When a portable version of a Windows 7 application is not available, what is an effective way to test it out to see if you like it?  I define effective as:   Not time consuming Leaves no (or minimal) files and folders behind if uninstalled Leaves no (or minimal) registry entries changed or added if uninstalled Does not remove files or registry entries that were present before evaluating the application   I used to take a registry and file structure snapshot before and after trying out any application, and then compare everything after the install or uninstall.  This did not satisfy #1 above, and required many judgement calls, especially for registry entries.  I then switched to creating System Restore points.  But I'm always concerned they will mess something up.  And after installing the (disappointing and misleading) free version of Microsoft OneNote 2013, and then removing it by restoring a System Restore point, there was still a significant amount of cleanup that had to be performed by hand (as well as a bunch of new \Windows\assembly folders that I'm really not sure if I should delete).  I would prefer a free (as in no cost) solution.  The solution can use tools built into Windows 7 or not.  The solution must be legal, and must work on a system on which the Windows 7 operating system was pre-installed by the manufacturer (no Windows installation disks included).  If the answer includes setting up a VM, please ensure that it will work with this condition.  Technically, if the answers others post use tools and techniques that are built into the OS, then this question belongs here in the Superuser site, and if the answers use tools that are not built into the OS, then this question belongs on the Software Recommendations SE site.  Since there will likely be complaints if it is crossposted, and I can't predict the answers, I'll post the above question here.  If the mods want to crosspost it, they have my permission to do so.
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I'm looking for Windows 7 software that will allow me to quickly create a "checkpoint", do whatever I might need to do to my computer - install programs/drivers/updates, create/delete personal files, reboot the system multiple times, open questionable attachments - and then revert the entire system back to when the checkpoint was created.  Essentially I want Windows Restore Points that save my personal files and partitions, too.  It sounds like disk imaging might be the ticket, but creating them is much too slow and the restore process too involved... I'm hoping to sacrifice full disaster recovery for speed. Creating a checkpoint should be as close to one-click as possible, and rolling back should be a matter of selecting a restore point and rebooting. Ding!  I'm familiar with Sandboxie, True Image Home "Try and Decide", Returnil, and a number of other "virtual system" apps that actively "catch" changes and allow you to commit or reject them. I'm not interested in these for a number of reasons - I prefer the "cut and dry" restore point approach.  Finally, I'll note that I've just recently become aware of . It sounds absolutely perfect, however, a quick skim through the user forums show more than a few horror stories of corrupted, unbootable systems. Any positive personal experience with the software to suppress my superstitions, or suggestions for more established alternatives would be greatly appreciated - Comodo Time Machine seems relatively new. I'm willing to purchase unbloated, quality software.  Thanks for your help!
109373
If I copy a large amount of data from on drive to another (physical) drive my whole system is running slow.  I am using Windows 7 64bit version on an Intel Core 2 Duo 3 GHz.  This is the situation:   Very fast copying between two SATA disks.  Resource Monitor shows 80MB/s read, 70MB/s writes and 150MB/s total The total CPU load is about 3% There is plenty (>2GB) of free physical RAM left All partitions have enough (>10gb, >10%) of free space left and show low fragmentation Anti-Virus software is not active   This is the problem: No matter what I want to do while copying, it takes forever. Even tasks that do not need a lot of disk access (as they should work from RAM only), are extremely slow. The moment I stop the copying process, all the unfinished tasks finish at once. For example trying to open a new browser windows or explorer window will not work. If the copying is stopped 5 explorer windows popup at once.  My question is: why? What resource is exhausted, if CPU and memory are idle? And what part of my computer hardware I need to upgrade to get better behavior? Also read Psycogeek's comment for further questions in this direction.  If your answer is, that everything needs HDD Access, which is blocked by such an activity, then my question is: Is there a way to copy something on your system without rendering it unusable until its done? (which can be hours, if >500g have to be copied).
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I want to make an unattended install of Windows 8.1 with the following features:   It has to be actived It metro apps removed from the system Some freeware applications installed such as CCleaner Registry modifications to boot up directly to the desktop   Problems  When I have an ISO file and load it up into the Windows System Image Manager I can only modify registry settings and not install or remove software wich is automatticly getting installed by Windows.  I saw i can pre-install software with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2013 program, but I dont like that because its not unattended.  Question  How can I make an unattended installation (with already software removed and installed) ISO file of Windows 8.1 without using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit?
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I bought a laptop recently. While Windows 7 was installing, the battery died. So I plugged in the charger and re-installed Windows 7 Home Basic from the start. After completion of the procedure I now have 2 Windows folders in my C:\ drive, so I deleted the old Windows folder.  The problem is, while booting time it shows two Windows 7 options, although I already deleted the old Windows folder.  How can I remove old Windows 7 option from my boot?
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I don't know about vista. I never used it. I just moved from XP (32 bit) to Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit). I was expecting c:\windows\system64 directory similar to c:\windows\system32. Why is still entire system is located in system32? Why isn't there any system64 directory?
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I'd like to know if given an existing Windows PC, are there any concrete reasons why a clean install should be performed over an update.  Articles like  refer to "bloatware" and "clutter" on the PC and rightly suggest that this might not be something that you want on the upgraded PC.  refers to "crashes" and upgrades being "problematic". Both are fairly non specific as to what these problems might be though.  If I'm happy that there is no bloatware or clutter on the PC prior to the upgrade, are there any specific known issues that can cause specific problems when upgrading rather than clean installing?  Or is it just a case of being sure?
74863
I'm working with InstallAnywhere, an old program for creating installers. I would like to install a particular file, only in case of Windows XP and Windows Vista.  Due to InstallAnywhere limitations, this is not possible. I can only decide to delete the file once it has already been installed, based on a rule.  Within that rule, I can check for the platform on which I'm running, which gives me the possibility to check for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, etc. but not for Windows 10. I can't say "Perform this action when the system is not XP or Vista", so I need to say "Perform this action on all those platforms, which are not XP or Vista".  However, I can launch command-line commands and catch the result, so here's my question: is there a command which I can use for determining if I'm working on a Windows 10 system?
89263
, I'm starting to believe it is not active.  Last night I started up Task Manager and I see 2 disks - Disk 0 (C:) and Disk 1.    Disk 0 appears to be active -    Disk 1 appears to be not active.  It's been this way for at least 3 hours of active use, both Metro and Desktop use.   This is supposed to be the Solid State part of my Hybrid Drive, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything, at least not from the perspective of the Task Manager tool.  Does anyone know of any additional tools that I could you for analysis or do you know if there is some way to activate this part of the drive?  Thank you in advance!
91643
Is there a "noop"-esque exe somewhere as part of the Windows installation? I'm preparing some batch jobs and scheduled tasks, and for a couple reasons I'd like to reference an executable that does nothing -- i.e. launches with no visible window, and quits immediately.  Does such an executable exist in the usual Windows installation anywhere? or how can I come close? I do not want to have to depend on anything not already included in Windows.
25833
After (hopefully) scrubbing viruses out of a Windows 7 installation (after deciding not to simply run over the laptop repeatedly with my car), I've got everything almost back to normal. The only lingering issue I have is that for my non-admin users, the ".exe" file extension doesn't work. That is, clicking on the various desktop application links results in a "How do you want to open this?" dialog.  I've been through the alleged registry fixing from "winhelponline" and that had absolutely no effect.  I've tried running "assoc" for the affected users, but it reports the .exe association to be "exefile" even though it persistently does not work.  Right-clicking on a desktop icon and then choosing "start" does successfully open an application, but that's clearly a terrible situation.  For my admin user, things seem to work fine.  What do I need to do to get things working?
28245
One of our Windows 2003 servers has a fairly small C-partition, which is approaching full. I've had a quick look round using  as to where the space has gone, and a fair bit of it seems to be taken up with C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download  I think this folder is used as a temporary storage for Windows Update, but as all the pending Windows updates have now been installed, is it OK to delete the contents of this folder?
38338
System drive, OS is Windows 7 x64 SP1 Ultimate.    Windows Explorer shows 100GB of used space.  TreeSizeFree shows 75GB of used space.  Total Commander and FAR confirm TreeSizeFree's measurements (counting hidden files).  Shadow copy is using up to 5GB with the current usage of 1.36GB.  Running FAR from Win7 PE shows the same.  Checkdisk shows no bad sectors. Disk is an OCZ SSD.  SMART monitor suggests SSD condition is perfect.    Where is the rest of space gone?
74163
When working on a project, I generally have a couple of Explorer windows open to relevant folders and a couple of applications (e.g. Eclipse and a form development tool) open to specific project-related documents.  There's a lot of value in that context, and I'd like to find a way to save a set of open apps under a project name, then restore that state at a later date.    Thus far all of the utilities I've found are virtual desktop products that don't save/restore state.  I'm specifically looking for something that will run the applications I had running, open the documents I had open, and position the windows as they were.  I'm amazed that such a seemingly simple concept as "Save my workspace state" doesn't seem to be available.  I'm on Windows 7.  Any suggestions?
52062
A Windows-7 laptop was upgraded to Windows-10 during the Microsoft free upgrade period when they were nudging users to migrate away from 7 to 10.  The system is sluggish and crash prone: I would like create a fresh install with a new SSD from a Windows 10 install .iso burned to a USB drive.  Is it possible (and how can) the the license-key from the old drive be recovered and migrated to a fresh install?   If this is not the right question to ask, I would appreciate edits to the questions: thank you.
17316
I have a Windows machine (laptop) that needs fixing. The current installation is really badly broken (e.g. the taskbar is unresponsive, but the Explorer windows work, booting takes literally half an hour) and when I try to access the settings app and click on the tile to access the reset settings it instantly crashes. The same happens in Safe Mode.  I have created a USB install medium using the tool offered by Windows on my own Windows desktop machine. I've ensured that both the laptop and the USB tool have the same version of Windows (Home, 64-bit, NL). When I want to reinstall Windows on the laptop with this stick I am asked to enter a serial number which I obviously don't have. I don't want to try and see if I can phone activate it, because if it fails the install is gone.  I need to reinstall this Windows machine from a USB stick. There are a few problems I can't find an immediate solution for on the .   If I use a tool such as  to extract the serial number, will this work? If the above does not work, how can I reinstall this Windows machine?
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Windows XP/2003 and earlier (can't attest to Windows Vista, but I suspect it's the same) all appear to become more sluggish over time as applications are installed and uninstalled.  This is not a scientifically tested observation, but more of a learned-through-experience piece of wisdom.  (I've always suspected the registry as being behind the issue.)  Is there any concrete evidence of this degradation occurring, or it just an invalid perception of mine?
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It would seem that there should be web resources to quickly find an answer to this question but I couldn't find any, so I'm trying my luck here.   I used the Win10 Media Creation Tool to download Win10 Pro ISO's and set up VM's I use for testing before deploying to bare metal. Once I deploy, I do so with a digital license or product key but it obviously doesn't make any sense activating while in the (temporary) VM.   Now I noticed that my VM still works, and it's been many weeks since I first used it. It's not activated, of course, but I can still log in and install software and so on.   Up until now, I always created a new VM installation from scratch when I needed to do testing. It would naturally save me some time if I could just install it once and then clone when I need a new environment (that will eventually be licensed). I thought that's not possible due to some time restraints so I didn't even try it.   Hence my questions:    Is there an official "evaluation period" for Windows 10, and how long is it?  How long can one use (from a technical perspective only) a not activated copy of Windows 10?  Which limitations are there for a not activated copy and when do they step into effect? I was, for example, not able to confirm that personalization is not possible as seems to have been the case with a not-activated Windows 8.  (See comment on answer below.)