Setup

There are countless articles on how to install Windows 10 from a USB flash drive. Most of them, however, fail to mention a common problem: the USB flash drive does not show up in the BIOS’ list of boot devices. Here is a simple solution that often works.

Installing Office 2019 as a Microsoft MPN silver or gold partner is a little more complicated than it used to be. Partner Center has keys but does not directly offer installation media to download. This article lists the necessary steps to get Office 2019 on your machine(s) without assigning Office 365 licenses.

This is a summary of my experience with Active Setup combined with what I could find on the internet. The information applies to older and current versions of Windows, up to and including Windows 7, Windows 10, Server 2016, Server 2019.

Installing a software that includes a driver may leave your system in an inconsistent state. If the install fails, parts may remain on the system. And if the remaining part is a driver, I get nervous - drivers are not the kind of stuff I want to have lingering around my system’s memory. Here is a way of identifying when a driver actually got installed.

In the first article of this mini-series I described how I prepared my work laptop for the installation of Windows 7 x64 beta 1 into a virtual hard disk (VHD) file. This post covers the installation itself.

After reading a lot about the speed and stability of Windows 7 (beta 1), I decided it was time for me not only to use it for real work, but also to move from 32-bit Windows to a 64-bit installation. This mini-series serves as a documentation of the steps I took and the lessons I learned.