Here’s a good question. Should you migrate Windows 7 to SSD or install fresh? And what about Windows 10? This is likely to be controversial and everyone has an opinion. I’ll weigh the pros and cons of each, as a guy who knows a little about optimizing Windows, and who has been using SSDs since 2009.
Windows
The HP Elitebook 8440p and Windows 10
I got an HP Elitebook 8440p because I wanted something a little newer and faster than my old Dell E1505. It was certainly newer and faster, but it had a problem. Every morning it greeted me with a BSOD. That E1505 was getting older and it had its own quirks, but I don’t remember it ever bluescreening on me. Here’s how I fixed the bluescreens I got with the HP Elitebook 8440p and Windows 10.
Not only did it bluescreen, but the behavior seemed pretty consistent. Two days in a row, I woke the laptop up from hibernation, and about nine minutes later, it bluescreened.
Xxcopy vs Robocopy
Part of being a system administrator is copying large quantities of files around, for any number of reasons. The traditional tools for this, Copy and Xcopy, have some limitations. For this reason, two companies extended Xcopy: Microsoft, with Robocopy, and Pixelab, with Xxcopy. Let’s compare Xxcopy vs Robocopy.
Cleaning the Windows registry – and optimizing
Cleaning the Windows registry is a popular and controversial topic. Many pundits tell you never to do it. When I wrote a book about Windows back in 1999, I dedicated most of one chapter to the topic. But today the pundits have a point. Most registry cleaning utilities do much more harm than good. I don’t recommend you clean your registry, per se, but I do recommend you maintain it.
I don’t want to dismiss the concept completely out of hand. There’s a difference between a bad idea and a bad implementation. Registry cleaning and maintenance is a victim of bad implementation. But that doesn’t mean it was a bad idea. So let’s talk about how to get the benefit while minimizing the drawbacks.
Optimize Windows 10 for better performance
When I first installed it, I thought it was pretty pointless to try to optimize Windows 10. Of course, I installed it from scratch on a computer with an SSD and 16 gigs of RAM. Then I upgraded a couple of computers from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and I started to see why some people might not like Windows 10 all that much.
Upgraded systems almost always run slow, but I’d forgotten how much slower. And while you didn’t have to do much to Windows 7 to make it fast–that’s one reason people liked it–I find some Windows 10 optimization seems to be necessary.
Read more
Fix a Windows boot loop with AHCI
My wife’s computer was stuck in a Windows boot loop. We’d get the Windows 7 boot screen, and it would display a single pixel of the Windows 7 logo, then reboot itself endlessly. Booting in safe mode made it fail on classpnp.sys.
Any number of things can cause this, and it usually happens after you swap a motherboard. Enabling AHCI turned out to be the fix. Enabling AHCI also can be easier said than done, but I figured it out. She’s running Windows 7 (for now) but these same tricks should also work for Windows 10.
Convert a list of hostnames to a list of IP addresses
I had a client with a huge list of hostnames that they needed to convert to IP addresses so they could scan them. That’s common. I used to have a Windows batch file to convert a list of hostnames to a list of IP addresses, so I dug it out of my archives. This isn’t like a ping sweep; they knew the machine names but their tool needed IPs.
I used the file to resolve lists of machines so I could load them into a centralized logging or vulnerability management system. This client had the same need and nobody there had a similar tool. So I shared mine with them. And I present it here so I won’t lose it again, and if you need it, you can use it too.
Fix a Device Manager Code 43 error
Sometimes computer peripherals stop working in Windows, and you’ll start to troubleshoot and find a code 43 error. Here’s how to fix a Device Manager Code 43 error without compromising on security.
There’s a lot of bad advice out there on code 43 errors since it’s not very well documented. I started my career as a computer technician and now I work in security, so this is a comfortable topic for me. I want your computer to work, but I also want it to be secure.
Connecting to Virtual Disk Service message in Disk Manager
I had trouble in Disk Manager the other day. It hung at the message that says “Connecting to Virtual Disk Service.” My problem happened with an SD card, but it can happen with any type of drive.
Here’s how I fixed it.
Check your network speed in Windows 10
Sometimes you need to check your network speed in Windows 10. The information buried a bit but you can get there in about three clicks. When you need to know the raw specs of your network connection, here’s how to do it.
Depending on your network driver, it was sometimes easier to get this in previous versions of Windows. Sometimes all you had to do was hover over your network connection icon. But this method also works in Windows 7, even if you have a featureless network driver.