windows 7 Archives

Change your printer’s IP address in Windows

Dave Farquhar Windows April 26, 2016July 15, 2017UNC, vista, Windows 10, windows 7, windows 8

Sometimes you may need to change your printer’s IP address, such as after you rearrange your network. It’s not hard to do, it’s just not always immediately obvious where the settings are.

This method works in Windows 7 and Windows 10. It probably also works in Vista and Windows 8, but I don’t have those versions anymore.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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A DD-WRT USB print server

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT, Servers and Networking March 31, 2016August 11, 2018DDWRT, usb port, windows 7

If your router has a USB port and is running DD-WRT, you can turn it into a DD-WRT USB print server. It can still do wireless duty while it allows your computers to print to your wired USB printer over your wired or wireless network. It’s not very intuitive or user friendly, but it works. Here’s how to set it up with Windows 7. Other Windows versions will be about the same.

Dave Farquhar

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The settings saved on this computer for the network do not match the requirements of the network

Dave Farquhar Windows March 30, 2016August 2, 2017AES, Windows 10, windows 7

If you replace your wireless router with another one, your Windows machines may give you a red X along with this error message when you try to reconnect: the settings saved on this computer for the network do not match the requirements of the network.

The quickest, easiest fix is to forget the network and reconnect. Here’s how to forget a network in Windows 7, and how to forget a network in Windows 10.

Dave Farquhar

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Simple tips to prevent ransomware

Dave Farquhar security March 8, 2016April 23, 2017antivirus, malware, malwarebytes, Microsoft Security Essentials, oracle, Proxy server, psi, vector, Windows 10, windows 7

Last week at work, I noticed some odd events in an event log, and when I investigated them, I found they were part of a failed ransomware attack. This got me thinking about how to prevent ransomware at home.

Ransomware, if you aren’t familiar, is an attack that encrypts your data and demands a ransom, usually around $300, in bitcoins, and you get a short deadline until it destroys your files. More often than not, paying the ransom is the only way to get the files back, so it’s much better to prevent it.

Dave Farquhar

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HP Compaq 6910p upgrades

Dave Farquhar Hardware December 28, 2015August 3, 2017black friday, compaq, extra money, hp, intel, kingston, prime95, samsung, Windows 10, windows 7

I spent some time exploring HP Compaq 6910p upgrades because used HP Compaq 6910p laptops are dirt cheap these days. I picked one up for $75 as an alternative to a Black Friday cheapie.

If you look for one yourself, either look for one with a valid Windows 7 or Windows 10 license on it, or get one at a deep enough discount to make it worth your while.

Here’s what I did to turn an outmoded laptop from 2008 into something better than what I could have bought on Black Friday.

Dave Farquhar

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Easier application whitelisting in Windows with App Locker

Dave Farquhar security, Windows November 26, 2015December 5, 2015malware, Whitelist, Windows 10, windows 7

Application whitelisting is the holy grail of security, but it’s always at the top of the list of things people should do but haven’t yet. The reason is because it breaks stuff and it’s almost as impossible to anticipate ahead of time what it’s going to break as it is to fix whatever breaks.

I know. I wanted to do application whitelisting way back in 1997 and failed miserably.

I found a good-enough approach recently, though.

Dave Farquhar

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Here’s a better laptop than the typical Black Friday specials

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Saving money November 21, 2015December 17, 2015black friday, dell, Windows 10, windows 7

If you want a better laptop than the typical Black Friday special, I found just the thing: this Dell Latitude E6420 laptop from Newegg, for $225 (the price is good through Sunday, Nov. 22). It has several things going for it: it comes with Windows 7 Professional, so you can upgrade to Windows 10 when you want and you’ll get the better, more-feature-filled, easier-to-secure Professional version; you can upgrade the memory to 8 GB of RAM, and it comes with a 128GB SATA SSD, so you can drop in a bigger, faster SSD at a later date.

Note: When Newegg sells out of these, which happens occasionally, they’re fairly easy to find on Ebay, though some come with conventional hard drives rather than SSDs.

Dave Farquhar

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Lenovo and Best Buy team up for a $149 laptop for 2015

Dave Farquhar Hardware November 20, 2015March 30, 2024best buy, hp, intel, Intel Atom, keyboard shortcuts, lenovo, Lenovo Ideapad, Microsoft Office, usb port, Windows 10, windows 7, x86

Cheap laptops are nothing new this time of year–they’ve been practically a holiday tradition since 2002 when Sotec released a decent laptop for $900, which was jaw-droppingly low for the time–but this year, Best Buy is selling a Lenovo Ideapad 100s for $149.99, which, while not jaw-droppingly low given the number of $199 laptops that were available last year, is still the cheapest name-brand laptop I’ve seen. Note: Best Buy has since raised the price to $199, but Ebay has limited stock of the same item for $129.

I’ve seen some reviews, but there is one thing I haven’t seen anyone bring up yet: This is a netbook in every way, except I think we’re supposed to call them cloudbooks now. So keep that in mind. The machine is probably worth $149.99, but it made some compromises to reach that price point.

Dave Farquhar

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Having trouble installing Windows 7 from USB? Disable USB 3.0.

Dave Farquhar Hardware October 13, 2015November 26, 2016intel, Intel Core, UEFI, usb device, Windows 10, windows 7

I had trouble installing Windows 7 from USB on an Asrock Q1900M motherboard. It was the most difficult time I’ve had in years. Creating a bootable USB stick from my Win7 DVD went flawlessly, and the Asrock booted off it just fine by hitting F11 to pull up the boot menu, but then Windows prompted me for a driver, and when I navigated to the drivers directory that Asrock provided, none of the drivers would load. The mouse didn’t work either, and the only reason the keyboard worked was because I still use PS/2 keyboards.

The solution was to go into the UEFI, dive into the USB configuration, and disable USB 3.0. After I did that, Windows could see the USB drive and other USB devices just fine. This issue is likely to get more common as time goes on.

Dave Farquhar

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Dual screen Citrix, or dual monitor Citrix

Dave Farquhar Software September 22, 2015October 17, 2018citrix, excel, windows 7

At my current and immediately previous job, we made heavy use of Citrix. Citrix makes remote access and administration really convenient. But you don’t get dual screen Citrix by default, and that’s a shame.

Dave Farquhar

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