New owner and info gathered

Thanks for the responses gents.

It did take a little while to compile the info but I must admit that I have been trolling this forum for the last couple of months and everytime I've come across a useful bit of info I have saved it to a word doc.

Just happy to continue the contributions that have been made by everyone else.

Will add the suggestions from CD77, kamikaze458 and myang07 to the original post. Thanks for the info.

 

That's what I did too.

 

Thanks to you Sir. Much appreciated your hard work. Well done

Really handy to have all this useful information in one post, a "must have bookmark".

Regards

 

thanks for the compilation.. very useful. I particularly liked rainmeter, never heard of it until now.

 

This thread should really be stickied. it would be a shame to let it fade. It was Extremely helpfull for me when i got started.

 

Can anyone explain how get back yo the home screen after opening one article in Mosaic?

 

Good idea, I second! Thread moderator?

 

Updated to add SSDTweaker from kamikaze458 and Grimspoon

 

The 1st of the 2 links does not seem to work anymore:
Try this link for version 13.2 of Hiren's boot cd:
Download Hiren?s BootCD 13.2 | HBCD Fan & Discussion Platform
All of the included software is freeware, so it's completely kosher!

Notice that in version 13.2 of Hiren's BootCD Acronis has been replaced with DriveImage XML 2.22:

I just tried DriveImageXML and it seems to work just fine. Here's how to use:
1. Follow these instructions to create a bootable USB-drive: http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd-on-usb-disk (you will probably need a CD/DVD-writer to burn the bootcd and later copy files from the drive, that's how I did it)
2. Attach to your EP121 (using an USB hub, because you need to attach more than 2 USB-devices):
- USB keyboard
- USB mouse
(I used a single dongle from my Logitech wireless desktop, which contains a keyboard and mouse)
- the bootable USB drive created at step 1
- an external USB hard drive containing sufficient space for the image.
3. Press Esc on the keyboard to get into the boot menu
4. Select the bootable USB drive as booting device
(Hiren's boot menu loads)
5. From the Hiren's BootCD menu, select "Run mini XP"
(a minimal version of XP starts running)
6. Select from the menu in Windows XP, "DriveImage XML" under "Backup"
7. In DriveImage, follow the steps under Backup (select the EP121's C-drive as source, select the external USB hard drive as target)
8 Creating the image takes about 30 minutes (in my case, depends on different factors)

The format of the image files that DriveImage XML produces are (so the software says) written in XML, which makes it possible to use 3rd party tools to inspect and handle the image file. Quite interesting.

I first tried making an image with Paragon HDD Manager 2008 Suite (WinPE) - software that I purchased in 2008. However, it seemed to have problem with Windows 7, the SDD or some of the other hardware components. So I'm glad to have found the tips in this thread.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I read in another thread that power managemnet of usb root hub linked to touch device should also be tuned off. Since you have more than one usb root hub in device manager, you have to disable them one by one to tell which one is linked to touch device