Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC » Windows 7

Windows 7 – Switch between monitors with ease

Daniel — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:37:48 +0000

Have you ever had a laptop and one of those head-scratching moments while you tried to figure out which combination of buttons to press so you could use a projector or monitor that you plugged in? On one laptop it might be fn+F8, while on another fn+F5 while on another it might be a button that you press that is somewhere on the laptop.

With Windows 7 Microsoft made it easy. Press the Windows key and p. That’s it. Windows Key + P will bring up a window that will allow you to switch between your laptop display and a projector or monitor that you hooked up. If you are running a desktop system with multiple monitors you can also use Windows Key + P to configure your displays.

We welcome any feedback, and as always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give us a shout!

Web www.scurlocksystems.com

Daniel Scurlock

Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC

972.633.1111

Firefox and Windows 7 – How to Enable Taskbar Preview

Daniel — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:18:47 +0000

If you are using Windows 7 and Firefox did you know you can enable the nifty little feature to display your open tabs in the Taskbar? Previously this was a feature only available in Internet Explorer.

What this will allow you to do is hover your mouse over the Firefox icon at the bottom of your screen and see images of all of your open websites in Firefox. You can simply click on the site you wish to jump to.

To enable this feature in Firefox, simply type “about:config” (without the quotes) where you would normally type in a website URL.

You will get a warning, press the ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’ button

In the Filter box, type browser.taskbar.previews.enable – this will display the entry, and by default it is set to false.

Now double-click under Preference Name on browser.taskbar.previews.enable. This will change the value from false to true.

That’s it! Now close Firefox and open it back up. If you have multiple tabs open you can hover your mouse over the Firefox icon at the bottom of your screen and you will see images of all of your open tabs.

Keep in mind that this feature is available only in Windows 7. Thinking about upgrading to Windows 7? Give us a shout and we will be happy to discuss the best upgrade path for you, be it replacing your system or reworking your existing system.

We welcome any feedback, and as always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give us a shout!

Web www.scurlocksystems.com

Daniel Scurlock

Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
972.633.1111

Windows 7 Trick – Alt + Tab vs. Windows Key + Tab

Daniel — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:48:15 +0000

In various versions of Windows you can press the Alt + Tab keys to cycle through your open programs. By keeping the Alt key pressed town you can jump from program to program by pressing the Tab key until the program you want is displayed.

Starting with Vista, Microsoft added a very slick new way to display your open programs called Aero Flip 3D. It also displays your open programs, but displays them in a 3D (well, as close as you can get to 3D without wearing those silly glasses) view. You can see your open programs and use your mouse wheel or Tab key to cycle through the windows.

To use the Aero Flip 3D view press the Windows Key (near the bottom left of your keyboard) and Tab key.

It’s that easy! Next time you are flipping between open programs try using the Windows Key + Tab and enjoy the view.

The Aero Flip 3D does require a bit more hardware oomph from your system in order to display the 3D view. Here are the minimum requirements to use Aero:

Minimum Hardware Requirements for running Windows 7 Aero:

1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 GB of RAM

128 MB graphics card

Please visit our website at www.scurlocksystems.com and our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/scurlocksystems for more information, and check out our new youtube channel at www.youtube.com/scurlocksystems!

Thanks for checking out the post.

Daniel Scurlock
Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
972.633.1111

Windows 7 Trick – ‘Send To’ Options

Daniel — Tue, 25 May 2010 00:22:13 +0000

As you know, when browsing the contents of your computer you can right-click on a folder or file and one of the options you have is ‘Send to’. Send to is handy, but somewhat limited in where you can actually send the file or folder to.

Now take a look at the additional places you can send the file or folder by simply holding down the key while right-clicking and pressing the Send to option:

As you can see there are quite a few more places you can send your data to, including the Documents, My Music, My Pictures and My Videos folders. Quite handy!

Thanks for checking out the post.

Daniel Scurlock
Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
972.633.1111

The Joys (and pains) of Multiuser Mode in Quickbooks

Daniel — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:00:13 +0000

Sherry and I both have Quickbooks 2009 on our systems and we share one data file.

It’s a great system – Sherry takes care of the day to day invoicing, I can run reports, enter stock, and all those other Quickbooksey things that one does in the daily running of a business.

Sherry had been using an old Dell desktop since she started here over a year ago (I know, the cobbler’s kids have the worst shoes) and we finally built her a very nice replacement system. All the bells and whistles, including an upgrade to Windows 7 Professional – woohoo!

So we get the new system installed, all of her data transferred over, her Outlook up and running, MS Office up and running, Mozy backup setup, etc. and we get Quickbooks installed.

When running in multiuser mode Quickbooks requires one to run a little program called Quickbooks Database Server Manager – you simply run the program and it scans your drive for Quickbooks files that you wish to share. Easy peasy. We ran the program, it found the data file and we shared it.

Sherry opened up our company file in Quickbooks with no problem and set Quickbooks for multi-user mode.

I head back to my office to fire up Quickbooks – I have stock to receive, invoices to print and mail, it’s time to get to work!

Alas, Quickbooks has other plans. I can see the Quickbooks file on Sherry’s system but Quickbooks is not having any of it. Nuh-uh. No way. Not gonna happen. Quickbooks gleefully points out that it can’t open the file on Sherry’s system. I hear sounds Nelson on The Simpsons “Ha-ha“.

Quickbooks can’t open the file – it tells me that the file is not properly setup for sharing on Sherry’s system; it can’t connect.

Hrrrmmm.

Much troubleshooting ensued. Data file moved from Sherry’s machine to mine, new data shares setup on both systems, and so on.

What we ended up discovering was a nifty little utility from Intuit’s site for troubleshooting network connection issues from within Quickbooks. We downloaded and ran the tool and it generated two errors for us to research.

After a bit of research we the found the cause of the issue to be……

Undocumented ports that needed to be opened at the firewall! No really. That was the issue.

In all of the troubleshooting and knowledge base searching at Intuit’s site nowhere did we find any mention that certain ports needed to be opened on the firewall software in order for Quickbooks to function in a multi-user environment.

It seems that the Windows 7 firewall blocks these ports by default. The fix took all of 30 seconds to implement. Opened up the firewall on Sherry’s system and allowed access to ports 8019 and 55333.

We are quickbooking away now – woohoo!

-Daniel Scurlock
Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC

Windows 7 – It’s All That (and more)

Daniel — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:00:16 +0000

So we’ve been playing with the Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) for a few months now and have been quite impressed with what we’ve seen, but a couple of weeks ago we received the *full, complete version* of Windows 7 from Microsoft as an Action Pack subscriber.

All I can say so far is ‘Wow’, and I mean that as a good wow, a great wow, a jumping up and down with glee wow.

Windows 7 is what Vista should have been, and then some. The interface is cleaner, the bells and whistles numerous, and the stability rock solid.

Jimmy has been running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 on his main desktop for a week now and swears he will never go back to XP or Vista – that’s saying a whole lot right there.

What has me so jazzed at the moment is that earlier this morning I decided to install Windows 7 on my little Acer One Netbook which is not a powerhouse of a system by any stretch. It has only 1GB of RAM and an Atom 1.6GHz processor. I wasn’t sure if Windows 7 would even do an initial load or not due to the system hardware specs.

The netbook doesn’t have a CD or DVD drive built in, so I hooked up an external DVD drive and booted to the Windows 7 installation DVD.

Flash forward 30 minutes and we’re done. Windows 7 is installed, NO drivers were needed. System has full video, audio, wired and wireless networking. I’ve also installed MS Office 2007 Enterprise and Malwarebytes Antimalware.

The system is faster now than it ever was running XP, which just blows me away. MS Word loads in under 4 seconds, Excel in about 3 seconds.

Call me a convert.

-Daniel Scurlock
Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC
scurlocksystems.com