Coming To You From A Windows 7 PC

Trish is in Melbourne as I type. I dropped her at the airport Wednesday morning and I have already heard from her a couple of times. Once was to say she had arrived safely, the other was to say the battery in the old car had required replacement.

My PC is heading towards 3.5 years old now and beginning to cause some minor problems. It shuts down beautifully but it won't 'power off'. This isn't a huge problem because the wall power switch right beside it. The computer shuts down and the monitor says it isn't getting a signal but the front PC light stays on and you can hear the fan whirring inside. I jumped on to my favorite Computer forum and put my problem online for people to read and offer suggestions. One suggestion was to re install Windows again but this time don't use Vista, try Windows 7 instead.

I had downloaded a top version of Windows 7 but the secret was how to get it 'activated' so it becomes a 'real' version. There is a little program available for download which fools Windows 7 into believing it is activated! I installed Windows 7 and then installed the little program which 'activates' it.

Bingo, it works as the photo here shows. Right down in the bottom left hand corner is the "Windows is activated" statement! Click on the picture for a larger view, then hit "back" to return to this page.

So much of the rest of Wednesday and much of this morning has been spent setting my computer up again.

But will it power off after shutting it down and installing Windows 7? The answer is NO! It still stays 'turned on' and needs switching off at the wall. I have got it to successfully turn off the last 3 times by following a tip from a guy on the forum I spoke about above. The PC can do this, it can turn off perfectly for a day or so then spend the next few days not powering off at all.

Of course it has all been great fun getting the computer all up and running again! My PC needs a good clean out every 12 months so this reformat has been a job worth doing. Windows 7 is so much quicker to start up as well as shutdown. All the features work again so I am quite pleased with myself.

Much cooler and showery here the last couple of days, so much that I even had the doona over me last night. Days are mid 20's or so, even the pool is now down to about 25 degrees. I got 10k's of my bike ride in this morning till it again began to drizzle.

Now back to 'cruising' the internet!