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I would NEVER consider going back to Vista or XP.

Well, Vista yeah, even though SP2 is pretty good, its just not good enough and the burn mark it left in early years is still touchy, but OMG, still love the heck out of XP, installations still going in as fast as Win 7 ones. Its eventually going to lose out to Win 7 now but I think only because nearly every new thing that comes along from Microsoft is denied to XP. Its like thery’re trying to starve the Grandmother slowly to death, but she keeps sneaking a potato from the burlap sack hidden under the floorboards in her room!! Sack is almost empty though.
I would hope that Microsoft learned thier lesson and that the future OS incarnation will include the best of XP with the modernity of 7…OR maybe they won’t…exactly because XP has been so strong for a decade and they fear another product cycle stagnation.
No matter, as long as I have my XPs all in a row, me’s happy.

You must have removed the XP entry when you selected it as the default. For future reference don’t select a default when there are only two entries, remove one entry and the other becomes the default…ah…by default
You had no way of knowing but this is also why you should leave both installations intact until after the entry is removed. Then if a mistake is made, one can just undo it with EasyBCD in the other installation. Think of it as plowing the driveway first, then demolishing the home.
Hopefully following Ted’s links you’ll be right as rain again.

Haven’t tried it but Google came up with this.

Do you have, or do you want to install more than 4 gigs of RAM, or want to have a system boot drive that is over 2 terabytes? If not, you don’t need 64-bit and I would resist whatever allure there is to “double” your “bitness.” Good luck whichever.

Hmmm, no feedback yet…first order of business would have been to try and boot with a LINUX live cd and see if the system operates from the CD, that you can access the hard drive and see the info. If so, probably caught a virus or some other system corruption occured. If the LINUX CD has a hard time or can’t see the internal drive, probably a hardware problem as in dead drive or video card/mobo-related, but so far, we don’t even know if the BIOS option comes up (“nothing on the screen” means different things to different people).

Looks like its a Q6600 processor so yeah, its been 64-bit ready for years and years…and years.

I use Easy BCD, it’s free and lets you pick what OS starts first and also lets you adjust the wait time. It does a lot of other stuff also.
I like it.

Lots of other important stuff but also fun stuff. I renamed one entry on one system so now instead of starting Window 7, I start the Peace and Love OS…far as I know, its the only one in the Universe.

The easiest way, I think, is to download and use EasyBCD. Windows 7 takes over the bootloader and automatically makes it a dual boot system, so not only can you zap the entry(s) under Edit Boot Menu, but you should also install the Windows XP bootloader to the MBR of the correct partition again (the XP drive system partition) so the system will boot after the Win 7 entry is removed.

Edit: Just for giggles you can edit the entry name as well. Instead of earlier versions of Windows, mine says XP Bay-Bee! and I made it the default instead of Win 7…little customizations that make me smile when I see them because I usually forgot I put them in until I see them again.

It’s definitely a hodgepodge that grew as the network grew. Switches are all run of the mill consumer, 3 of which are DLink DSG2208 8-ports and three of which are 5 port Trendnet TEGS50 Greennet switches, and the current router is a DLink gigabit gaming router. Most of all the switches are jammed to 100% port capacity and there’s a couple others I didn’t even mention. I’ve gotten in the habit of living on many computers through one with RDC. Why right now I’m redering media data from a network location on this computer, have 8 remotes going, am rendering data from network locations on two other computers (mostly old video cleanup tasks so lots of filtering, lots of time), not to mention remote editing of hours and hours of PCM WAV audio on weekdays from two more networked locations and always with two or three network location .psd editing tasks going, and usually a few multi-gigabyte data transfers going on any single day.
Then add on top of that all the media device playback of hi-def home consumer video at totally unpredictable times (family member habits being what they are), usually in the 4.5 to 6 gigabyte an hour range on the top end, usually only from and to one device, but sometimes two and once in a great while, 3. Many of the media playback devices will report network speed and that ranges from a low of about 13,000 kilobits/s to a high of almost 50,000 kb/s.

Most times the video playback is just fine but now and then there will be packet loss on the high end video and it will stutter for a sec or pixellate.

Sounds like I may benefit just from unjamming all the switch ports doesn’t it? I have no problem running an inline router handoff setup, I mainly want to know if seperating the media storage and playback network is going to run free and clear of any packet loss except from the Internet of course which I can’t control. I figure it would be almost impossible for me to clean up the configuration of the work network at this point, nor would it be possible for me to change my network “overlording” habits.

Widows 7 audio is not nearly as straightforward as it is in XP, but as far as HDMI goes, you do not use “speakers.” The normal thing with HDMI is that it just passes along the signal like Line In and its up to the recieving device to control the sound through its speakers.
In the sound window under Playback you probably have Speakers (not plugged in), Headphones (same), a Digital Audio and then you should have for the HDMI, one or more HDMI audio format outputs. If not then you probably don’t have it installed. If you are using an HDMI graphics card, it should be part of that install.

If HDMI audio output is there, that is what you would use rather than Speaker, and also check to see if there is a monitor setting to enable and control the level of audio if it is not pure pass thru.

I would like to know how Mr/Ms Rubiero with the cat theme created his or her own theme. That seems somehow to unlock the individual pieces’ colors.

It doesn’t. You can use any theme or allowable customized theme, and associate a photo or any number of photos with that theme. If you go into Personalization and then Desktop Background, you can browse for a photo or set of them to add to a theme and then save it back on the personalization window. I always just copy whatever set I want directly into the Windows>Web>Wallpaper folder, create the theme and save it.

Those are probably the settings Phil was trying when in basic mode…since that is the window that comes up directly when in basic theme or ease of access theme.

I think the only place it really works at all is if you use just the Windows Classic Theme.

If you mean the highlight and outline color for menus and window items, the menu bar (if displayed) and the action and info bar, and left control pane for those types of windows, that seems to be locked in stone. I have Stardock installed on several 7s and that can’t change those colors either (as least I haven’t found a way).
I guess it helps keep we modifiers out of trouble maybe; because every once in a great while I would have a color combo set up in XP and it would flip a bit or something and suddenly I’d get black on black…which can be rather difficult to navigate.
XP is still much more customizable both natively and with something like Stardock Windowblinds and it seems is going to remain that way. Granted, there are a LOT of garishly bad combinations of colors possible in XP, even through Themes, where one presumes someone thought that it looked good , but even in 7 some of those limited color combos just don’t look that good with that ever-present blue.

Interesting that none of you addressed the Microsoft statement “Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) activation is a perpetual, one-time activation that associates Windows 7 with the firmware (BIOS) of a computer.”

Note that this only applies to OEM activation – not retail activation! That’s the crucial difference. It implies that OEM Win7 cannot be “moved” to another machine – while the retail Win7 can.

Oh, but I did address it…it was easy to miss though since I couched it,,,spoke only of a “damaged” motherboard being replaced…and the BIOS is on….that’s as far as I’ll go…I’ve never driven my Mac Truck through that loopity doopity hole but it exists because it has to exist…I really have burnt out about 6 motherboards over the last decade (two in short order in one disasterous power supply issue ) and have had no problem reactivating an OEM on a brand spanking new BIOS that came with the brand spanking new motherboard.

Even if it does spread your key round the net, you will be the rightful key user and will able to use W7 with that key.

Probably not if a thousand systems (or even a few less than that ) suddenly show up at Microsoft’s door with the same key…they’ll kill it pretty quick.