As the author of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” from Microsoft Press one of the most popular webcast requests I have received is for how you can diagnose and repair these complex and difficult problems, so on January 12th 2012 this is exactly what I’m going to do.

The webcast is completely free, live and starts at 10AM PT - San Francisco | 6pm – London | 1pm – New York | Fri, Jan 13th at 5am – Sydney | Fri, Jan 13th at 3am – Tokyo | Fri, Jan 13th at 2am – Beijing | 11:30pm – Mumbai

It can be difficult enough finding out what’s gone wrong with windows 7 or a program, but some problems can be a nightmare to diagnose. In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out talks you through how to diagnose really stubborn and hidden problems in Windows 7, and explains how you can go about fixing them.

In this webcast I’ll cover the tools and skills you’ll need to diagnose problems, and I’ll show you the extensive diagnostic tools that already exist inside Windows 7 to help you with the job.  In fact it’s possible to diagnose complex Windows 7 problems using nothing more than Windows 7 itself.

If you’re not able to make the webcast when it’s broadcast live, just register in advance and you’ll be given free access to watch it afterwards online through the O’Reilly website.  It will last for approximately 60 minutes and is part of a series of regular webcasts that, from February, will return to their regular first Thursday slot.

You can register for this free webcast here.

The operating system basically deletes the files information from the system while leaving the file itself on the storage device. File recovery software like Undelete Plus, Pandora Recovery or Recuva may restore those files. Windows will use the storage space of the deleted files eventually which means that they will eventually become partially and then fully unrecoverable.

Eraser on the other hand speeds up that process by overwriting the entire space a file occupied on the computer’s hard drive. Once done it is no longer possible to recover the file with file recovery software or other means.

For some time now I received the error message “Eraser has stopped working” when trying to start the software. Running the software with administrative privileges, from the context menu or in compatibility mode did not resolve the issue.

Uninstallation and re-installation of Eraser did not resolve the issue either. Then I discovered that Eraser was using a folder in the application directory, and that the file Task List.ersx was in that folder. The path of the Eraser folder is C:\Users\Martin\AppData\Local\Eraser 6 under 64-bit editions of Windows 7.

Made a backup first and deleted the file afterwards from the folder. After that, Eraser was starting up just fine without error message or other issues.

Windows users who are receiving the “Eraser has stopped working” error when trying to start the program should check the application directory to see if it too contains a Task List.ersx file and if it does, delete it to resolve the issue.

Installation of Light Explorer was not a issue. All I had to do was to click on Plugins > Plugin Manager > Show Plugin Manager to bring up the built-in plugin manager to install the Light Explorer plugin.

Listed there are dozens of plugins created by the developers or users of the service. From plugins that let you customize the program’s toolbar to a document monitor or translation plugin. Plugins can be easily installed by selecting them first, clicking the Install button afterwards and restarting the program when the installation has completed.

The issue that I experienced was that the graphical user interface of the program was not starting up anymore after installing Light Explorer. I checked the Windows Task Manager and noted that Notepad++ was running in the background.

Since I had only installed that one plugin I was pretty sure that it was the culprit that prevented the program’s gui from starting up. This happened on a Windows 7 64-bit system.

The idea now was to disable the plugin and see if that resolved the issue I had with Notepad++. After some looking around I discovered that Notepad++ plugins are installed as dll files in the Notepad++ directory on the hard drive.

I went to C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins and found the LightExplorer.dll plugin in the root directory there. Copied and moved it to a backup location, killed all Notepad++ processes in Windows before I deleted the file. The program started up fine once again after the operation.

With Firefox it is another issue. The browser just stops receiving traffic from the Internet as if it is blocked by a firewall or as if the Internet connection died. The only solution here so far was to restart the web browser.

David Bradley now has found a solution that fixed the Thunderbird lag issue, and probably the Firefox no traffic issue as well.

David mentioned frequent stutter or lag in the browser leading to the “not responding” message that can last for a few moments. This was the same behavior that I experienced in Thunderbird.

The solution or fix here is to assign one specific core to the Firefox, or in my case Thunderbird, process. This obviously only works if a multi-core cpu is available.

Users who just want to test the setting can assign a specific core by opening the Windows Task Manager with Ctrl-Shift-Esc, right-clicking the firefox.exe or thunderbird.exe process and selecting Affinity from the context menu.

Here they need to select a specific cpu core or remove one from the listing to test the fix. Please note that this is only a temporary solution. A system state change, e.g. a reboot, standby or hibernation resets the affinity settings there.

A permanent solution is to create a new program shortcut and set the cpu affinity this way.

The command for Firefox is this one:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\” /affinity x firefox.exe

where x is the cpu core number. (cpu 0 = 1, cpu 1 = 2, cpu 2 = 4, cpu 3 = 8 and so on).

For Thunderbird the command is

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start “C:\Program Files (x86)\Miramar 3.3 Alpha 1\thunderbird.exe” /affinity x thunderbird.exe

The easiest way is to copy the shortcut from the start menu or to use Windows Explorer to open the folder where the program is installed. There you can right-click firefox.exe or thunderbird.exe and select to create a new shortcut.

It is likely that we will see an official fix in the coming days / weeks. You can then simply delete the shortcut or modify it again so that all cpu cores are used by the application. It is unlikely that this change has an effect on the program’s performance.

Windows XP users cannot make use of the command. The suggestion here is to use the freeware RunFirst which sets the process affinity automatically to one core.

Has this fixed your issue as well? Let me know in the comments. (thanks David, via)

As you can see from the screenshot below they’ve also been given a very prominent position, listed third in the list of sixteen help and support subject areas.  Personally I’m delighted with what Microsoft have done to showcase them.  Microsoft do occasionally showcase help and support content from MVPs but this will be the first video content on the Microsoft help and support site.  I will also in the future be providing more content for the site covering products including Windows 7, Windows 8 and Microsoft Office.

Screenshot only, no playable video in this image

You may also remember that a little while ago Microsoft Press released for free on YouTube a series of videos I had made accompany their Windows 7 and Word 2010 Step by Step books.  The videos are full tutorials to the products and run to more than 10 hours.  I can also announce that discussions are in an advanced stage for Microsoft to also host these videos on their support website.  IN addition to these I also made tutorial video series for PowerPoint 2010 and HTML5.  I can certainly see the latter being popular, while any tutorials that can help teach people how not to bore their co-workers to death with PowerPoint has got to be welcomed  :)

In other news!  I can also now announce that my next eBook will be released by US publisher Fair Trade Digital Exchange (FTDX) in November (if I ever finish writing it!).  Need2Know Office 365 Security for Small Business will look at all aspects of running a safe and secure business environment using Microsoft’s new cloud-based server and productivity package.  As well as looking at Office 365 itself, the book will also look holistically at every aspect of your business computing security from your domain hosting and broadband connection, to your storage solutions, PCs, laptops and smartphones and also your attitudes to mobile working and workers using their own IT hardware.

Finally the big announcement!  As if all this wasn’t enough for one day there is one final announcement, but I can’t officially say anything for another month or so.  All I can officially do is make a statement and show you a picture.  Though it shouldn’t be at all difficult to piece together the clues.

The statement… “I will definitely NOT be writing a Windows 8 Power Users Guide as a follow on to my similar guide to Windows 7”
And the image…

…have you guessed yet?  ;)

Their portable nature makes them excellent for putting them on troubleshooting DVDs, repair USB drives or tools collections. Nirsoft applications in general are lightweight and do not take up much space on the storage device.

NirLauncher is a frontend created by Nirsoft that provides access to more than a hundred Nirsoft applications. The program ships with the programs included, which means that you can run all the supported programs right after you have unpacked the launcher program on your system.

The program has a size of roughly 16 Megabytes unpacked on the hard drive, which is not bad at all considering that the Nirsoft applications are already included.

When you start the program for the first time, you see a tabbed interface that divides the programs into groups. Available for selection are for instance password recovery utilities, network monitoring tools, web browser tools, Internet related utilities or programmers tools.

A click on a tab lists all the programs listed under that category in the lower half of the interface. Each program is listed with its name, a short description of what it is doing, the version, last update date, web page url and file path.

A double-click launches the program automatically in a new window on the system. It is alternatively possible to select one program from the list and use the buttons located in the status bar to interact with them.

This includes running the program, open the program web page at the Nirsoft website, opening the program’s help file or searching the web.

A right-click on a program opens a context menu with options, including an option to run the program with administrative privileges or advanced parameters and options.

The Options > Advanced Options configuration menu holds some interesting preferences and settings as well. Users can change the double-click action for instance from running the selected program to opening the advanced run screen, help file, web page or properties window instead.

One interesting feature of NirLauncher is its package based design, which means that it is theoretically possible to add custom application groups to the program. For download at the NirLauncher website are several example packages, including the SysInternals Tools collection as well as the Joeware and Piriform packages.

NirLauncher is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems from Windows 2000 up to the very latest Windows 7 version. Some of the Nirsoft applications included have separate 64-bit versions which will be automatically run if a 64-bit operating system is detected by the program launcher.

Windows users can download NirLauncher from the project website over at Nirsoft.

Some customers running those operating system versions have reported that their systems stop responding randomly. Microsoft has analyzed the issue and discovered that it will typically occur when the memory usage is high and when the Windows memory manager performs “frequent paging in and paging out actions”.

The cause is a deadlock situation int he Microsoft Filesystem Filter Manager (Fltmgr.sys).

Microsoft has released a hotfix and instructions on how to pinpoint the random freezes and lock-ups of the operating system.

The hotfix is available for download at the Microsoft Support website. Users who want to download the hotfix need to access the terms of service and fill out information on the Hotfix Request site including their email address before they can download the program to their computer system.

Microsoft sends a download link of hotfix to the email address entered in the form on the hotfix request page. This in itself is a rather complicated process; A simple download link would make it a lot easier for users to download the fix from Microsoft.

It should be noted that only users who experience freezes and responding issues should download and use the hotfix to resolve those issues on their operating system. The hotfix will eventually be included in one of the scheduled patches for the operating system.

From what I can tell, the hotfix replaces the old version of Fltmgr.sys with a new version that does not cause the issue on the operating system anymore. The fix is available for 32-bit, 64-bit and IA-64 Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems.

I have to admit that I did never experience related issue so far and I’m running Windows 7 since the beta on my main system. Did you ever experience freezes? Let me know in the comments.

The issue is caused selecting the checkbox to “Treat all future networks that I connect to as public, and don’t ask me again” during configuration of the network connection.

A Fix-It has been created by Microsoft to resolve the issue and restore the option to click on the network location. Since it is a Windows 7 specific issue, the fix is only provided for that operating system.

Windows 7 users can download the Fix-It from the Microsoft Support website. All it takes then is to execute the program on the target system. The fix resets the settings and displays a prompt to select a location for the active network.

The Fix It displays a fixing status report in the end with options to leave feedback, get online help or read additional information about the Microsoft Fix It.

Experienced users and users who have no success with the Fix It can try the manual fix to repair the network location issue instead. The manual fix is listed on the same support web page. Here are the steps to troubleshoot the network location issue manually.

• Close all applications that use the network connection.
• Click on the Start Orb, type device manager in the search and run box and press enter.
• Expand the network adapters listing
• Right-click on all network adapters and select Disable from the context menu.
• Now re-enable the adapter that is causing the troubles.
• Click on the Start Orb again, type in network and sharing center and select the program with the same name from the available selection.
• Select Choose homegroup and sharing options on the lower left side of the window.
• Click on the What is a network location link and select the network location
• You can continue the Homegroup setup dialog or exit it at this point.
• Re-enable all disabled network adapters in the last step.

Both the Fix-It program and the manual repair should fix the issue under Windows 7. Did you ever run into this problem? Let me know in the comments.

The webcasts are all on the theme “Windows 7 Troubleshooting” and will include Securing Windows 7 and Internet Explorer, Troubleshooting Windows Update and Service Pack Problems and Troubleshooting Networking Issues and will be one a month until the beginning of November.

The webcasts are all free to attend, from the comfort of your own home or office, and full details can be found below.

Join Mike Halsey, author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out, in this four-part webcast series on Troubleshooting Windows 7. On the first Thursday of each month, Mike will guide us through a new aspect of Windows troubleshooting. You’ll learn how to take control of essential Windows 7 maintenance and security features and master quick fixes to the most common Windows problems. Bring your questions, too. Mike will allow plenty of time for Q&A. Securing Your Files and Data in Windows Thursday, Aug 4, 2011 at 10:00AM PT The most important part of your PC is your files and data, but how can you safeguard them against sudden disaster, and how can you recover them should things go wrong? In this webcast, Mike  will talk you though how to keep your files and data safe from even the worst disaster. Securing Windows 7 and Internet Explorer Thursday, Sep 1, 2011 at 10:00AM PT The more time you spend online, the more vulnerable you can be to malware and scammers. In this webcast, Mike  will describe what to look for to keep yourself safe, and how you can configure Windows and Internet Explorer to keep yourself, your family, small business and your personal data safe from prying eyes and online thieves. Troubleshooting Windows Update and Service Pack Problems Thursday, Oct 6, 2011 at 10:00AM PT Among the most common problems with Windows are issues around the installation and maintenance of Windows Updates and Service Packs. In this webcast Mike  will talk you through how to repair common problems and diagnose and repair more complex issues that can bring your computer to a standstill. Troubleshooting Networking Issues in Windows 7 Thursday, Nov 3, 2011 at 10:00AM PT Everybody has had issues with networking at some point and with the Introduction of new features including Homegroup, networking in Windows 7 is more complex than ever before. In this webcast Mike will discuss how you can diagnose and repair networking problems on your PC.

You can find out more about these webcasts here.

The first idea that I had was to run Autoruns to see if the task was listed in the program.

To do that run Autoruns and switch to the Scheduled Task tab. You should see some, but not all, of the tasks configured on the system. The task that caused the corruption error was unfortunately not in the list.

The next step was the Windows Registry. All scheduled Windows tasks, custom and default, have an entry in the Registry.

Open the Windows Registry Editor. An easy way to do that is to press Windows-r to open the run box, type in regedit and hit enter. Navigate to the following key in the tree structure in the folder view on the left side.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Schedule\TaskCache\Tree

You will see a list of scheduled tasks, more than what Autoruns displayed in its interface. The task that is causing the error message when opening the Task Scheduler should be listed as a folder underneath the Tree folder.

My advise is to backup the Registry key first before you start deleting it. Right-click the key that is causing the problems and select Export. The Registry Editor saves the key and all of its information in a Registry file on the system. A double-click on that file imports the information back to the Registry. Please note that you need the right permissions to import the Registry information into that structure.

Once you have backed up the Registry key you can delete it by selecting it with the left mouse button and a tap on the delete key.

Restart your Task Scheduler to see if that fixed the issue. If you do not get the The Task Image Is Corrupt Or Has Been Tampered With error anymore you have fixed the issue. If it still appears double-check the Registry again to see if the key has really been deleted.

Why bother checking?

Performance. Especially when you turn on your computer. The time it takes to load each piece of software adds up quickly, increasing your boot time. This can cause instability too. There is a chance that some of these programs could be harmful, but most antivirus programs check for them. The focus here is to figure out what is running on a computer, identify the programs, and introduce tools to help with the process.

Listing What is Running

The main tool to find out what is running in Windows is the Task Manager. Use Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open it directly. There are also a variety of alternatives to choose from. For a Linux system, use the ps command or use the System Monitor. These tools will list the programs and processes that are running on your computer. Some of them will be standard process that are a part of the operating system, but many will be foreign to even experienced users.

Known Processes

Here is a list of what would appear on a Windows XP system. To be clear, these programs are a part of Windows; they are needed. What each item does is an article unto itself. What is listed here is the file name and the pronounced name of the programs. This list can change for different versions of Windows. In time, a user should become familiar with these and the typical processes of their computer.

• csrss.exe – Client/Server Runtime Server Subsystem
• lsass.exe – Local Security Authority Service
• mdm.exe – Machine Debug Manager
• services.exe – Windows Service Controller

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• smss.exe – Session Manager Subsystem
• spoolsv.exe – Printer Spool Service
• svchost.exe – Service Host (expect to see it running multiple times)
• taskmgr.exe – The standard Task Manager itself.
• winlogon.exe – Windows Logon Process

Unknown Processes

Chances are that the list of programs running on a computer is a lot longer than the list above. Keep in mind that whatever you are doing will show up in that list (which is why taskmgr.exe will not show up if you use an alternative). For example, if you are running Firefox, expect to see firefox.exe in the list.

Figuring out what an unknown program is will help you decide if you really need it. There are two main methods: find where the file is and a Google search. (A third might be to look at a program file name (e.g. Mcshield.exe) and guess what it is (McAfee).) Windows 7 and Vista users can simply customize the view to show file paths. To search for a file manually, press Win+F to open the File Search. Alternatively, we recommend the replacement Locate32. Type in the name of the unknown program (including the .exe) and search. The key is to look at the location of the program, which should tell you what it does or who the author is (McAfee being another good example). The folder it is in will probably have a name you recognize and contain documentation (e.g. readme.txt). If things are not clear by this point, turn to Google. There are a variety of websites that have archives of processes and will tell you what they do. Neuber.com is commonly seen in search results and has a more extensive list than above.

Tools to Help

Ghacks has covered an extensive list of tools that can help you in this task. Here are just a few samples.

PC Decrapifier: This program identifies useless programs, provides information on them, and gives an option to remove them.

Malwarebytes: A tool that specializes in identifying and removing malware and spyware.

Spybot: A tool that can find and remove spyware, tracking cookies, etc.

msconfig: A tool that comes with Windows used to show and control what runs when a computer turns on.

Startup Control Panel: A program designed to make it easy to control what runs at boot on your computer and can integrate with the control panel.

Some Things to Consider

Once you know what is running on your system, think through and be careful with what you want to turn off. The instructions here are designed to help you “know what you are doing,” but one article can only teach you so much. It will cause a problem if you turn off something needed (via closing, altering settings, or uninstall); it will help your computer to get rid of rubbish programs.

Malicious software sometimes disables Safe Mode among other things to prevent an easy recovery of the system. That’s a problem if you do not want to reinstall or restore the operating system, or do not have the means to do that.

Windows Safe Mode Fixer is a straightforward application that can be used to repair the Safe Mode, so that it becomes accessible again.

The troubleshooting software needs to be run from within the operating system, which may be the program’s biggest downside. If you still have access to Windows you can run the program to repair the Safe Mode. If you do not have access anymore, the program won’t do you any good.

A short explanation and three buttons are displayed on startup. The program requires no installation and can be started directly after downloading it from the developer website.

The tool does not explain what it does to repair the Safe Mode, only that it does repair the troubleshooting mode. A click on the Fix button applies the repairs to the operating system and restarts the system automatically afterwards. It is recommended to safe all work and open windows before you click on that button.

The developer recommends to disable all antivirus and firewall solutions prior to pressing it. I personally would not recommend that, and would use it as a last resort if pressing the button without doing so did not fix the broken Safe Mode.

You should try to boot into Safe Mode during that restart to find out if the issue was fixed by the program. I recommend to press F8 repeatedly after BIOS until you see the selection menu with Safe Mode as an option.

Safe Mode Fixer can be downloaded from the official program website at Sergiwa. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. (via)

ServiWin is a Nirsoft application that aids the administrator and user in troubleshooting driver and service related issues.

The program starts up in driver list mode on startup. It is basically a list of all system drivers that are currently known to the system. This includes drivers that are loaded or stopped.

Each driver is listed with is name and display name, status, startup type, description, versions and company related information. Especially the startup type and driver version are helpful in troubleshooting driver related issues.

The toolbar at the top contains buttons to start, stop and restart a selected driver. The right-click context menu offers even more of those including changing the status to pause and the startup type.

As you can see from the screenshot there are also options to research a particular driver on Google and to create a HTML report of selected drivers or all drivers of the system.

The File > Save Selected Items menu can be used to save the selection to a text, xml or csv file.

You can switch to Services Mode, the second featured mode of the program. You do that with a click on the Services button in the toolbar, via the View menu or by pressing F8.

This list mode displays all services of the operating system along with their names, statuses and startup types. That’s handy to troubleshoot related issues, for instance the Print Spooler service when troubleshooting printer drivers.

This mode supports the very same options as the driver mode. From changing statuses and startup types over researching a driver on Windows to exporting the information to a file or a HTML report. The software supports troubleshooting remote machines. This is done by entering the IP address of a remote computer via the File > Select Computer menu.

ServiWin is a handy portable software for the Windows operating system. You can download it directly from the Nirsoft website. (via)

Additionally I will, at their request, be making more tutorial videos and providing how-to articles for their support site and for their TechNet newsletter which goes out to IT professionals.

The news has come about because of the publication of my first Microsoft Press book last year, Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out, which became one of the publisher’s top 20 eBooks of 2010, despite only being released at the end of October, and has sat consistently in the top 2% of all paperback sales on Amazon since then.

Personally I find it quite an honour that Microsoft consider my help, support and tutorial materials and videos to be of a high enough quality to be part of the official Microsoft support website.  I know this sounds a bit glib coming from the author of a Windows 7 Troubleshooting book that was published by Microsoft Press, but it really came as a very pleasant surprise that came out of the blue, and I’m genuinely thrilled.

The first five videos to go on the Microsoft website, about the Automated Troubleshooters, reading the Event Viewer, using the (oh so carefully hidden) System File Checker, the very useful Windows Startup Repair and finally how you can manually Repair Corrupt Boot Files were originally made to help promote the book.  Future videos will be made in collaboration with Microsoft and will focus on the things Windows users have the most difficulty with.  The next videos will appear by the end of this month.

There’s also more exciting news coming in the next month or so, but at the moment I’m sworn to secrecy (and quite frankly it’s driving me nuts!) but you’ll be the first to hear, believe me.

You can watch the first five videos on my YouTube page and get the latest news on additional videos for the Microsoft website on my new Facebook page.

So what can you do with D7? The feature set ranges from running maintenance related tasks over tweaks and PC repairs to malware scanning and offline tools.

When you start D7 for the first time you are presented with the program options, before you can access the main interface. An info screen is displayed in the first tab that displays different information about the operating system, from the data of installation to the user path, hardware related information and whether UAC is enabled or not. Alerts on the right highlight areas of improvements.

All tools are listed on the remaining tabs, from left to right: Maintenance, Repair, Tweaks, Malware and Offline Tools.

D7 offers two modes of operation. You can either start a section in auto mode which will run through all suggested features and programs, or execute a program or feature individually.

The maintenance tab makes use of one of the best features of the application; Integration of popular third party tools. When you look closely you can see that the maintenance module can integrate CCleaner, Defraggler, StartupLite, Recuva and Custom applications in the maintenance run.

You need to download those applications manually and put them into the 3rd Party Tools subdirectory of the program directory before you can use them. Instructions on how to do that are available on the developer website.

Repair offers lots of tasks. From examining the Windows hosts file and resetting the firewall over fixing PIO mode to Windows Updates and repairing system restore. There is a lot to select from, this time without an option to run all tools at once. But it makes sense here to make the user pick individual repairs only.

The Tweak’s tab offers the usual assortment of tweaks, nothing spectacular but still useful for some users who may want to disable some features in Windows.

It gets interesting again on the Malware tab. Here you can perform standard malware related tasks, like purging the Windows System Restore, fixing the shell and run dialog, repairing permissions or networking settings. Several popular malware scanners, like Malwarebytes, Kaspersky’s TDSS Killer or SuperAntiSpyware can be integrated into the tool to scan the system thoroughly.

The custom apps section offers integration of custom third party applications, like virus scanners that have no individual listing in the application.

You need to make sure that the programs are either in the D7 directory or installed properly on the system before they can be utilized in the malware scan and removal. Here is a video of the malware module in action.

If you thought that’s all what D7 has to offer then you thought wrong. Icons at the top right lead to additional menus with options. Here is a screenshot of the Internet button. Remember, that’s only one out of nine available buttons.

It offers several interesting features; From downloading the latest video drivers over testing Flash, SSL or Siliverlight to downloading Microsoft’s Security Essentials and running Windows Update. Other buttons lead to a list of system tools, important folders on the system, user related features like changing the password or configuring UAC to finding specific terms in the program. The search terms are highlighted in the application interface, helpful if you are looking for a tool to fix a specific error or problem.

D7 is a great addition for a maintenance, troubleshooting and repair tool collection. The option to integrate powerful third party is a great feature. New users will have to spend some time in the interface before they can use the full potential of the application.

The program can be downloaded from the developer website. You find instructions there as well which you should read to make the most out of the application. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows. It was tested on a 64-bit edition of Windows 7 Professional.

UPDATE : In the first day of it’s release as a free eBook, the Windows 7 Power Users Guide has received more than half a million hits!

The book contains 16 chapters and is a guide on how to get the very best out of Windows 7 from installation to configuration and advanced operations. It includes step-by-step guides, screenshots and diagrams on every page, quick tips throughout the book and is presented in full colour.

From the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out from Microsoft Press… A book for people who use Windows 7 at home or at work and know it can do more for them, but who don’t know how. The Windows 7 Power Users Guide contains helpful how-to’s, full colour pictures and quick tips to guide you through everything from using the Start Menu and Taskbar to backing up your documents and identifying and fixing problems

You can download the book from my online book store or directly from my website here. 

You can now catch up with more of my writing and events (including competitions and giveaways) at my new Facebook Group.

Sometimes however you may be left in bewilderment why a specific application hangs. If it freezes regularly you may want to analyze the situation to find out why that’s the case, in hope of finding a way to resolve the situation.

WhatIsHang is a new Nirsoft software that tells you why a program is not responding in Windows.

The portable software tries to detect software and processes that are currently not responding. Information about those applications are then displayed in the program interface.

Here you see the process name and window title of the application, the process ID and thread ID as well as the full path to the program executable.

The report created by the program may reveal information why the application is not responding. In the case of Notepad, it suggests that it may have something to do with a remote network file that may have caused the freeze of the program window.

You may notice that most of the information displayed is intended for tech savvy users. Some information, like file names or strings can however be used in searches to investigate the cause of the hang. Combining those names and strings with a search on the Internet may lead to possible fixes or explanations for the hang. Plus, you may be able to copy and paste the information into a forum or email to ask a proficient user about it.

WhatIsHang is another excellent Nirsoft application that should be part of everyone’s tech tool collection. The program is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system starting with Windows 2000.

Downloads are provided at the official Nirsoft website. The project web page offers some instructions on how to interpret the reports of the program, a good starting point for all users who intend to use the application.

A remark. WhatIsHang needs to be started on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and the server variants with elevated privileges if the active user account is having system or administrative privileges. Otherwise, no hanging applications will be detected.

I’ve also arranged a Geek Meet the night before. I’ll be there to answer your questions and I’ll be giving away paperback copies of my book Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out. Plus every attendee will get a free eBook of their choice from the O’Reilly / Microsoft Press catalogue, even my book :) I’m also hoping some people from Microsoft UK will be in attendance for drinks and a chat.

Best still, one lucky person will walk away with a state of the art Windows 7 Tablet PC courtesy of ExoPC.com

The tablet has an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 resolution screen, a 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Atom processor and 2Gb of RAM. The hard disk is solid state and comes in 32Gb and 64Gb sizes.

This prize is worth around £600 and is a fantastic giveaway from the company, thanks very much to them. What’s more a representative from ExoPC will be there on the night to answer your questions and give away this fantastic prize.

On the night you will need to bring along a printout (or smartphone) showing you’ve subscribed for your chance to enter and win.

I also thought I’d share with you a couple of photos from my most recent seminar, at the University of York, where we had a charity raffle and raised £165 ($265) for people affected by the terrible tsunami in Japan.  My thanks go out to Microsoft UK for providing such fantastic prizes which included a jacket, mugs, three books and two full copies of Windows 7 Ultimate.

Troubleshooting Windows 7

This first webcast, made for O’Reilly and Microsoft Press is aimed at users of Windows 7 of any ability, right from beginners to intermediate users.

You really don’t have to have any technical knowledge to troubleshoot and repair many problems with Windows 7, and in this webcast, which is 55 minutes long including a ten minute Q&A at the end, I talk you through the tools available, the process of repairing Windows 7, and I also talk about how you can avoid problems occuring in the first instance.

In this video I talk about the tools available in Windows 7 to help you prevent, diagnose and recover from problems quickly and simply. These tools are easy for everyone to use regardless of your technical skill and can save many hours of frustration and wasted money on technical support.

You can view this webcast in full here, but I’ve also broken it down into four smaller parts which you can find on these links. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Advanced Windows 7 Troubleshooting

This second webcast is for intermediate to advanced users and people who use Windows 7 in an enterprise environment.  It deals with many more in-depth troubleshooting tools and utilities including command scripting, powershell and how to export all manner of logs and information from Windows to aid with diagnosing and repairing problems with the operating system.

Despite Windows 7 being the most stable and reliable operating system ever to be released by Microsoft, Windows 7 contains a great many features and tools to help advanced users troubleshoot and repair problems from the common to the complex. In this webcast, Mike Halsey MVP, the author of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” from Microsoft Press, will talk about these advanced tools, and how you can use them to save time, money and frustration.

This webcast is 48 minutes long and you can view it here.   Again I’ve split it into four smaller parts which you can find on these links.  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Why would you want to do this?  You can commonly find that drivers, services or software in Windows can crash without you even being aware of it.  The only time you find out is later on when you want to perform an action such as print a document, attach to a corporate network or run a piece of bespoke software.  These events can very often be triggered by something the user is doing at the time, perhaps running another piece of software or performing a specific action.

This is where attaching an action to an event becomes useful.  In the Event Viewer in Windows you can launch a program, send an email (if the user has a desktop email client installed) or alert the user to the fact that something has occurred.

It’s very easy to do this to.  Once you’re in the Event Viewer (either through the Computer Management console, the Control Panel or by typing Event into the Start Menu search box) keep double clicking on the event type and the error itself until you get to the screen you see here.

In the right hand panel (highlighted) is an option to attach a task to the event.  It’s here that we’ll find all of our options.  This will pop up a window in which we can define the task.  We can specify whether we want to run a program (more on this in a bit), send an email (for which we’ll need email software installed on the PC) or display a pop-up alert.

When you’re finished you will see an option to display further properties for this task.  You can tick this box for even more control and options.

It’s here that we can specify additional tasks to run and in what order we want things to happen.

I talked a little while ago about running a program.  There are a couple of very useful Command Line and PowerShell utilities that can come in very handy here.  I won’t go into detail on them in this article but they are both well documented on the Microsoft website.

You can run the program CMD.EXE with either the /c switch to carry out a command string and then stop, or the /k switch to continue afterwards (see here for more details on command line switches).  It’s here you can use the WEVTUTIL command to automatically poll the event viewer for data and perform an action such as saving it to the user’s desktop.  This can then immediately be sent to a support person for review.  You can get full information on WEVTUTIL here.

You can also run POWERSHELL.EXE or involve the PowerShell command from the Command Line to automatically generate a System Health Report.  The command you would use here is Get-RmsSystemHealthReport -Path <drive>:\Report [-StartTime <start_time>] [-EndTime <end_time>] -ReportType <report_type>.  Full details of this command can be found here.

Any tasks you add can be viewed and edited in the Windows Task Scheduler and all in all, being able to add actions to events can be a real time-saver when it comes to diagnosing problems in Windows… especially those annoying intermittent ones.