On the appearing window, select the protocol you want to use and provide the server’s and your account’s data – if you choose to remember the password you enter, you won’t need to re-enter it later; it will be stored in your password manager if you have installed any (seahorse is installed by default on Ubuntu and Mint). This is also where you can delete them!

Name: Enter the name of the entry that will be shown in the previous menu.
Command: Enter the terminal command that launches the program you want to start – to see if you got the correct one, test it in a terminal (e.g. firefox, nautilus). If you want to start a program with root privileges, append the gksu string before the program’s name (e.g. gksu nautilus).
Comment: Enter the comment that will be shown below the name in the previous menu.

Click on Add afterwards and close the startup applications window. Reboot your machine to test the configuration.

To not waste tons of paper and being able to dynamically re-arrange and rename items, it is always good to have a digital solution for such things – in this case, there is Freemind, a freeware for creating simple mindmaps, downloadable here.

At least Java version 1.4 is needed to run Freemind.

You can drag the children anywhere you want and reorder everything after creating it. Every item can be assigned multiple icons, attributes and differently formatted path and/or bubble designs.

One problem you might have though is that the slide animation is quite slow and there is no registry key for speeding things up. One thing you can do however is to switch off the animation completely so that the menu hides and reappears instantly. To do so,

- go to Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced (tab) > Performance Settings… > Visual Effects (tab)
- Uncheck Fade or slide menus into view
- Apply changes

That works really good in most cases but in working environments or during LAN parties etc. you will most likely need a static local IP so you don’t conflict with other machines in the network and your IP stays the same even after restarting the router or unplugging the system. To configure a static local IP, first find out what network data you currently use.

To do that, open the start menu and type cmd. In the command line interface, enter

ipconfig

You will be shown your current IP, the subnet mask and the gateway:

Leave the command line window open since you will need those data if you don’t know them by heart.
Next, open the Control Panel. Click View network status and tasks:

You will be shown your active network here. Click on the on you are currently using:

On the window that appears, click on Properties:

Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click Properties again:

This is the place where you configure your IP properties. Select Use the following IP address and enter the free IP that you want to use (that can be the address you were already using since you now know that it isn’t used by any other machine in the network). Enter the subnet mask and the gateway you were shown in the command line:

By not obtaining the IP address automatically you also are deprived of the option to obtain the DNS servers automatically. You now have to enter a primary and secondary DNS Server of your choice – I use Google’s servers here (DNS servers are there to kind of translate domains like example.com into IP addresses, so you are displayed the correct websites upon entering their domain in a web browser – there are public DNS servers offered like the ones I use above; feel free to take the same of look for others).

Since Windows 8, the scale ranges up to 9.9, changing your old score on the same system. This is why your computer may score worse with a Windows 8 system than with your old Windows 7 system. My score went from 4.6 to 4.2 from Windows 7 Enterprise to Windows 8 CP with the same hardware installed:

Windows 7 Enterprise:

Windows 8 Consumer Preview

But if you have the latest version of Virtualbox installed there is something you can do about that – experimental 3D support is now available with the help of a guest addition. To install it, open your virtual Windows 7 box and select Device > Install Guest Additions… to start:

Wait a second for the next window to pop up and click Run VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe:

Follow the setup until you can choose what additions to install. Select Direct 3D support (experimental). As it says, it is experimental so you shouldn’t use it on production systems – make sure to have backups made of everything important:

When the warning appears, don’t click on Yes blindly – that will make you cancel the installation. Read instead and click on No:

Follow the last steps of the installer and restart your machine to find Aero working. It may lag at times but that is what you would expect in a virtual machine with limited resources:

Apart from installing EasyBCD and other tools on your Windows partition to set things right, you can also just reinstall the lost GRUB boot manager with the help of a live CD (I used Ubuntu 11.10 for that). Insert the CD and boot from it. Open a terminal. If you have no idea what the name of your partitions is, use

fdisk -l

to get an overview. My output looks like this:

christian-main christian # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000587d5
.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 629147647 314573792+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 * 629147648 775948287 73400320 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 775948288 968380415 96216064 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 968382196 976768064 4192934+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 968382198 976768064 4192933+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
christian-main christian #

My first partition, /dev/sda1, has Linux installed and is the partition I want to have GRUB on – what I need is its identifier, sda1. Replace every following instance of that identifier with the one of your partition’s identifier. Become root by typing

sudo -i

Afterwards mount your partition and install grub (replace sda1):

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
grub-install –root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda

If there is no grub.cfg in /boot/grub, create one using

mount –bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount –bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount –bind /sys /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt update-grub
umount /mnt/sys
umount /mnt/dev
umount /mnt/proc

Afterwards you can restart your system, remove the Live CD and boot into GRUB.

- To start, edit the picture you want to use as logo. It has to be 120×120 pixel large and a bitmap file (.bmp, color range is up to you).
- Save the file into any directory now, I will choose C:\Windows\System32 for that but it can be any other. Name it oemlogo.bmp
- Open the registry by entering regedit into a Run… prompt. On the left column, navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OEMInformation key.
- On the right column, if there is no value called Logo, create it by right-clicking the empty space and choosing New > String Value.
- Assign the full path of the picture to the Logo value (C:\Windows\System32\oemlogo.bmp).
- Close the registry and open the system properties window to view your beautiful new logo:

- open the Control Panel and enter System and Security.
- In the topmost Action Center section, select Troubleshoot common computer problems.
- In the last menu entry, System and Security, select Improve power usage.

By clicking on Advanced, all problems found will automatically be corrected. You start the process by clicking on Next – if there have been problems they will be displayed along with a notice if they have been corrected or not. Click on Detailed information to view all the points that the troubleshooter has messed with or not: