No worries if you forgot the admin password. Here are 12 ways to reset the Windows administrator password on Windows 7, Vista and Windows XP. Rest assured, one way will work for you.

In this article, I describe 12 ways for resetting the administrator password on Windows 7, Vista, or Windows XP. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Make sure you use the right procedure for your situation.

If you forgot the admin password and have no other account with administrator rights, things can get tricky. The methods and free tools explained here can reset the Windows password for all Windows versions—that is, for Windows 7, Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008 R2. In this article I only talk about the Windows client editions, but the methods also work for the corresponding server versions. The methods described here are not for resetting lost domain administrator passwords.

As system administrator, you are usually confronted with this problem if users have admin rights on their machines. Even if you don’t have to reset a password now, you should get acquainted with this issue. Rest assured that sooner or later a user will bug you with this problem. I must admit that I managed to forget my password more than once.

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Office 2010 activation is a new topic that many users and admins face. This article explains how you can activate Office 2010 and rearm Office 2010.

This article explains how you can rearm Office 2010 and for what you need this feature.

Office 2010 is certainly the best Office suite out there. However, compared to Office 2007 it has one major drawback: Like Vista and Windows 7, Office 2010 has to be activated. However, Office 2010 behaves a little different than Windows if it is not activated. Rearming Office 2010, that is resetting the grace period, works similar as rearming Windows.

Office 2010 Reduced Functionality Mode

Retail versions of Office 2010 will only run in Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM) after the grace period of 30 days has been exceeded. In RFM Office, documents can only be viewed but not modified.

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This second part of the Office 2010 32-bit vs. 64-bit article addresses the advantages and disadvantages of Office 2010 64-bit.

In the last article I looked at the installation of the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office 2010. In this part I’ll cover the important considerations in choosing which platform to go with. This principally comes down to the advantages and disadvantages of Office 2010 64-bit.

Office 2010 64-bit advantages

Apart from the general ability to address more physical memory, the main advantages of using the 64-bit version of Office 2010 will be experienced by power Office users, who, for example, might use Excel spreadsheets which reference massive amounts of data, or who regularly work with Office files greater than 2GB in size. Microsoft Project also benefits, with the ability to handle large, multiple subprojects contained with the main project.

64-bit machines also have a security advantage via mandatory hardware-based DEP (Data Execution Prevention) for native 64-bit applications. With the 64-bit version, this protection is now available to Office.

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Learn how to create a bootable Windows PE 3.0 USB drive. First you you create the bootable USB stick, then you copy the WinPE 3.0 files to the drive.

For Windows PE 1.0, the minimalist Windows based on Windows 2003/XP, you needed an SA (Software Assurance), OEM, or ISV license. When Windows Vista was released everyone had access to Windows PE 2.0. This also applies to the Windows 7-based edition, Windows PE 3.0. Windows PE (Preinstallation Environment) was originally designed to deploy Windows. However, it is also useful in creating your own customized rescue boot media. In this article, I will describe how you can create a bootable Windows PE 3.0 (WinPE) USB stick, and, in my next post, I will show how to add your own rescue tools and how to keep your rescue stick up-to-date without much hassle. You will see that the procedure described here is much more convenient than most solutions you’ll find on the web.

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Windows 7 32 bit vs. 64 bit? In this first part of a comprehensive series I discuss how 64 bit and 32 bit Windows 7 differ with regard to performance and memory.

In my last post, I described my experiences with Vista x64. Today I will focus on two important topics related to the Windows 7 64-bit vs. Windows 32-bit controversy: memory and performance.

Memory

The most significant advantage of a 64-bit system is that it can use more than 4GB of RAM. One thing that has changed since I last concerned myself with this topic is that most new desktops and laptops now come with at least 4GB of RAM. The problem is that like Vista, Windows 7 x86 is capable of only using about 3 GB of RAM. By contrast, Windows 7 x64 cannot only make use of up to 16TB 192GB RAM, but is capable of using the memory remapping feature of modern BIOSes, which allows the operating system to really use the complete 4GB. Thus, if you install Windows 7 64-bit on a 4 GB machine you won’t waste 1 GB of RAM like you would with Windows 7 32-bit.

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In 7 steps you will learn how to set up Remote Desktop with Windows 7. Each step has a screenshot making it very easy setting up Remote Desktop Connection.

Remote Desktop tutorial was written by Gilberto J. Perera from LaptopLogic.com. On LaptopLogic you can read the latest news on laptop software and go through the best cheap laptop reviews.

This guide below will walk you through the process of setting up your Windows 7 computer to handle incoming Remote Desktop Connections from authenticated users and how to connect to a remote computer. If you have any comments or questions, please post them below.

Note: Windows 7 build 7000 was used for this guide

Setting Up Remote Desktop

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This article reviews Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) a free tool set that allows you to remove a forgotten administrator password and has many other recovery features for Windows.

Last year, I wrote a short article that explains what you can do if you forgot your password. Some of those who commented on the article recommended the Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK), a free Linux-based recovery solution. However, TRK can do much more than just reset passwords. Like MSDaRT, which I reviewed some days ago, it can be helpful to recover a Windows installation in offline mode.

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This article explains how to disable Internet Explorer enhanced security in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 by turning off IE ESC in Server Manager.

One of the first things I usually do when I install a new Windows Server in a test environment, is to turn off Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC). I am talking about this little prompts that get on your nerves whenever you open a website in Internet Explorer on a Windows Server. I described how to disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security in Windows Server 2003 a while back. Since it is one of the popular articles here on 4syosps and because the procedure is different on Windows Server 2008, I decided to post a follow-up to save you from this constant security prompts.

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This article describes 3 ways how to disable indexing in Vista: Indexing options in the Control Panel, folder properties and disable Windows Search service.

Update: I have written a new article about turning off indexing in Windows 7 and Vista, which I recommend to read first. If you installed Vista SP1, there are other ways to disable indexing.

Vista comes with a new indexing service which improves desktop search. It not only makes search faster, but also adds some nice features. The one I like most is that it allows you to search very fast for mails in Outlook. There are, however, cases where you might want to disable Vista’s search indexing.

Good desktop search tools index your hard disk only whenever the PC is idle. This seems to be different with Vista. I often saw the corresponding processes (SearchProtocolHost, SearchFilterHost, SearchIndexer) active even though my computer was quite busy with other tasks. This can decrease the overall performance tremendously.

Another reason why you might want to disable Vista search indexing is, if you are using another desktop search solution. Or perhaps you only rarely search for files on your PC. If it is not the reduced performance, then it could be the constant activity of your hard disk, whenever indexing starts, that might get on your nerves. And if you install Vista in a virtual environment, for example, VMware Workstation or Virtual PC, I recommend disabling it anyway since it will slow down your VM significantly.

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You don't know where Documents and Settings in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is? Here you will learn how you can access Documents and Settings.

You probably know that the C:\Documents and Settings folder doesn’t exist anymore in Vista. It was replaced by the C:\Users and C:\ProgramData. Vista uses symbolic links pointing to these new folders for compatibility reasons. However, many guides still refer to the old folder structure. There is a simple trick for using the old folder name in Windows Explorer, though. This way you can find configuration files easier.

If you want to see the symbolic links, you have to enable first “Show hidden files and folders” in Folder Options. To access the Folder Options you must press “ALT” in Windows Explorer to make the menu visible. You’ll find them under tools.

Now, you should be able to see Documents and Settings. But if you double click on it, you’ll get an error messages. Even administrators don’t have enough NTFS rights to navigate to this folder. It is not even possible if you change the rights by taking the ownership.

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Update: Please read this review about VMware’s free P2V solution, VMware Converter 3.0 and check out my first impressions about VMware Converter 3.0 final. We are currently setting up a new VMware server and want to migrate several physical Windows servers to virtual machines. So far, I know six different ways doing this.

1. VMware P2V Assistant VMware offers a tool for this purpose. The only problem with this option is that the VMware P2V Assistant is quite expensive. Prices start at about $2,500 for the VMware P2V Assistant Starter Edition which allows 25 migrations. The VMware P2V Assistant Enterprise Edition costs more than $6,100.

2. PlateSpin PowerConvert Platespin PowerConvert seems to be a more sophisticated tool since it allows any kind of conversion. It not only supports VMware but also Microsoft’s format. Prices start at 2,619 Euro.

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Update: There is a much easier way now to resize a virtual disk: Expand a virtual VMware disk with VMware Converter. Also check out this article about my first impressions of VMware Converter 3.0 final.

Today, my Windows XP test system running in a virtual machine under VMware Workstation 5.5 complained that there is not enough space anymore on the system partition. I thought it can’t be too complicated to resize a virtual disk. After all, it is only virtual. I hoped to solve this problem within 5 minutes or so. Well, here’s how it went:

I was disappointed the first time when I realized that one can’t change the size of a virtual disk with the VMware user interface. So I googled this problem, hoping to find an easy-to-use tool. What I found out was that the virtual disk can be resized on the command line using the VMware Virtual Disk Manager Utility. The documentation about this feature on the web is for VMware Workstation 4.5, but it also works with version 5.5 and also for VMware GSX Server.

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