Report for Previous Meeting

May 2009

May’s meeting took us into many byways of Windows XP and Vista like the screen capture tools - generally PrintScreen for XP and the Snipping Tool in Vista.  We delved into lots of ways of using them, their differences and a couple of interesting alternatives.

Then there was the story of setting up a computer with both XP and Vista on their own partitions.  A problem had arisen when the drive settings had interfered with booting until they were fixed. 

Killing a disk dead was asked about, bringing out about five creative and effective alternatives, and a member was having trouble with many aspects, and there are many, of Acrobat in all its forms.  This led to talk of the alternative aspect of disks: preserving them and caring for them, and safe-guarding their contents.  A package from disk maintenance company was revealed to us and we had an excellent exploration of its power. 

Drivers came up again so Peter H showed how to find, get and install ones that Windows itself won’t handle.  We looked at a couple of packages that help manage them and they deserved special attention.

Then we saw how to set up a USB stick with a Windows package for streamlined installation onto disk.  This made a USB key bootable and allowed a swift operation once you understood the peculiarities of the setup.  An excellent tutorial for those times you wish you could run a quick install easily.

Dozens of howtos and a very useful night.

.oOo.

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