windows-xp-guest-os-inside-mac-os-x/ http://www.unixnewbie.org/windows-xp-guest-os-inside-mac-os-x/#comments Sat, 22 Oct 2011 18:27:38 +0000 Stephen http://www.unixnewbie.org/?p=1300

As many of you already know, I have switched to use MAC fulltime. MAC is really good, the experience is awesome and I enjoy it a lot.

Still because I use many programs and some of them do not run on MAC so I need to power up my Windows PC from now and then.

Windows Emulators

It is a little bit inconvenience so I recently looked into running Windows Software inside my MAC. I have tried many Windows emulators including CrossOver, CrossOver works wonderfully but still, some programs do not fully work as expected.

Virtualization

I then looked into virtualization thinking… the only way to make these Windows software to fully work is to have them running inside Windows. It turned out that I am correct. The virtualization software I am using is called VirtualBox. This is a free virtualization program developed by Sun Microsystems, now Oracle. It is very simple to use and is very stable.

Steps by Steps

Installing VirtualBox:

• Simply download VirtualBox here
• Once downloaded, simply double click on it and follow instructions to begin the installation

How to install Windows XP OS Guess in VirtualBox:

• Start VirtualBox
• Hit “New” on the top left to start creating your virtual machine
• Click “Continue”
• Under Name, enter your virtual machine name, i.e. “Windows XP”
• Click “Continue” => then choose your memory size
• Click “Continue” several times => then choose your hard disk size
• Click “Create” to finish creating your virtual disk

Once your virtual disk is created, it will appear on the top left, inside the Virtual Box Manager => simply start it => virtual box will then prompt you to install the Guest OS => from here, enter your Windows XP CD into your CD drive and start the installation.  If you have Windows XP in your computer as .iso file, you can select it and begin.  Pretty easy.

One thing that I was struggling with was how to access the MAC OS X files from inside the Windows XP Guest. Here is the solution:

How to access MAC OS X files from inside Windows XP Guest OS:

• Once you have your Windows XP Guest OS fully installed => boot it up
• Click on “Devices” on the very top left menu => then click on “Install Guest Addition”
• Once complete, reboot your Guest OS
• Once Guest OS boots up => click on “Devices” => then click on “Shared Folder” => now choose the folders you want to access
• Here is how to access the files inside Windows XP:
  -  Click on Start => click on Run
  - Enter “explorer” without quote and click “Ok”
  - On the left menu => click on “My Network Places” => click on “Entire Network” => click on “VirtualBox Shared Folders”
• There you go, now you can open/edit/copy/paste the files/folders in your MAC OS X to your Windows XP Guest.

Hope this helps someone! Take care.

My Windows XP Guest OS inside MAC OS X

I have been dual booting Windows + Linux for a long time but that has been a pain. Since Windows is my primary environment, I am unable to work on my Windows apps every-time I boot into Linux. I require both Windows and Linux to be available to me side-by-side so that I can conveniently experiment with Linux whenever I want to. In this article, we will find out how to easily run multiple Operating Systems at the same time, in a single machine.

• A decent computer with at least 1GB RAM (more recommended)
• VMware Player software
• Your favorite Unix/Linux CD or iso file; for me, I will use Ubuntu version 9.10 but this article works for any OS, any version

1. Visit the VMware Player download page
2. Click on Download
   
    
3. At the time of this article, the latest version of VMware Player is 3.0 => click on VMware Player 3.0 at the very bottom of that page to continue. If you happen to see a newer version, simply download the new version.
   
    
4. Locate “VMware Player for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows” then click on Download.
    
5. VMware would then prompt you to signup “Register for your FREE Download” on the top right. You need to register for an account in order to download. VMware will send you an email with an activation link. Note: it may take several hours for VMware to send out the email. For my case, it took around 20 hours
    
6. Once you have your VMware Player downloaded, simply double click on it and install.
    

How to download Unix/Linux:
In this article, I will use Ubuntu 9.10. Ubuntu is a very popular, stable, secure and very easy to use Linux Operating System. It is based on Debian and is ranked the top OS of all Unix/Linux OSs.

1. To download, visit ubuntu.com and click on Download Ubuntu
    
2. Under Download location, select your location (country) then click on the big green Begin Download button to begin your download.
   
    

1. Start VMware Player: Start => All Programs => VMware => VMware Player
    
2. Click on Create A New Virtual Machine
   
    
3. Selecting your media: If you have your Unix OS in a CD => select Installer Disk
   If you have your Unix OS in an iso file => select Installer disk image file iso
   For this article, I will use Ubuntu 9.10 ISO file.
   
    
4. Click Next then enter your login information. This is the login you will use to login to your Linux OS.
   
    
5. Click Next then enter your Virtual Machine name. I recommend entering it as “Ubuntu 9.10″ or the name of your Linux OS so that you can easily recognize the OS at a later time.
   
    
6. Click Next then enter your Disk Capacity. This is the maximum hard drive capacity limit you set for Ubuntu. I recommend 10Gig of disk space or more.
   
    
7. Press Next then press Finish to begin the Ubuntu installation. Once the installation is finished, to start Ubuntu, simply double click on Ubuntu 9.10 under Home
   
    
   
    

How to Create a System Repair/Recovery Disk in Windows 7: It is very easy to create a Recovery Disk in Windows 7.

1. Start => type recdisc.exe in the search box then press Enter
   
    
2. The built-in system recovery utility will open => click Create disk to start creating your Recovery CDs.
   
    

It is a good idea to create a Recovery CD set so if anything happens to your computer in the future (i.e. crash, infect with virus, etc.), you can always have something to quickly restore the computer back to fully working stage; avoid having to reinstall Windows then spend countless hours reinstalling your apps.