By default whenever you create a shortcut in Windows, a small arrow is placed on the shortcut icon to indicate this is indeed a shortcut. If you would like to remove this arrow, you can do so easily by following the applicable instructions for your OS:

• Windows XP
• Windows Vista / 7

Both articles show you how to make a registry change and offer a utility which will do this for you. Just go with whatever you are more comfortable with.

Put simply, I don’t upgrade operating systems. Ever.

I install any OS new and recommend the same to anyone else. It doesn’t matter if it’s Windows, OS X or Linux. Don’t upgrade. Back up your stuff, wipe the drive and start from scratch with the new OS.

To note, I don’t do this with incremental updates (e.g. XP Service Pack 2 to 3) but rather with significant version changes (e.g. Ubuntu 7 to 8).

In my personal experience, my OS upgrades have consisted mainly with Linux and Windows boxes; neither of them know how to do major version updates correctly and never have.

With Linux, I will encounter some type of upgrade issue without fail. If it’s not X that screws up, it’s the network connection. Or maybe Samba decides to drop all the network shares. Or maybe some other service just magically decided to stop working and absolutely will not work again no matter how many configuration files you manually edit or services you stop/restart or reboots you perform. Or maybe the OS won’t load properly at all. But when you install fresh, ta-da… everything works like it’s supposed to and you can go on your merry way.

With Windows, any OS upgrade will leave an enormous amount of crap left behind by the previous version – always. The drivers that used to work in the old OS will try to load in the new one and BZZT… sorry Charlie, that doesn’t work anymore. In addition, the computer runs slow because it’s got all the preexisting crapola it’s still trying (and failing) to use. But when you install fresh, there’s no crap Windows has to deal with and therefore runs better.

I have never recommended that anyone take an existing OS and install an upgrade on top of it, and I never will.

Most of you out there will be upgrading to Windows 7 from XP when it comes to market. What I suggest you do now is the following:

Take inventory of your software

For every app you use, open up a spreadsheet app like Excel or Calc or Google Docs and list them all there. Include your downloaded stuff, your games and everything else. Consider it to be your own personal how-to guide to “build” your OS the way you like it.

For the downloaded apps in particular, make a separate column with the download link so you don’t have to go hunting for it later.

Keep this spreadsheet up-to-date.

For those that would ask why this is even necessary, the answer is that it’s easier to read a spreadsheet than it is to fumble thru a huge list of files and folders. Also, there’s probably at least a few apps you have to install in a specific order. Having the inventory on spreadsheet makes that easy to follow.

(For Linux users I also recommend doing the software inventory spreadsheet. Note the apps you have installed from your respective repositories. Just because you use Linux doesn’t mean you don’t take inventory of what’s on your box.)

Burn any/all downloaded app(s) to CD or DVD or copy to USB stick

CDs and DVDs are cheap and readily available. Buy a 50-pack of a decent brand (one can never have too many) and a set of fine point Sharpie markers. Set aside some time to burn all your stuff.

Recommendation: I suggest burning each disc twice just in case the first one fails or an optical drive decides “I don’t want to play nice with this disc” and scratches it all up.

Alternative: Use a large-capacity USB stick. 16GB versions start at 25 bucks. And it’s most likely true that all your downloaded app-installer files don’t get anywhere near that capacity when combined.

Need more space? Get a 32GB stick. Still need more? Get a 64GB.

Before you wince at the price of the 64’s, bear in mind this is a little USB stick we’re talking about.

If you can fit all your app installer files on a single USB stick, trust me when I say that’s darned convenient. Having all your must-have apps on a single stick is so much easier to deal with compared to flipping thru disc after disc.

Why don’t I recommend external hard drives?

Because you’re most likely using it as a primary backup for other things besides downloaded apps, and you’re probably using it routinely. When doing an app-inventory backup, it’s best use a store-and-forget method until you need it. Discs and USB sticks allow you to do that.

Collect any/all from-OEM discs, put them all together and categorize

These are CDs supplied with your printer, digital camera, camcorder, digital dictation device, GPS, etc. Buy a disc folder or box and stuff ‘em all in there. The software is probably more important to you than the manuals so you might as well keep it all together.

I’m not saying to throw out the boxes or manuals – but put the discs together.

If you don’t feel like doing that, burn copies of the driver/software discs and do it that way.

If you do this stuff now, it will make your new-OS install a whole lot simpler in the future

Most people do the above the day they buy a new OS. Wrong. Don’t do that. Doing it all in a day means you’re guaranteed to miss something along the way. That OEM driver disc you thought you had will end up missing. That file you thought you had won’t be there or backed up anywhere.

And let’s say that you don’t plan on jumping to Windows 7 the week it’s released. That’s fine – but you should still do inventory and back up your apps regardless. There is never such a thing as being too prepared when it comes to computers and operating systems.

For those of you out there that run a dual-boot system with Windows XP and Ubuntu, you’ve noticed that Ubuntu is the default OS that loads on each system startup. There is a way to change this so that XP is the default OS instead.

Full documentation:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GrubHowto/ChangeDefaultOS

What that documentation instructs you to do:

The boot order list is in a text file called menu.lst. You can edit this using a terminal text editor or by using gedit (a GUI-based text editor).

The OS choice in menu.lst is defined by the default line and title.

If for example the default num is set to 0 and you have the following in your grub.lst:

title      Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-27-amd64-generic
...
title      Ubuntu, memtest86+
...
title      Other operating systems:
...
title      Microsoft Windows XP Home

“0″ is representative of the first title (it starts from 0, not 1), so you would want the default num to be 4 to start Windows XP first.

For those asking “Um.. okay, so Other operating systems: is technically treated as an OS choice?” Yes it is. That’s the way it’s done in order to display it in the menu on boot.

On my personal system, Windows XP Professional is listed as title 6.

This may sound confusing but it isn’t. All you have to do is when counting the title entries, find the first one (which is 0) then count down until you find the Windows XP entry. Change default num to that number, save the file and reboot. If successful, XP will start first on boot.

Situation: You’re going to upgrade your primary hard drive to something bigger, better and faster – however the primary hard drive is obviously what holds your operating system.

So now you’re faced with a choice.

1. Reinstall the operating system on the new drive and reinstall all your apps.
2. Use drive imaging software to copy everything from the old drive to the new one.

Continued

Making the switch from Microsoft Windows or Apple’s OS X to Linux can be a daunting proposition for most people. There are a lot of negative myths, half truths and misinformation out there that scare many people off. Fortunately there are several ways to experiment with, and get to know, Linux that will not change your system as it is now. Continued

The other day I got into a somewhat heated discussion about why Linux is a viable alternative desktop OS. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to move the other side past the rhetoric and myths that seem to surround Linux. It is because of this discussion that I am writing this…as a way to give accurate information. Let’s start by looking at some of the most common myths.

Myth 1: “Linux is hard to install”

This could not be further from the truth. Many Linux distributions are as easy, if not easier. to install as Windows. Ubuntu, Linux Mint and PCLinuxOS are but three of the most popular. The install is nothing more than a few mouse clicks and basic options like timezone, language and name. All these are explained well and you need to provide the same information when installing ANY operating system. Continued

Some have asked me off and on why I’m not using a Linux distribution full time as my primary operating system. Over the years (yes, years) I’ve tried but never found a Linux that did it all for me. The video below explains a bit of why I feel that way.