How To Make Bootable USB

Having a bootable USB is very essential, especially if you are a Netbook user. Using bootable USB to install an operating system (OS) not only makes the installation faster, but also saves a DVD.

Creating or using an USB drive to install Windows operating systems is very easy if you follow the below mentioned steps.

1. Insert your USB (4GB+ preferable) stick to the system and backup all the data from the USB as we are going to format the USB to make it as bootable.

2. Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, type in CMD in Start menu search field and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Alternatively, navigate to Start > All programs >Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and select run as administrator.

3. When the Command Prompt opens, enter the following command:

DISKPART and hit enter.

LIST DISK and hit enter.

Once you enter the LIST DISK command, it will show the disk number of your USB drive. In the below image my USB drive disk no is Disk 1.

4. In this step you need to enter all the below commands one by one and hit enter. As these commands are self explanatory, you can easily guess what these commands do.

SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number)

CLEAN

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

SELECT PARTITION 1

ACTIVE

FORMAT FS=NTFS

(Format process may take few seconds)

ASSIGN

EXIT

Don’t close the command prompt as we need to execute one more command at the next step. Just minimize it.

5. Insert your Windows DVD in the optical drive and note down the drive letter of the optical drive and USB media. Here I use “D” as my optical (DVD) drive letter and “H” as my USB drive letter.

6. Go back to command prompt and execute the following commands:

D:CD BOOT and hit enter. Where “D” is your DVD drive letter.

CD BOOT and hit enter to see the below message.

BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 H:

(Where “H” is your USB drive letter)

7. Copy Windows DVD contents to USB.

You are done with your bootable USB. You can now use this bootable USB as bootable DVD on any computer that comes with USB boot feature (most of the current motherboards support this feature).

Note that this bootable USB guide will not work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on XP computer.

How To Get The New Windows 8 Start Screen In Windows 7

Now that Microsoft has officially unveiled the new user interface (UI) of the upcomingWindows 8 OS (check out the official preview video) with some great new features, you might want to get the tile-based Windows 8 Start screen in your Windows 7 OS as well.

Unlike Windows 7 or any other desktop OS, Windows 8 includes tile-based Start screen (just like in Windows Phone 7), which replaces Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps. These live tiles provide notifications, up-to-date information from installed apps.

Getting the new Metro UI based Start menu is pretty easy if you follow the steps given below.

How to get it:

1. Start the procedure by downloading and installing Rainmeter software.

2. Once you are done with Rainmeter installation, download Omnimo 3.1 skin for Rainmeter.

3. Extract the contents of the zip pack and then double-click on Omnimo.rmskin file to start installing the skin.

4. Once installed, add new panels and arrange them one by one to get the Windows 8 Start screen look.

5. Good luck!

NOTE: The developer of Omnimo Rainmeter skin, fediafedia, is working on a new version of the skin which will bring the exact Windows 8 Tablet UI Start menu to Windows 7 (with Start at the top left and user picture at the top right of the screen) and the skin will be released within a week or two. Until then, you can follow the above procedure to get similar Start screen in Windows 7.

Here is the preview of next version of the skin with exact Windows 8 Start screen look:

How To: Enable Or Disable Hibernate Option In Windows 7

In Windows XP enabling Hibernate option was a very easy task, but we have to follow a different approach to do the same job in Vista and Windows 7.

If you are not aware of Hibernate feature, Hibernation is a power-saving state designed primarily for laptops. While sleep puts your work and settings in memory and draws a small amount of power, hibernation puts your open documents and programs on your hard disk and then turns off your computer. Of all the power-saving states in Windows, hibernation uses the least amount of power. On a laptop, use hibernation when you know that you won’t use your laptop for an extended period and won’t have an opportunity to charge the battery during that time.

So if you are really going to use this feature then you need to enable it by doing a simple procedure as mentioned below:

1. Open Command Prompt with Administrator rights. To open Command Prompt, typeCMD in Start menu and then hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter to open the Command Prompt with Admin rights.

2. Next, type the below command and hit enter:

powercfg /hibernate on

3. Type exit and hit enter to close the Command Prompt.

4. If you can’t see the Hibernate option in Start menu then do the following tasks:

A. Type Power Options in Start menu and hit enter.

B. In the left pane, open the link labeled “Change when the computer sleeps” and then open the link “Change advanced power settings”.

C. Under the Advanced Sleep options, expand the Sleep tree and turn off Hybrid Sleep.

D. Now go back to Start menu to see the new Hibernate entry.