PC Help Guide

Google, Inc. announced Thursday that it is working on a collaborative online encyclopedia that could compete with Wikipedia, the popular user-edited encyclopedia.

The “knol” project – named for Google’s shorthand for a unit of knowledge – will allow a user to create an entry on virtually any topic. Like Wikipedia, it will allow anyone to add an entry, but unlike the largely anonymous Wikipedia, it will post an author’s byline and profile with each entry.

From what we know so far, Knol is a wiki-like platform. Authors can create topics, and there are tools to interlink articles and content, but as Manber says, an article, or “knol,” is “just a Web page.” Where it differs from a wiki is its focus on the author. All knols will highlight who wrote them.

Google said that a main idea behind the project was to bring attention to authors who have expertise on a particular topic.

“Somehow the Web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors’ names highlighted,” Udi Manber, vice president for engineering at Google, wrote in an announcement of the test Thursday evening on a Google corporate blog. “We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of Web content.”

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Microsoft on Tuesday released the first service pack for Office 2007, focusing on improvements to stability and performance instead of new features.

“People were generally happy with the tools we’ve offered in [Office] 2007,” Reed Shaffner, product manager for Microsoft Office, said in an interview. “You’re not going to hear about a ton of new features.” Office 2007 has seen strong sales that Microsoft officials have credited with significantly bolstering the company’s financial earnings.

The world’s largest software maker said Office 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will crash less, is easier to use and is more secure than the original program that was released to consumers in January.

Microsoft had said it planned to release Office 2007 SP1 in early 2008, but the company finished updating the software sooner than it expected.

Microsoft explained that using data from the Dr. Watson bug-reporting system, the developers fixed, at minimum, the five software bugs that most frequently caused each application in the 2007 Office system to crash. The 2007 Office system SP1 also improves the stability of server components in the 2007 Office system and compatibility with Windows Server 2008.

The 2007 Office system SP1 improves performance in applications that are pervasive in modern offices, most notably: Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, Microsoft claims.

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The display resolution refers to the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed on your computer screen. The majority of PC’s and laptops come with a computer screen resolution standard of 800 x 600 (newer computer have a higher res) but you may need to alter this.

To alter your computer screen resolution you have to;

Windows XP

• Right click on your desktop
• Click Properties
• Select Settings
• Move the Slide Bar in the Screen Resolution area to the desired res
• Click OK and you are done

Windows Vista

• Right click on your desktop
• Click Graphics Property
• Click Display Settings
• In the Screen Resolution drop down you can alter your screen resolution from 1024 x 768 to 1280 x 800
• Click Apply and you are done

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I had an email from one of our readers from NZ asking about NTLDR. Basically he said he heard the term at uni but had no idea what it was or meant, and could we help him. Well Andrew here is a basic overview of NTLDR and the NTLDR process;

NTLDR (abbreviation of NT Loader) is the boot loader for all releases of Microsoft’s Windows NT operating system up to and including Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. NTLDR is typically run from the primary hard disk drive, but it can also run from portable storage devices such as a CD-ROM, USB flash drive, or floppy disk. NTLDR can also load a non NT-based operating system given the appropriate boot sector in a file.

NTLDR requires, at the minimum, the following two files to be on the system volume: NTLDR, which contains the main boot loader itself, and boot.ini, which contains configuration options for a boot menu.

To load an NT-based OS, ntdetect.com must also be present. (Strictly speaking, only NTLDR is actually required. If boot.ini is missing, NTLDR will default to C:\Windows on the first partition of the first hard drive. Many desktops in the home are in this configuration and a missing boot.ini file will simply generate an error stating it is missing, then boot into Windows successfully.)

When booting, the loader proper portion of NTLDR does the following in order:

1. Accesses the file system on the boot drive (either FAT or NT File System NTFS).
2. If hiberfil.sys is found, and it finds a hibernation image, its contents are loaded into memory and the system resumes where it left off.
3. Otherwise, reads boot.ini and prompts the user with the boot menu accordingly.
4. If a non NT-based OS is selected, then NTLDR loads the associated file listed in boot.ini (bootsect.dos if no file is specified or if the user is booting into a DOS based OS) and gives it control.
5. If an NT-based OS is selected, then NTLDR runs ntdetect.com, which gathers information about the computer’s hardware.
6. Starts Ntoskrnl.exe, passing to it the information returned by ntdetect.com.

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Do you currently run Windows XP but you want to upgrade to Vista but do not know if your computer can handle it? You need to use the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor tool from microsoft.

The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor will help you to determine if your Windows XP-based PC can run Windows Vista. You can also use the Upgrade Advisor to determine if your Windows Vista-based PC is ready for an upgrade to a more powerful edition of Windows Vista.

This small software tool will scan your computer and create an easy-to-understand report of all known system and device compatibility issues, and recommend ways to resolve them. The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor can also help you choose the edition of Windows Vista that best fits the way you want to use your computer.

Click here to download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor

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