Clark76

I personally have been using Ubuntu since 7.04 and have liked it for many reasons such as ease of use, the large amount of documentation online and the great group of follow users on the forums willing to help.  I have also been a fan of the Gnome interface which unfortunately the powers that been at Ubuntu are not.  Ubuntu developed Unity which is a shell for the Gnome environment and is enabled by default on Ubuntu 11.04.  I understand and appreciate giving users choices which is why there are so many different environments available such as Gnome, KDE, Xfce, ect… but it is starting to feel like Ubuntu is taking those choices away from us with forcing Unity on the masses.  Gnome’s choice is going to be taken away, what is next? KDE?

See here for some info on the dispute between Ubuntu and Gnome: Ubuntu Linux and GNOME: The Disputes continue

Thankfully with 11.04, we still have the choice to default to not using Unity which I am not a fan of at this time.  Perhaps over time I might come to embrace it as some have but currently it gives a dumbed down feel to it and and what is provided does not have the polish to it that I would expect from one of the most popular Linux distros.

To switch to back to an environment without Unity follow these easy steps:

• First either reboot  the computer or log out of your current session in Ubuntu
• At the log in prompt you will see at the bottom of the screen a pull down menu.  It will currently be set to Ubuntu.
• Change it to either: Ubuntu Classic or Ubuntu Classic (No effects)
• Log in as you normally would and experience Non Unity goodness!

Rumors have been bouncing around the internet that this option will not be available for Ubuntu 11.10.  If that happens then the only option is to either learn to embrace Unity or look at another distro using an environment of your liking.  Fedora is using Gnome 3 already in version 15 and I am sure that we will start to see many others following suit shortly

It amazes me how so many people never back up info on their computer.  Info I might add that they feel they could never replace!  So many things can happen to a computer making it very difficult or even impossible to retrieve important data, such as hardware failure, severe malware infection or even an accidental file deletion.

This could be avoided by simply backing up your data.  There are so many different options available and pricing to meet anyone’s budget, that there is really no excuse.  Below I am going to outline some of the many options available.  I stress that this is not all encompassing and I am sure there are plenty of options that I have missed.

1. Burning to either CD or DVD.  With the price dropping on blank DVD’s and the amount of data that will fit on one DVD compared to a CD, I would recommend using DVD’s but the choice is yours.
2. External hard drives.  Long gone are the days of the bulky and unattractive external hardrives.  Manufactures are making the drives physically smaller but at the same time making the hard drive capacities larger and larger.
3. Cloning software.  While simply following option 1 or 2 while allow you to back up music, pictures, documents, ect…, using a cloning software will allow you to take your computer back to the exact spot it was at during the time of the back up including installed programs.  There are several different cloning softwares available now a days.  Two of the most popular paid applications are Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image.   Two common free cloning software programs are Paragon Drive Backup Express and CloneZilla.  Of course with any cloning software you are going to need a place to save this back up.  You options are going to be utilizing either Option 1 or 2 from above or a separate partition.

By following one of the above steps or another method of your choosing, you can feel a little safer during the next lightning storm, knowing the baby photos of all your grandchildren or your library of music is safe!

It used to be with Windows 7, you were unable to run XP mode unless the processor supported hardware assisted virtualization and the feature is turned on in the bios.  Microsoft has recently came out with a patch to allow you to bypass this restriction: KB977206

This patch is available for 32bit and 64bit Windows 7 systems running the following versions: Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise.

If you do not have XP Mode installed and have one of the above versions of Windows 7 you can download it from here.

Lately on the forums I have run across users with unbootable machines due to a corrupt OS that would like to save some files/folders before either reloading the OS or purchasing a new computer so I thought I would write this tutorial on how to do so.

To be able to perform the directions below you will need a working computer to download the software required and be able to burn it to a CD.  You will also need a flash drive to save the files/folders to.  The size of the flash drive needed will depend on the size of the files and/or folders you wish to copy over.

We are going to use a Linux distro called Ubuntu for this tutorial.  I chose this distro because it works with well with many different hardware configurations.  At the time of writing Ubuntu was at verison 9.10.  If you end up using a different version the screen shots may look a little different.

Download Ubuntu from here: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

Next we need to be able to burn the file as an iso image on a blank CD.  If you do not already have software to burn an iso image download ImgBurn, which is free, from here: http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download

Follow the directions located on ImgBurn’s web site to burn the ISO for Ubuntu to a CD: http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=61

Now that we have a CD with Ubuntu loaded on it we need to boot the computer with it.  To do this we are going to have to change the boot order in the computer BIOS.  This may sound scary to some but it really is not that hard to do.  When powering your computer up before you get the windows screen a prompt appears generally at the top of the screen telling you what key will need to be pressed to enter the set up menu.  Some of the common keys are as follows: F2 for Dell’s, F1 or F2 for HP and Compaq and F1 or Esc for Toshibas.  If you use a different model or these keys do not work for you consult your computer’s documentation. Once you are in the set up menu you are going to want to look for an option for boot or boot sequence.  From there follow the directions on screen to move the CD-ROM drive to the top of the list and then save the changes.

Before exiting the set up menu you will want to insert the CD you burned the Ubuntu image on into the computer, so when the computer boots it boots from the CD and not the hard drive with the corrupt OS.

Once the computer has booted up you will be presented with the following screen:

You will then want to choose the language of your choice then press enter.  You will then be presented with the following screen:

At this point you want to be careful you choose the top option: Try Ubuntu without any changes to your computer and click enter.

You will then see a series of screens with the Ubuntu logo and some screens with a lot of text on it.  Allow it to fully load till you see the following screen:

Next plug your flash drive into the computer.  After a moment a window will appear with the contents of the flash drive if anything was currently on it.  Leave this window alone for now and click on Places at the top of the screen.  Next you are going to look for a file size followed by the word Filesystem. Click on it. See the below screen shot as an example:

After you click on the file system your copy of windows was installed on, it will open a window similar to the following:

From here you are in the window’s install and can navigate through it and copy any files/folders you wanted to save.  This will be very similar as to when you are in windows on how to copy and paste files.  Click on a single file/folder or highlight a large group and right click and choose copy.  Next right click in the window that should still be open when you inserted the flash drive into the computer and choose paste.  Depending on the size of what you copied will determine how long it takes to paste.  Once this is completed close all the windows by clicking on the x in the top right hand corner for each window open.

Next you are going to want to locate the icon on the main screen that represents the flash drive.  Mine looked like the following:

Right click on it and choose Safely Remove Drive

You can now transport the files you just saved to another computer for safe keeping.  I recommend if at all possible verifying right away in another computer that your files are on the flash drive and you are able to open them.

Once this is complete click where it says ubuntu at the top right and then choose shutdown.  During the course of the shutdown your CD drive will open.  Remove the CD and close the CD drive then press enter on the keypad to finish the shutdown.

Welcome to Clark76.com.  For now this site will be used for tutorials I feel would help in the forums and important news in the tech field.

Special thanks to the owner of www.TnThelpforum.com for graciously hosting this site.