9 Tips to improve Mavericks Performance on Mac

Millions of Mac users have already upgraded their existing Mac to OS X Mavericks, and why not OS X 10.9 is absolutely free to upgrade. It’s not only free but an outstanding OS that deserves praises by all of us. Apple have spent good amount of time to bring in some good features that were missing from the OS X. The integration of some iOS features such as iBooks, Maps helps sync the iOS devices for ease.

Minor Glitches that rocked 10.9 upgrade: Since, the Mavericks was rapidly being upgraded, reports of bugs like data deletion from WD HDD were reported. However, the issue was resolved sooner than later and now OS X10.9 is free from such bugs.

So, OS X 10.9 is smooth, fast and convenient to use, that is how it is built to perform.  But, being responsible Mac users, it is our duty too, to help 10.9 run smooth forever.

Evergreen tips that work on 10.9 to fasten its speed: Some tips & tricks work on every OS X, even on the latest releases such as Mavericks. Not only these, tips are simple, but when put to action they produce results.  Today, we shall discuss some of those free & fair tricks that can help both gain & maintain high performance for the new OS X baby, which is “Mavericks”.

1.     Use Command + R – Like in predecessor OS X, CMD + R works on OS X 10.9 too. This command is used while the OS X is loading on to the machine. Restart Mac and press CMD+R to bring in the ‘Recovery Mode’ menu from OS X. A Recovery Mode is a hidden partition of the OS X and helps restore the system in case of any logical causality. Now, when you are in the Recovery Mode, go to Disk Utility and run Verify & Repair Disk permissions on the boot disk. (Please Note: Only the boot partition has the ability to verify & repair disk permissions). Any fault in the permission will be resolved with the help of Disk Utility feature.

2.     Check Spotlight–One of the reason you experience slow performance just after the upgrade is may be because of the spotlight being indexed again. While indexing, the performance of the OS X suffers, until the entire process finishes.  Being a user, you don’t need to take any action against the indexing. Since it is a general process of the system, it is better to let it happen. You can check the indexing via a small dot (.) symbol appearing on the magnifying glass, which is situated top-right location. Once the indexing finishes, the OS X performance restores to normal.

3.     Activity Monitor – Activity monitor is the only place that lets you know the reason behind a slow application or Mac. One can easily monitor which application is consuming what amount of spaces & deteriorating the OS X performance.

4.     Console of Mac–Hidden under Application>>Utilities, console is a fine way to check out the system logs which might give user a clear picture of slow Mac performance.

5.     Dosage of additional RAM – Just like popular energy drink Red Bull gives you fly to wing, similarly additional RAM provides Vitamins & Minerals to a slow & crawling Mac. Upon adding RAM to an existing Mac OS, the system can experience a sudden power-boost up. The old Intel machine may not have those sufficient RAMs, unlike the new ones. So, go ahead, enjoy the 10.9 update with increased dosage of RAM. The best size for smooth Mavericks operations varies from 4GB-8GB and so on, depending on the type of work.

6.     SSD for Solid Performance – Again, a SSD can make the Mac OS X to reach to the peak of fast performance. Imagine, a SSD made, as a start-disk of Mac will boot into desktop in few seconds. It is that fast but a costly affair too. Again, adding a SSD is directly proportional to amount of task that is to be done on Mac.

7.     Duplicate files – Coming back to the free tips, finding and deleting duplicate data from OS X can help grab some quick spaces of the HDD. The most duplicated data is commonly found in iPhoto, iTunes library that eats up good amount of space. Eliminating such redundant files will help the OS X to get good amount of free spaces.

8.     Empty Trash & Download Folder – These 2 is the most neglected and underrated folder on OS X Mac. Everything that is sent to trash is made to live there to an indefinite time period. Trash folder is actually to hold the unwanted data for a short period of time. Once, filled, it must be emptied so that it consumes fewer spaces on Mac HDD. It goes for the download folder too. Everything that is downloaded from the web is made to stay in Download folder to an indefinite period of time. When neglected, both these folders consume Gbs of spaces, thus making the performance suffer.

9.     Back up data in clouds – Its not only the HDD, to which data could be saved. With plenty of clouds, user can now migrate their images, music & videos to online storage sites such as iCloud, Dropbox, AmazonCloud Drive and more.

There are plenty of others minor and major tricks that one might opt to boost up Mavericks performance, including running a Mac clean up App.

5 Things to Do When Windows 7 Won’t Loads Properly

Many times we run across problems when our Windows 7 computer fails to boot or load properly. As we can’t get through and resolve the error, immediate working solution is needed to access your computer and so as your data. Though, many problems can be easily addressed by reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows but you may lose crucial information stored on the computer hard drive. 

We've combined here a list of 5 working tricks that may eventually leads to your computer booting failure problem resolved and allows you to access it without facing any problems or continuous restart loop.  Carefully look for steps to troubleshoot the problem, depend on your system and type of error you’re facing. 

P.S. Some of the error requires to modify settings in your computer hardware, so please see if you’re comfortable with playing around the hardware equipment’s. Expert help is recommended if you’re novice computer user or won’t have enough knowledge about hardware parts.

The solution may applies to all the latest Windows OS editions, however we’ve written it exclusively by keeping Windows 7 users in mind. So you may find it little different while applying solutions on your computer. 

#1 Perform System Restore

Sometime, there are few minor problems behind your unbootable computer state and simply restoring the system could fix it. System restore is a powerful system utility comes pre-included with your Windows installation package and helps user in restoring everything back to any specific date. However, it won’t roll back any saved documents, media files, and stored backup copy on the hard drive etc. 

If choosing any specific date doesn’t address the issue, you could select any different date (restore point) and see if it might help you on this. However, if restoring system doesn’t seems the obvious solution for your computer you might need to get deeper and proceed to next solutions covered below.

#2. Fix hardware related problems

The internal hardware lying on your CPU could be the primary suspect in most of the booting failure cases. If running some basic troubleshooting steps didn’t address the problem, this is the second place where you need to look carefully and make sure that the problem is not related to hardware. Based on the facts, below are the common error you may have faced already. You’ll get the subsequent solution that you can apply to resolve mentioned errors. 

Computer starts but no light on the monitor (memory related errors)

If you press the power button on your computer and everything seems running quite well except there is no display at the monitor. Moreover, replacing the display device yields the same result. If that’s the case, your computer might be suffering from some serious memory errors caused by faulty or outdated RAM (Random-access-memory). 

Latest Windows OS have capability to automatically detect problems related to computer memory and provides relevant solution to fix it immediately like Memory Diagnostic tool. You may choose to run this utility immediately by restarting your computer or choose to run it at any later date. Microsoft has a detailed tutorial page on to find and fix memory related problems on your computer. 

Windows Freezes, Hangs or Crashes During Boot (Hard Disk Error)

This error could happen because of installing faulty or suspicious software on your PC, but hard disks remains the primary suspect in most of the freezing or hangs cases. Failing or dying hard drive may give freezes or hangs at the startup and prevent you from accessing Windows normally.  There is a formal method to check your hard disk for errors and find ways relevant solutions to fix it.

In worst cases, you’ll need to replace the existing hard drive in order to get your system in working state. Though, complies to lose all your valuable data. You can try some professional Windows partition recovery program which offers very easy ways to recover data from inaccessible Windows. 

Blue Screen of Death or Continuous Startup Failure Loop (Device and Driver Errors)

Unsigned or outdated drivers for any newly installed hardware equipment’s may give BSOD errors which may occurs while logging in screen. It may also cause the system to fail while booting into Windows and follows the same in loop. 

You can either choose to uninstall such hardware or update all your system drivers to its latest. 

#3. Software Related problems

Avoid installing programs from unauthorized vendors or which has originated from any unknown sources. Such programs might provide heavy damages to your system and leaves it in inaccessible state. 

Moreover, try installing programs written exclusively for the OS edition you’re using. Old version may have compatibility issue with your current copy of Windows and is heavily responsible for damaging registries. 

#4. Windows Starts but Running too slow or starts abruptly

Sometime, due to corrupted or damaged file system and registries which prevents Windows from running smoothly. If you’re so lucky, you might able to logon to Windows but what if screen stays there for a very long time or restarts automatically. 

Windows provides powerful utility to solve such issues, even without reinstalling Windows or manually applying any registry tweaks. Startup repair provides powerful options to fix missing or damaged system files, solves memory errors or recover system from unbootable state. You can access it from the System recovery options by pressing F8 after starting the system. 

Startup repair will automatically find and fix problems on your Windows 7 computer without asking for any information. If it fails or won’t come up with any errors, you may need to run it again or run it twice as sometimes, it’s just miss errors which it won’t recognizes. 

If startup repair didn’t seems helpful, Try running your computer in Safe Mode by using Advanced Startup Options menu. It’ll start your system using minimum set of drivers and applications so you might have any idea about the conflicting programs or the devices drivers. 

Clean boot has been already available for selective startup by disabling certain programs so you can find the conflicting applications and uninstall it immediately to make your system working again. 

#5. Interrupted power supply or damaged cables

Sometime, performing basic tests could solve most of the issues at the very beginning. Just check and make sure that all the power cables were connected properly and performing their tasks. You’ll also need to check and make sure that PSU has been providing the needed power supply and in controlled manner. In case you’re using Laptop, removes the secondary power source which is the laptop battery and try connecting it directly to the power source. 

Windows 8 is Set to Overhaul - Windows 9 Codenamed ‘Threshold’ Releasing Next Year

After the successful release of Windows 8 and handful upgrades to Windows 8.1, this time Microsoft has reportedly planning something big to announce at Build 2014 Developer conference. As per the news report, it’ll be the release of Windows 9 codenamed “Threshold”, somewhere in April, 2015. The Microsoft very next OS after Windows 8.1 update 1 which will release this year in April.

With not so expected success of Windows 8, Microsoft still managed to sell over 90 Millions of license keys worldwide and raises their net profit for up to 13.5 % as compare to their previous quarter. This clearly indicates that users are interested in Microsoft upgrades and releases even if they weren't fully comfortable with it. 

What will be possibly included?

Microsoft vision is to release the advanced computer operating system with high end tiles and Metro 2.0 introduction which might lower the criticisms that Microsoft has faced after releasing the most recent operating system i.e. Windows 8. Rumors around the tech world were also loud about the addition of start button will be a big hit for company and might turns rumors into appraises.  

Besides this, there are number of changes that might rolled out before the final release of Window 9. These changes will completely overhaul Window 8 and leaves no traces of their previous pitfalls. The company is in no mood to sacrifices with anymore criticism whatsoever.

What we actually thinks about this release

According to a news report, Microsoft will release three pre-release versions of Windows 9 for users and developer to test. However, it’s still unclear that how many versions will be actually available for users to explore when Windows 9 is going under development. 

Build 2014 developer conference this year in April might bring some exciting changes and noticeable improvements on which, the company success lies. The company is not comfortable with announcing any updates till now but have high chances of revealing its vision in Build conference. 

5 things that irritate a Mac user. Solutions Included!!

1. Applications during Startup:

The moment we press the power button of the Mac CPU, it begins to load the OS X from the boot volume to takes us to the desktop of the system. A desktop holds our icons, hard drives, dock and other menu’s, which are helpful to operate the computer & perform our task. In general, the journey to the desktop from the boot goes smoothly until few applications turn to show up on the desktop. Now, these apps shouldn’t show up until & unless a user double-clicks them to launch. However, these apps on there own starts to get launched until they are closed individually. At times, this becomes so irritating that user first have to closed multiple applications in order to perform his/her tasks. Take my example: Reaching office just on time and marking the attendance on the employee portal gets halted as the Mac is busy launching & terminating the apps that show on start-up. This process also halts the launch of the browser, which is needed as a primary application to get my attendance marked. 

Solution: - If there is a problem with the Mac applications then solution lies within the OS X itself.  Follow below steps to resolve:

• From Dock, click System Preferences
• Click Users & Group
• Select Admin account.  Switch to Login-Items tab
• Evaluate the apps that are listed on the Login-Item window.

Make selection of wanted & unwanted apps to keep during login of the Mac machine. It will be good if the Login-Item tray is kept empty with no such application added to be launched on start-up. Click (+) button to include one or multiple apps or click (-) button to exclude one or more programs. Exit the tab.

Another round of taking measures to halt the applications during start-up would be the apps built-in options to stop them from opening. For example, the Office for Mac 2011 has an option available for Excel, Office and PowerPoint, which read – Don’t ask next time.  Once it is checked, the tray of this program won’t bother.

2. Keyboard Shortcuts:

Shortcuts are meant to perform the task in a quick manner. Some application residing in inner folder can be launched with the help of keyboard combination. The keyboard shortcuts do exactly what a human hand and the mouse would do, minimising the navigation of mouse. It is also good to know basic keyboard shortcuts of a system to expertise on the machine you operate.  

Keyboard shortcuts are much of a topic of search for new users. Even an avid PC user becomes a novice once a Mac OS X is handled over to him.  

Solution: The best way to expertise in shortcuts is to read as much possible from the relevant websites. Eg: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343 holds all the answer to the shortcut queries.

Sip a cup of coffee and check out equivalent keyboard shortcut for both PC and Mac 

3. Helpless in swapping between similar applications:

Consider how helpless you would be if you were working on two Excel files, copying data from one Excel sheets and pasting it to another. It is obvious you would go for Apple + Tab key to swap between two excel sheets. This is how you to on a Windows machine. But to disappoint you, it won’t work that way on an OS X Mac. CMD + Tab will swap between separate applications but not amongst similar.

The above image is a screenshot of CMD + Tab which is navigating through different applications and not similar ones.

Solution: The keyboard command to swap amongst similar applications is as simple as anything. Just use Apple + ~ key to operate between 2 excel or any other similar program. I found it much difficult to do the task of copy & paste until found the useful command.

Also note that CMD + ~ won’t do anything if no multiple applications are opened. (CMD & Apple Key are the same)

4. Magnifying Dock:

Though it looks good when you hover the mouse on the dock and view the icons get beautifully magnified, sometimes they annoy.  It may happen at times, the mouse cursor gets unintentionally hover towards the dock and clicks an application to get launch, causing a slight interruption.  Also to bring this to notice, some DMGs when extracted or installed occupies the lower part of the desktop window & when mouse is bring towards them, the dock icons begins to magnify.

Solution: Go to Apple Logo, which is situated to the top most left position of every Mac OS X. Bring down it’s inner option by the drop down click & then go to 

DOCK<click TURN MAGNIFICATION OFF, this also help saving some of the OS X spaces.

5. No page source view in Safari browser!!!

Is Safari a perfect browser? Undoubtedly, a good browser that comes built-in with Apple’s OS & iOS devices. Still Safari is not the best browser to depend for professional work. Consider for a web designer who constantly looks for the page source view of the websites has to do some search in order to look into the matter. On Chrome & Firefox, the page source can be bring to front by right-click<View Page Source.

By default, on Safari it is not available and requires a minor setting to be upgraded to do so. 

Solution: Go to Safari<Preferences<Advanced and tick the option that is “Show Develop menu in menu bar”. Now, Safari is loaded with the View page Source menu with a right-click of a mouse.

iCloud, Dropbox, Skydrive and Google Drive for Mac OS X. All Free

Computer operations started from floppy disk devices, moved on to optical media and further went to high capacity storage device in the form of HDD, SDD, USB and memory cards. All these devices helped a computer user (Mac) to store their surplus data through safe manners. But with the constant creation of new data every day, a need arrived to further store the data on different channels, without using any form of devices.

As World Wide Web expanded to new heights, many third party entities offered surplus amount of free spaces on their servers. These servers included huge machines dedicated to store & preserve data on them. Not only storage of data but ability to sync user’s data through Desktop computers, Laptop, Mobile Phones and tablets also gave Cloud an upper hand over any other medium of data storage. It also almost excluded the chance of loss of data stored upon physical hard drives.

Before iCloud came on Mac OS X, Apple made sure to offer data storing clouds though MobileMe and .Mac services. Though, these services hardly made any impact on the users, and further led the Apple to Research & Develop much more sophisticated cloud service.

iCloud – iCloud can be launched from System Preferences and an Apple ID which is used as login credentials. It offers superb 5GB of free space to store Mac OS X data from built-in Applications.

Once you create an account on iCloud, you see what applications you can choose to back up on cloud. For Example, click on Check box to select the Mail, Contacts, Notes, Calendar, Safari (bookmarks), Photo Streams and Document Data to sync alongside with the OS X Mac.

You can also open www.icloud.com and enter your account to manage the applications.

iCloud has functionality to sync data on an OS X and to be retrieved on iOS, vice-versa.

Dropbox – Talking off free cloud services and Dropbox rank above all in terms of usage and simplicity. The 30 MB set-up file can be quickly downloaded from the site https://www.dropbox.com/downloading.

To Set-up Dropbox on Mac OS X –

• Install the file in Application folder & double click to launch. 
• Insert essential credentials to set-up Dropbox account.

• Agree to terms and click Continue. Select 2GB (Free) account to store your future files on    Dropbox. Now click series of Continues to finalize the process. 

• It will now ask to set-up Dropbox folder on OS X, which would help sync, the files between the  Machine & Cloud itself.
• Once installed, the Dropbox folder can be located in the Finder menu. Any files or folder pasted in this folder will sync to the cloud.
• Though, its free and convenient to use, it only allows access to store 2GB of data online. 

Amazon Cloud Drive – Yes, its our very own favorite online store that delivers all shopping items safely to our homes. And now, it has taken a stand to store your precious data online. The Amazon Cloud can be accessed via link https://www.amazon.com/clouddrivs, and if you have an account on Amazon then use its credential to login. Similar to Dropbox, once you are login, you can upload documents, images & files to store. Unlike the Dropbox, it has 5GB of free spaces to offer.

Compared to Dropbox, Amazon Cloude Serivce pricing for storage is much cheaper. For 100 GB both Dropbox and Amazong offer $120 (9.99/Month) and $50 each.

Microsoft SkyDrive – Microsoft SkyDrive offers mammoth 7GB of storage spaces to save files for Mac OS X.  Like iCloud is to Apple, similarly SkyDrive is to Microsoft. SkyDrive management application for OS X, allows you to access and organize the files on the drive directly from the Finder.

Google Drive – Click Download Google Drive button to download 23.5 MB DMG file into your Mac download folder.

The set up is as similar as other cloud storage services. It integrates a folder on Mac OS X and starts syncing files to upload on the Google Drive. You can access the Google Drive by one of your GMAIL id. 15GB of storage cloud space is waiting for you to use it.

With Google Drive, one can easily create documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Calculating the amount of GB you own for free – Dropbox (2) + iCloud (5) + Amazon Cloud Service (5) + Microsoft SKyDrive (7) + Google Skydrive (15) = 34 GB. Go grab it for your Mac OS X.

Illusion Cracking Differences Between Macs And PCs.

The Conflict between Mac and PC users has been going on for years. Some Mac users can’t understand PC users and vice-verse. Windows users allegation calls that Macs aren't suitable computers because they’re not practical and Mac users claim that PCs are insufficient and slow. So can we credit these myths?

Are Macs not worth their price?

OR

Are Windows PCs really that frightful?

Here, we will compare both companies in a very unbiased style!

Initially, We will discuss which company started early, then the reason of the more successful existence. We also discuss which company is more relevant today and who are the majority users of both PC and Mac. We will also discuss important features and technical specifications in both; Macs and PCs.

According to the sources Apple Macintosh introduced the prior computer system to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI) in January 1984. And Microsoft introduced Microsoft Windows in November 1985, in reply to the rapidly growing interest in the GUIs.

Mac Systems are widely known for their interactive graphical user interface from earlier times. The Apple Macintosh continued to sell successfully till the mid of 1980's, though its sales got reduced in 90's . In 2009, Microsoft quickly took over World's PC market by retiring the Mac OS.

Who Was More Successful & Why?

It’s not a myth, Microsoft dominates the world’s operating systems market. The reason for this domination is simple, Microsoft designed it’s operating systems to be compatible with various hardware created by a wide range of computer companies such as Dell, IBM, HP, and Sony, etc.

On the other hand, Apple designed its software for close integration of computer hardware and software, which means it’s not compatible with other computer hardware. An Apple OS will always run on the Apple hardware only.

Whereas, Microsoft sold it's operating system to various computer companies. Microsoft is more prominent than any other operating systems in the market. In the mean while, Apple's operating system rigorously fit perfectly in their own hardware only .

Many years ago most of the business computing applications were standardized on Windows PCs.

If we discuss about the compatibility

While the main operating system for Apple is OS X, and PCs is Microsoft Windows, only Macs have the proficiency to run both. Naturally, both systems continue to develop faster and more powerful versions of these operating systems that are increasingly user-friendly and more compatible with handheld devices.

And though the PC tends to rule the workplace, many software programs for professional use–including Microsoft Office and the Adobe Creative Suite–have versions for both operating systems. PC is very popular for its application when it comes to leisure time apps.

When it comes to reliability, most of the PC users know that their devices are vulnerable to malware and viruses. Although Mac users are much safer from these virus attacks, but still both PC and Mac users must install an up to date antivirus software to protect their devices from malicious attacks.

If we discuss about the cost of both PCs and Macs, then their it is very clear that PCs dominated the budget friendly market. As Macs are more expensive then PCs, for many user cost is an issue, as users wants to get most from their money. If we talk about budget, then PC wins over Mac.

Easy Availability - Mac or PC.

Macs are privileged to Apple, which means that its price, features are same for the most of the part, so it hardly matters from where you shop. This restraint Mac availability now, even its easier to buy Macs and its accessories from new Apple stores. Whereas any upgrades or reair can only be done by an authorized Apple support center.

On the other hand, PCs are available from a wide range of retailers and manufacturers. This means a wider price range for all budgets, repair, and upgrades, it makes upgrades easier for home users.

After discussing about so many features, facts about Macs and PC, In the end the choice is yours as per your personal preferences If we look upon the availability and price then PC tends to be the winner. While Mac is the exclusive choice for the noble anti-Microsoft computer user.

I have given you a little overview on Apple and Microsoft’s, and an impression of who was more successful and why, Now, it is up to you to decide which company serve you best with your specific needs.

Fix Startup Repair Loop and Solve Windows 7 Loading Problem without Reinstalling

Ever wondered why your Windows 7 PC not able to load properly and inbuilt utilities like Startup Repair won’t able to fix this issue? Moreover, startup repair keeps coming again and again but didn’t able to repair problems of your computer. If you’re unlucky, other troubleshooting options like ‘System Restore’, ‘safe mode’ and similar to fix unbootable Windows system will not work either.  

Previously, Startup repair is used to heal problems with your computer by repairing or replacing important system files, fixing registries and removing problems with third party installed software. However, in some cases startup repair seems useless as it might not able to detect the exact cause behind the problem or the startup repair itself facing difficulties with system registries or the conflicting windows system files.  

In such cases, you've got only one option to make your Windows system working again. That is, by reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows which involves risk of losing everything stored on your computer along with all the installed applications being removed completely. 

What causes ‘Startup Repair’ to Loop?

There might be bunch of reasons that causes startup repair to loop infinitely. However, we’ll group here only few popular reasons of why this is happening with your computer along with subsequent steps to fix it. The first and foremost popular reasons behinds this is due to bad registries which prevents startup repair to perform actions effectively and thus causes it to loop forever.  

Some other possible reasons could be malicious programs installed on your computer that you haven’t noticed yet. It may have high vulnerabilities of damaging system files and other registry settings which prevents Windows to load properly and prevents other system options to troubleshoot Windows. 

In both the cases, you can easily get rid of all the problems and roll back your old Windows in working state by performing clean installation of Windows. Again, doing this will compromise you to lose everything stored digitally with no traces of deleted files and folders, which makes data recovery impossible on your computer even by using most powerful data recovery applications. 

Little about ‘System Recover Options’ before getting in

It’s a Windows 7 inbuilt utility, mostly comes preinstalled with your copy of Windows 7 and if not, you might have Windows 7 installation disc provided from your manufacturer. As of now, we’re supposing that you try to access ‘System Recovery options’ using inbuilt recovery options provided from manufacturer. 

1. Start or Restart your computer
2. Start tapping F8 just after the beep sound or as soon as you get the motherboard screen.
3. 'Advanced Boot Options’ screen will appear, choose ‘Repair your computer’ and hit enter.
   
   
4. Choose your preferred language and click ‘Next’ to proceed.
   
   
   
5. You’ll be asked to enter your username and password, after typing the same into text box click ‘Next’.  If you won’t set any password for current user previously, leave the password field blank.
   
   

If you’re trying to access this menu using Windows 7 Installation Disc, the steps will be little different. Insert installation disc on your CD DVD drive and press any button when asked to press any key to boot from CD or DVD…

Again choose language and click ‘Next’. On the ‘Install Windows’ screen, ‘Repair your computer’ option will be listed at the left bottom corner. Choose which copy of Windows you want to repair, applicable to multi boot environment. Click ‘Next’ to begin repairing your computer. 

‘System Recovery options’ windows mainly constitutes six options:

• Startup Repair
• System Restore
• System Image Recovery
• Windows Memory Diagnostic
• Command Prompt

As of now, we restrict the information to ‘Startup Repair’ only. However, you can use further system recovery options as per your knowledge and capability to perform actions carefully.

How to fix bad registries and startup repair loop problem?

Before diving in, make sure that you’ve enough knowledge and capable to follow all the instructions carefully as any wrong attempt might leads to further damages of your computer. Those changes can’t be rollback and you might forcefully need to reinstall Windows and permanently lose all your important documents, pictures, videos etc. 

Once you’re at the ‘System Recovery Options’ window as described earlier, start following steps mentioned below:

1. Let’s give one more try to repair your computer to verify that the problem really exists. Click on ‘Startup Repair’ from the same window and it’ll start searching for problems. Wait for few minutes till action is being performed. 

2. As startup repair couldn’t able to fix startup problems, you should see the message ‘Windows cannot repair this computer automatically’.

3. Click on ‘View advanced options for system recovery and support’, which opens again the same ‘System recovery options’ window.

4. This time, instead of clicking on startup repair you’ll need to click on ‘Command Prompt’ as we’re trying to fix problems manually. Note: Basic command operating skills is required. So if you’re feeling uncomfortable, take help from your friends to do this for you. 

5. On the command prompt window, you’ll see the default drive of internal ram disk mainly used by system repair, perhaps labeled with X:\

6. Now you need to navigate to system drive, drive where your system is setup. Most probably, It’ll labeled with ‘C:\’. Don’t worry if you don’t know exactly the system drive as we’ll check and verify that we’re on the track. Just navigate to the C drive and type DIR and hit enter. You’ll see the common folders, only found in the system drive such as Program Files, Users and Windows. 

7. After confirming the system drive (which is C, we’re presuming), type CD \Windows\System32\Config and press enter. This will let us enter into the Config folder located in the system drive. 

8. Further, we need to explore its subfolder. Again, type DIR to check the subfolders containing into Config folder. It’ll contain folders like RegBack, DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SYSTEM, SOFTWARE. 

9. Type MD newbackup and hit enter. It’ll create a new backup folder entitled newbackup in case, this whole process didn’t yield any positive result. 

10. Type Copy *.* newbackup and press enter to copy the created backup folder. In case, if you’re asked to overwrite existing file, type Ato allow all backup files to be overwritten. 

11. We’ll check and see if we can use windows automatic backup to fix/restore damaged registries. To do this, type CD RegBack from the config folder location to go to RegBack Folder.

12. Type DIR to further explore all the existing subfolder und RegBack folder. Please check and make sure that all the subfolders should be of defined size as mentioned below or at least very close to.  

* The DEFAULT, SAM and SECURITY file should be around 262,000 bytes in size

* SOFTWARE files should be around 26,000,000 bytes in size

* SYSTEM files should be around 9,900,000 bytes in size

Please note that all the file size mentioned here were in approximate figure only and may vary, depending on your system. If any of the file sizes were completely different or can say 0 bytes in size, you should stop following steps immediately and seek for an alternative method.

13. Once assured the files listed in RegBack folder is of defined sizes, then proceed to the next step.

14. Type Copy *.* and press enter to copy all the RegBack subfolders or files into config folder. Again, if prompted to overwrite existing files, press A and hit enter. 

15. Type Exit and hit enter to close the command prompt window. Restart your computer and most probably, you may able to access your Windows system as before. 

15 things you must do when you have a Mac OS X

So a day might arrive in your life when you switch from a PC to Mac OS X.  Even an avid PC user will stumble in every step while operating the OS X. Though you will love the way OS X is carved for the user but will sure fume when simplest of thing will tend to confuse you. 

I have been using Mac Mini from last many months and now think I have mastered few things. So, I am compiling the list of 15 essential things, which you can set up on your OS X. 

• Install Office for Mac - PC gets an advantage of having Microsoft Office at time of installation, as it’s a basic need for the machine. Unfortunately, the same is not found on the OS X when you bring it home. Installing Office on Mac OS X may or may not be a choice for the user. But if it’s a definitive need for you then you must buy Office for Mac 2011 (latest) suite for the OS X. The Office powered for Mac is same as that of PC. Once you get Office on Mac and learn to operate in Mac environment, you will hardly remind of the Windows. Office for Mac constitutes Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook.

•  Set Time Machine – If you are installing the OS on your own then don’t forget to partition at least 50-60 GB of space for Time Machine backup. For those who are new to Mac, Time Machine is a built-in features for Intel Macs that takes incremental backups of your volumes. So, if in the starting you can create a distinct space for the time machine, then you can set the time machine to back up volumes of your computer. Or you can also allow a separate external hard drive to be as your time machine capsule. Do either ways to back up Mac machine. 

The time machine is a life-saving utility that offers edge to the Mac user to set prior backups and enjoy no loss at time of data disaster or system failure.

• Using Disk Utility – Disk utility is the central function of the Mac OS X where you can perform series of activities to monitor the health of the hard drive. Disk Utility can be reached out by following path Finder<Application<Utilities<Disk utility. The icon of the disk utility is represented by a hard drive with stethoscope, clearly representing it’s functions.

What quickly can you check with Disk utility?

• The hard drive information and its SMART status.
• Individual volumes of the machines & their information
• User can test hard drive & volumes for any malfunctions.
• The application permissions on Mac can be verified and repaired by Disk utility alone.
• Disk Utility can erase a partition and create a new one.
• It can clone on of the partition or entire drive to another destination.
• Burn a disc, create an image and unmounts a partition.

Apart from being very useful to the Mac, the Disk Utility doesn’t provide any support for hard drive defragmentation or data recovery. For these two operations, a user has to depend upon 3rd party software.

• Customising the Dock – A dock is where ships are parked for loading & unloading of the cargo. Similarly in Macs, the dock is place where all your essential icons of applications are well parked so that you can make a single click to launch them. See Below:

With Mac you can play some fine game with the Dock’ settings:

1. Firstly, to bring an app to the dock simply drag it’s icon and place in the dock to include that app. To remove an app from the dock, right-click and select Options<Remove from Dock
2. GotoApple Logo < Dock and here you can play with the settings like magnifying the dock icons, hiding the dock and bringing it back when mouse floats towards the dock.

• Force Quit – This feature is situated under Apple Logo < Force Quit and it ends up a stubborn application. Very handy.

• Activity Monitor won’t let you miss Task Manager: -PC users are well aware of Task Manager. I remember, myself looking around for the same on Mac OS X. The equivalent application to the task manager in Mac is Activity Monitor, which is located in Finder<Application<Utilities folder.

What quickly can you check with Activity Monitor?

• Quit bunch of processes that might be running at the background.
• Quickly monitor the CPU, System Memory, Disk Activity & Usage and Network on your Mac OS X.
• Check CPU load
• Verify Process Identifier
• Check Read-in and Write-Outs

• Set-up Apple Mail – Apple Mail is build in client to send/receive mails from Mac OS X to anywhere in the world. All you have to do is configure Apple Mail by providing you account information. Once done it will sync all your mail, contacts from the account and you can start using Apple Mail without wasting a second.

• Trash – Trash is what Recycle Bin is in Windows OS. So to delete a file in the Mac you can both drag and drop it into trash or right-click and select ‘Move to Trash’ option.OH Wait, if you seek to delete a file using keyboard then pressing only the Delete key won’t help you send the file to trash. In actual you have to select the file and press the combination CMD+Delete keys to trash a file. Tricky, it’s Mac after all. It is also simple to Empty Trash in OS X Mac. Either click ‘Empty Trash’ in the trash folder or right click the trash icon and select ‘Empty Trash’. 
• App Store –It won’t be wrong to judge the App Store as one of USP of Apple Inc. It was Apple who brought the concept of digital store to the IT industry, followed by everyone else. The Apple App Store is full of opportunity, where you can check out for latest OS X developments. The App store continuously prompts you to download new updates for smooth up running of OS X Mac. 

• Swap between applications– While you set hands on the Mac keyboard, you will come to know that CMD+ TAB shuffles user amongst open applications. While this is simple to understand, but one might become hot tempered in finding ways to swap between 2 similar open apps. E.g. I want to swap between two excel files but CMD+TAB doesn’t help me doing that. So, I must press CMD + ~ to shuffle between similar apps. 

• Install Dual OS on Mac – Like Windows, you can have two copies of different OS X on Mac machine.A Mac hard drive is large enough to accumulate multiple OS on it. So go ahead and Install another OS X on Mac. On Intel Macs, one can have Lion, Mountain Lion or Mavericks in a pair of two.

• Boot Camp – So, one cannot install OS X on a Window machine as it is a violation of Apple’s EULA. But the reverse of this is 100% possible with OS X built-in feature, which is Boot Camp. All you need is a 2GB of RAM and 20-30 GB of partition kept aside for the Windows OS. You could set a dream computer by having Mountain Lion and Windows 8 on the same Mac machine.

• Screenshots – If your work includes taking lots of screenshots from systems then Mac is just the machine you badly need. A user can capture a screenshot in two ways. Firstly by pressing CMD+SHIFT+3, the entire screen is grabbed and saved on desktop by default. Also, by pressing CMD+SHIFT+4 altogether, a sign appears that allows you to crop the image as per need. 

• Terminal – Terminal is all about finding deep routed features through several commands. It is as same as the Command Prompt from Windows OS. You can unhide system files, change a file format, change the destination of a file etc. and lot of other advance stuff that you can perform with Terminal application.

• iCloud – Last but not the least, you have Apple’s own cloud support to hang your ultra important files in cloud backup. On cloud storage, they remain safe from worldly affairs. You must check iCloud now and grab your free support.

Keep searching new things on Mac and do let us know. See You Until Next Time.