I usually do not have preview pane activated in Windows Explorer, so I did not notice the Acrobat preview under Windows 7 64bit is broken. Further investigation shows that not only the preview doesn’t work, the thumbnails do not work either. The issue is actually over 2 years old. It happened ever since Microsoft introduced 64bit OS.

pretentiousname.com has documented the problems extensively, they also offer free solutions. It’s surprising that neither Microsoft or Adobe cares to offer patches to fix the problems. The preview problem is only a simple registry fix. The thumbnails problem is harder, you need a software “bridge” to get the thumbnails to work. You can find out the registry fix and the software bridge from the site.

Boot Camp 3.1 Update is available for both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows. This is a must-have update if you use Boot Camp 3.0 on Windows 7. This is from the download page:

This update adds support for Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate), addresses issues with the Apple trackpad, turns off the red digital audio port LED on laptop computers when it is not being used, and supports the Apple wireless keyboard and Apple Magic mouse.

Ever since I installed Boot Camp 3.0 on my MacBook, I have been struggling with the trackpad. I can’t put my palm anywhere near the trackpad when I type, because the cursor would go crazy if I do. This update finally fixes the problem. Here are the links for download.

Boot Camp 3.1 (32 bit)

Boot Camp 3.1 (64 bit)

When I installed a new battery of my digital camera, I input a wrong date into the clock. I did not notice the problem until I found that the date taken of the EXIF is wrong. In search for a way to edit the date back to the correct date, I found a program called FastStone Image Viewer. With the program, you can do a lot more than editing the EXIF date. It is actually a very good program to manage your pictures. However, it is still an external program to download and the steps to edit the date are not very straight forward.

I found an easier way on Windows 7 and you do not need to download any program. It’s also very easy. All you need to use is the Windows Explorer. Here are the steps:

1. Open up Windows Explorer and browse to your picture.
2. Make sure the details pane(the bottom pane) is turned on. If it’s not on, click on Organize ->Layout->Details pane.
3. Select a picture to edit the date. Click on the Date taken date.
   
4. The date is now editable, you can enter a new date. Click on Save to save the changes.
   

Note that you can edit the date for multiple pictures. Just select multiple pictures in the step 3.

A lot of my readers have tried to use the Synaptics driver on their Dell laptops when they found my post about it. However, some Dell laptops do not have touchpads made by Synaptics. They have Alps touchpads. If you are not sure about what kind of touchpad you have, please see this post about identifying the correct model.

When I helped my user to upgrade his Inspiron 1420 to Windows 7, I used the driver for Vista. Here is the link to the download. This driver is for 32bit only. If this does not work for you, you can also try the driver for Windows 7. Here is the link. The second link provides both 32bit and 64bit drivers.

When I installed Windows 7 on a Dell Inspiron 1420, the only drivers shown missing are for the card reader. The Dell support web site doesn’t list Windows 7 drivers under Inspiron 1420, but I found this driver working just fine. Please click on the following link for the download page.

Ricoh Card Reader R5C833 Windows 7 Driver

I have an old HP Color LaserJet 2605dn in my office. When I first set it up in Windows 7, I used the HP Color LaserJet 2605/2605dn/2605dtn PS driver from Microsoft. It worked quite well until I tried to print something in duplex. I spent a lot of time trying to find the duplex option in the printer properties dialog and could not find it.

A post in the HP business forum pointed me to the right direction. To enable duplex printing of Color LaserJet 2605dn, you need to use the HP Universal Print Driver. Just go to HP’s support page at http://www.hp.com/#Support and enter the printer model to download the driver for installation.

There is a hidden feature of Windows 7 called GodMode. Once enabled, you have a folder full of shortcuts to various settings. Here is how to enable it.

1. Right click on the desktop and select New -> Folder.
2. Change the new folder’s name to
   GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

When I worked on my user’s computer for a possible disk problem, I found this event in the event log.

Log Name:      System
Source:        Ntfs
Date:          12/9/2009 12:40:53 PM
Event ID:      55
Task Category: (2)
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:
Description:
The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run
the chkdsk utility on the volume \Device\HarddiskVolume2.

This looks like a potential hardware failure or file system corruption. However, what is the HarddiskVolume2? I looked at the Device Manager, Disk Management and System Information. None of them gives me the volume information. I then tried the partition tool diskpart and got the information I need. To use the tool, follow these steps.

1. Open an elevated command prompt.
2. In the command prompt window, type
diskpart
3. In the diskpart prompt, type
   list volume

Here is a sample output:

C:\Windows\system32>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7600
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer:
DISKPART> list volume
  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------
  Volume 0     D   090809_2201  UDF    DVD-ROM     2081 MB  Healthy
  Volume 1         System Rese  NTFS   Partition    100 MB  Healthy
  Volume 2     C                NTFS   Partition    297 GB  Healthy
  Volume 3     E   FreeAgent D  NTFS   Partition    465 GB  Healthy
DISKPART> quit

From the output, we can clearly identify the Volume 2 is the C drive.

I have heard that you can use a USB drive to install Windows 7 for a while, but I have not tried it myself. I got a chance to do it yesterday, and I was surprised how easy it is. There are several guides when you google it. The one I used to prepare my external USB drive is actually a Vista installation guide.

There is no additional software to download. What you use is the built-in partition tool for Windows: DISKPART. It’s advised that you prepare the USB drive on Vista or Windows 7, because the command LIST DISK doesn’t show USB disks on Windows XP.  Once you use DISKPART to make the USB drive bootable, copy everything from the Windows 7 installation DVD to the USB drive and that’s it. I used the USB drive on a Dimension 3100 and the installation took less than 20 minutes. That’s quite impressive for an old machine.

When Microsoft released Windows 7, the stocks gadget was left out. One of our readers has pointed out this great gadget that works under Windows 7. This is adapted from the original stocks gadget for Vista. Here is the link to the download page.

Note that the quotes are delayed by 20 minutes. If you are looking for real-time quotes, try Stocks 3 by following this link.