Install ANY version of Windows 7 by making your own USB install drive

Microsoft had recently released a utility that allowed you to make a USB memory stick to install Windows 7 on computer’s that did not have a DVD drive. However Rafael Rivera of the “Within Windows” blog pointed out that the tool contained some GPL v2 licenced code and Microsoft have now quickly removed it from their web site. UPDATE: Microsoft has admitted that they violated the GPL v2 licence and have now released the tool under open source. In any case the instructions below show you how to build a much better bootable USB install memory stick that allows you to install ANY version of Windows 7. If you have bought multiple version of Windows 7 and compared the DVD’s you might have noticed that they are the same with the exception of one file (ei.cfg). This one file tells Windows what version to automatically install during the install process. Because all the DVD’s are essentially the same you can use any Windows 7 DVD to perform a version upgrade of Windows 7 using the “Upgrade Anytime” option. Now to make this bootable universal Windows 7 install USB memory stick you will need at least one Windows 7 DVD 32bit or 64bit depending on what version you want to install and a blank 4gb USB memory stick. Note you will need to create a separate 32 or 64bit USB memory stick of Windows 7 but it will let you install the different SKU’s. Step 1. Insert the Windows 7 DVD into your computer and the USB memory stick into your computer Step 2. Open an “Command Prompt” and run “DISKPART”. This will launch the diskpart utility in a separate windows and perform a UAC prompt. Step 3. Type “LIST DISK” and take note what the disk number is of the USB memory stick. This will be the same size as the USB memory stick (eg. 3824 MB = 4 GB). Step 4. Then type “SELECT DISK X” where X is the disk number of the USB memory stick. Step 5. Type “CLEAN”. Warning – This will wipe all data from the USB memory stick. Step 6. Type “CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY” Step 7. Type “SELECT PARTITION 1” Step 8. Type “ACTIVE” Step 9. Type “FORMAT FS=FAT32” (and wait about 5 minutes depending on the size and speed of the USB memory stick) Step 10. Type “ASSIGN”. You will notice the auto play window now appears. Take note of the drive letter (e.g. F:\ ) and close this window. Step 11. Type “EXIT” Step 12. Back at the command prompt type “xcopy d:*.* /s/e/f F:” where D: is the drive letter of you DVD and F: is the drive letter of your USB Memory stick. Don’t worry if it takes a long time to copy boot.wim and install.wim as these are the two largest files on the DVD. Step 13. Once the xcopy is finished  run “del F:\sources\ei.cfg” from the command prompt and you Windows 7 Bootable USB memory stick is ready to go. Doing this step is what makes the USB memory stick allow you to install any version of Windows 7 as it no longer has a default version configured. You can now either boot from the USB memory stick or just run setup.exe from the drive to start the install process. Either way you will now prompted for the version of Windows 7 you want to install. Warning: This procedure will allow you to install a copy of Windows 7 that you are not licenced to have. Therefore you need to be very careful to only select a version that you have a licence key for as you will not be able activate Windows without a key that exactly matches the version you have installed. By Alan Burchill Twitter at @alanburchill Blog http://abskb.spaces.live.com Related posts: How to install any version (or SKU) of Windows 7 Did you happen to grab the Professional Edition of the latest build and want to... Fix: Windows 7 boot screen shows a Vista boot screen instead Sometimes when you are trying to tinker with a multi-boot setup, you may end up...

View article...

New Live Meat Loaf DVD Hits Stores Today

Shot at the Stadthalle Offenbach, Bat Out of Hell: The Original Tour catches the raw exhilaration of Meat Loaf’s colossal stage performance. Larger-than-life songs such as “You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” and “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” sounded utterly extravagant performed live. Not only does Meat Loaf totally [...] Source: Real Rock News New Live Meat Loaf DVD Hits Stores Today

View article...

Pink Floyd The Wall - 30th anniversary interview reminder

DISCLAIMER: Please notice that the article below is syndicated from another website. As such, APFFN is not responsible for its content. Just a reminder to you of an unmissable two-part, two-hour radio special airing Monday (November 16th, 2009), and the following Monday (November 23rd, 2009). To help celebrate the 30th anniversary of its release, the well-respected interviewer Redbeard makes Pink Floyd The Wall the subject of his In The Studio show, interviewing Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason, all looking back at the album, and bringing the story right up to date. One not to be missed! In its 21st year, In The Studio is a weekly hour-long rockumentary syndicated each week to over 85 US cities, and listenable online worldwide. More details, including airing times, can be found at InTheStudio.net (http://www.inthestudio.net/). Click on the tab at the top of the homepage marked On the Radio for the station in your area; there's a link to each station's website for exact day, time, and radio frequency.If there's not a station in your area, and you are unable to tune in online, Redbeard has told us that he'll be posting the entire interview on the website one week after airing - so the first part will be available here (http://www.inthestudio.net/) from Monday, November 23rd, and the second part from Monday, November 30th. Originally published in Brain Damage on 11-12-2009 09:11 PM in . Read the original article here.

View article...

The World's Most Extreme Laptops - MSN Tech & Gadgets

 

The World's Most Extreme Laptops

Some laptops will give you a hernia, while others will fit in a coat pocket. Some cost a day's pay -- others, half a year's. Here are the outliers of the notebook world.

< Previous | Next >

6 of 15 pages

• E-mail this
• Print this
• IM this
• Blog this

< Previous | Next >

6 of 15 pages

The World's Most Extreme Laptops

The World's Most Extreme Laptops // Eurocom D901C Phantom-X (Image courtesy of PC World)

The Fastest
Name: Eurocom D901C Phantom-X
Price: $5,950
Availability: Now
Extreme spec: 133 score in WorldBench 6
Reasons to love it: The Eurocom D901C Phantom-X is the Frankenstein's monster of the laptop world. Looking at the specs, you can almost imagine Eurocom's engineers scurrying around in a darkened, secluded laboratory somewhere, plunging a processor fit for a high-end desktop into the heart of this clamshell chassis, and then screaming, "It's alive! It's alive!" as the machine starts up for the first time, and the lights in the neighborhood dim.
This beast may not turn against its master or declare war on humanity, but it will scare even the most experienced laptop user with its $5,950 price tag ($3,000 for the not-so-frightening base model). Under the hood, it has 8GB of RAM, two 80GB solid-state drives with Windows Vista, one 320GB traditional hard drive running at 7200 rpm for file storage, an nVidia GeForce Go 9800M GTX graphics processor and a 3GHz Xeon Quad Core X3370 processor running the show. The Eurocom is currently the WorldBench 6 speed champion in the laptop division, with a score of 133. Translation: It's fast -- very, very fast.
If you want a speedy machine that won’t drain your bank account so quickly, consider Dell's Alienware M15X with Intel's new Core i7 processor. The M15x isn’t cheap ($1,499 just for the no-frills base model), but it is a little more portable at 9 pounds, and it still delivers an impressive punch.

The World's Most Extreme Laptops - MSN Tech & Gadgets - Slide Shows - Products - 6

Violent Femmes - Kiss Off

 

I need someone
a person to talk to
someone who'd care to love
could it be you
could it be yo-ou
the situation gets rough,
and I start to panic
it's not enough
it's just a habit
and, kid, you're sick
darling this is it
well you can all just kiss off into to the air
behind my back
I can see that stare
they'll hurt me bad but i won't mind
they'll hurt me bad they do it all the time
yea yea
yea they do it all the time
yea yea
they do it all the time
yea yea
they do it all the time
do it all the time
they do it all the time
do it all the time
they do it all the time
do it all the time
I hope you know that this will go down on your permenent record
oh yea
well don't get so distressed
did I happen to meantion that i'm impressed
I take one one one cause you left me and
two two two for my family and
three three three for my heartache and
four four four for my headaches and
five five five for my lonely and
six six six for my sorrow and
seven seven for no tomorrow and
eight eight I forget what eight was for and
nine nine nine for the lost gods
ten ten ten ten for everything everything everything
well you can all just kiss off into to the air
behind my back
I can see that stare
they'll hurt me bad but i won't mind
they'll hurt me bad they do it all the time
yea yea
yea they do it all the time
yea yea
yea they do it all the time
do it all the time
do it all the time
do it all the time
do it all the time
do it all the time
time time time time
timetimetimetimetimetimetimetime
do it all the time

Violent Femmes - Kiss Off

Goldmine - Record dealer turns up ultra-rare 'Sgt. Pepper'

 

by  Peter Lindblad

Summary

There was something odd about the copy of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP John Tefteller was staring at.
The faces were different. Where John, Paul, George and Ringo were supposed to be, others had taken their place.
“At first look, I thought, ‘Okay, this is a standard Sgt. Pepper LP, but — hey, wait a minute, it’s still sealed. It’s not opened,’” relates Tefteller, owner of John Tefteller’s World’s Rarest Records. “And then as I look at it closely, I go, ‘Whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. There’s no Beatles on here. Who are all these people?’ ”
Those people worked for Capitol Records, and Tefteller was about to find out this particular Sgt. Pepper album was no ordinary Beatles record. In fact, it may be one of the rarest Fab Four LPs of all time, and at this writing, he is negotiating its sale to noted Beatles collector Stan “The Beatleman” Panenka.
According to Tefteller, while traveling earlier this year he received a call from a woman whose deceased husband was a Capitol Records executive who worked for the company in Los Angeles.
“He had a collection of mainly jazz and easy-listening LPs,” says Tefteller. “And I don’t normally go out to look at something like that because I’m not really into either of those categories, but I just thought, ‘Well, all right. Capitol Records? Maybe there’s something else in there.’ ”
So he made an appointment to see the records. The woman did say there was a bit of rock ’n’ roll in the collection, and “… as I’m going through the LPs, she says something about, ‘Well, there’s a Sgt. Pepper album in there,’” says Tefteller. “I’m like, yeah, okay. And I just figured, normal Sgt. Pepper album, no big deal, whatever. It’s cute to see one, but they’re not particularly rare unless they’re like factory-sealed in mono, or something. Or factory-sealed original stereo. They could have some value. Just in general I figured all these LPs look like they’re open and used. This is going to be just a standard Sgt. Pepper LP.”
But that was not the case. When Tefteller asked about the record, she replied, “This was one that was given to my husband. The other people on this cover are all Capitol Records executives.”
Tefteller admitted he’d never heard of this before, and he initially dismissed it. “I didn’t know what it was,” he says. “I thought, well, maybe it’s some kind of fake or repro, but it didn’t look like a fake and it didn’t look like a repro. So I just thought, ‘This is unique.’ So based on finding that in the collection, I bought the collection, ’cause she wanted to sell everything.”
When Tefteller got the records, including that strange version of Sgt. Pepper, home, he called Panenka to find out what he had. Panenka told him what he knew about it and said that there had been a couple like it that sold 20 or 30 years ago.
“None of these have turned up in the last 10 years or so,” says Tefteller. “And from what I understand, doing some further investigation, those copies were fairly well-used, whereas this one is factory-sealed in the original shrink and still in perfect condition.”
Tefteller and Panenka believe that only about 100 copies were ever made of this Sgt. Pepper rarity.
“We’re only speculating on that,” says Tefteller. ‘And the reason I say it’s a speculation and a guess is: One, there have only been three or four at most that have turned up over the last 30 years. That would lead you to think that there were very, very few of them made in the first place. Two, just in order to have one copy available to each of the people who are pictured on this front cover — and I would guess they would have more than one copy available to them, perhaps as many as two or three — you would be looking at a press run of around 100. In knowing what I know about how records are manufactured and the process that it takes to do that, it doesn’t make any sense for a record company, even one as large as Capitol, to go through all the trouble of making up a special cover, printing those covers and then factory sealing them and all that unless you’re going to do a minimum of a hundred.”
Since there is nothing really to compare it to at the present time, determining a value for this find is difficult. “I don’t even want to think about putting a specific dollar value on it,” says Tefteller.
As for selling it to Panenka, Tefteller thinks he should own it, and so does Panenka. “Of course I should! I’m the Beatle man,” laughs Panenka. Panenka (www.ultimatebeatlescollection.com) is reputed to have the best American Beatles record collection in the world. He has a photo of this Pepper LP, along with photos of most of the rarest and most valuable American Beatles records.

Goldmine - Record dealer turns up ultra-rare 'Sgt. Pepper'

Incubus – Pardon Me

A decade ago, I never thought I would be,
At twenty three, on the verge of spontaneous combustion.
Woe-is-me.
But I guess that it comes with the territory;
An ominous landscape of never ending calamity.
I need you to hear, I need you to see that I have had all I can take and
Exploding seems like a definite possibility to me.

So pardon me while I burst into flames.
I've had enough of the world and it's people's mindless games.
So pardon me while I burn and rise above the flame.
Pardon me, pardon me....I'll never be the same.

Not two days ago, I was having a look in a book
And I saw a picture of a guy fried up above his knees.
I said, "I can relate," 'cause lately I've been thinking of combustication
As a welcomed vacation from the burdens of the planet earth.
Like gravity, hypocrisy, and the perils of being in 3-D...
And thinking so much differently.

So pardon me while I burst into flames.
I've had enough of the world and it's people's mindless games.
So pardon me while I burn and rise above the flame.
Pardon me, pardon me....I'll never be the same

Pink Floyd and Other Royal Mail Stamps for 2010

Friday, 16 October 2009 13:59 Latest Pink Floyd News 2009

Links - http://www.nme.com/news/pink-floyd/47860

---

According to NME and http://www.norphil.co.uk, the UKs Royal Mail are to issue ten new stamps on 7th January 2010.  Pink Floyd, Blur, The Clash and Led Zeppelin are among those to be featured.

Albums in the collection include 'The Division Bell' by Pink Floyd, 'Parklife', 'London Calling', 'Led Zeppelin IV', 'Power, Corruption & Lies' by New Order, Primal Scream's 'Screamadelica', 'Let It Bleed' by The Rolling Stones, Coldplay's 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head', 'The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars' by David Bowie and Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells'.

Royal Mail are said to have assembled a shortlist of classic albums, though initially some were deemed unusable due to the darkness of the image.

Pink Floyd Roal Mail Stamps 2010 with Blur, Coldplay, Led Zeppelin and The Clash amongst others.

Alice in Chains – Black Gives Way To Blue (2009)

I didn’t think we would ever see another album from Alice in Chains after the death of singer Layne Staley.  It has been fourteen long years since the band’s 1995 self titled album.

I must admit that I had some reservations before listening to Black Gives Way to Blue.  Lets face it, Layne Staley left some pretty big shoes to fill.  Is Alice in Chains new singer William DuVall up to the challenge?

DuVall’s voice, mixed with the back up vocals of Jerry Cantrell gives Alice in Chains close to the same sound that helped the band sell millions of albums in the nineties. The big problem is DuVall’s voice is often hidden behind Cantrell’s voice, and the heavy guitars.  He isn’t really given a chance to shine as Alice in Chains new voice.

“Check My Brain” is a doom laden grunge masterpiece that only AIC could make work.  The guitars are tuned down, so that that the whole key of the song sounds utterly creepy, yet cool. The vocals on this song are perfect.  This sounds like classic Alice in Chains.

“Last of My Kind” looses a little bit of the doominess, but is still heavy as hell. This song requires multiple listens to fully appreciate.

“Your Decision” is an acoustic guitar  based track. This is the first song where DuVall’s voice is allowed to shine without the layers of guitar and heavy bass.  It sounds great and ought to be a single for Alice in Chains.

“A Looking In View” is the longest track on this album, but this moody mid-tempo number might be too long for its own good.  This song kind of plods along never really offers the listener a climax.  It is seven minutes of sludgey rock that I could have lived without.

“When the Sun Rose Again” is another acoustic track with some odd percussion thrown in for good measure.  This song doesn’t work for me either.

At this point in the record, I was hoping to stumble upon a hit worthy tune from AIC.  Hopefully somewhere on this disc is a monster song that I could not live without. I wouldn’t call it a monster track, but “Lesson Learned” is more like the AIC of old.  A cool heavy tune.

“Take Her Out” is another heavy mid tempo number that resembles the classic AIC sound.

The closing and title track “Black Gives Way to Blue”  is a tribute to Layne Staley.  The piano on this song is played by none other than Elton John. Yes, you read that correctly. This is a very slow and short tune, but is also quite amazing.  It is a very cool tune that honors Layne Staley well.

Does Black Gives Way To Blue live up to the Alice in Chains legacy?  No, I don’t think it is even close. The vocals are great. The guitar work is great.  So where does the problem lie?

The overall pace of the album is pretty slow, and the songs don’t stick with you. Once upon a time, the band could write some pretty cool grungy rockers with lyrics that were ultimately catchy and memorable. There just aren’t enough of these on this record to make me want to play it a whole bunch.  Yes there are songs that I like on this disc, but even with repeated listens something appears to be missing.  I am glad Alice in Chains is back, but Black Gives Way To Blue is ultimately disappointing.

CatWalkChatt - news, sports, classifieds, businesses.

 

Officers involved in Fort Oglethorpe shootout honored

Jul 28, 2009 | 769 views | 1 | 3 | |

slideshow

Officers involved in the Fort Oglethorpe shooting on June 24 were recognized at the July 27 City Council meeting. Fort Oglethorpe police officer Mitchell Moore was wounded during the incident. Walker County deputy Terry Miller, far left, shot the suspect, John Coates. Council member Johnnie “Red” Smith, center, who was wounded in 1993 in a police shootout, and mayor Ronnie Cobb presented the plaques from the city. Other Fort Oglethorpe officers involved in shootings, but not pictured, are John McGrath, Richard Williams, Chris Clark, and police chief David Eubanks. The shooting McGrath was involved in occurred in October 1994. Williams and Clark were both involved in an incident at Wal-mart in 2005, and Eubanks’s shooting occurred in 1974, while he was with the Dalton Police Department. (Catoosa News/Heather Gentry)

CatWalkChatt - news, sports, classifieds, businesses.