Items filtered by date: December 2014

Back linking 101

Link building is the single most important element to obtaining high rankings in all of the major search engines. It is vital that continual efforts be made and long-term plans be laid out to insure a web sites continued success in organic search results, and reduced costs in paid placement (PPC).
Google created the most successful information retrieval device of all time based on sending spiders to follow each and every link they can find on each and every web document they come across. Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and all the other search databases have acquired the vast amounts of information they contain in similar fashion. Links play important roles in the ranking formulas of all search engines, especially Google, by providing numerous pieces of data for their algorithms to chew through.
The best links a web site can have are natural, one-way inbound links. These are links that are posted by other web sites, forums or blogs. These show a natural interest in something the linked web site offers such as valuable information, news, a tool or some other resource.
The more one-way links a web site has, the more reliable the search engine algorithms consider it to be. Google has gone as far as to rank a web site in terms of PR, or page rank. This is a sliding scale of 0-10. The more important Google considers a web site, the higher the PR that it awards it. (PR also includes visitors as well).

Place your pointer over this in the toolbar and it will show PageRank 4/10

You can check the number of back links to a web site in many different ways. The Firefox browser has an installable extension that allows users to “right-click” and scan down to “back links” to see the number of back links a site has. There are several toolbars that you can install (Google, Yahoo, etc.) that allow you to see this, and there are various web sites that offer tools to do this.

(Google is unique in its approach to back links as it will only show a percentage of the actual back links, whilst Yahoo and MSN show all. Google also will delay showing back links in order to attempt to weed out purchased back links or schemes to affectively fool the algorithms into awarding a higher PR, and thus a higher position in the SERP’s – Search Engine Ranking Positions.)

These will check the number of back links that a page has: http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker
http://www.searchenginegenie.com/backlink-checker.html

This will check the number of back links that the top 10 sites have based on your selected keyword (this will help you find relevant sites);
http://www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/whoischeck-bykeys.pl

Types of Link Strategies
Natural Link Building – Adding quality content or something that benefits the end user that they would want to link to
One-Way Linking (Purchase) – Buying one-way inbound links to your web site
Reciprocal Linking – Exchanging links with another web site
Link Farms – Companies like linkmarket.net (but not directories, FFA’s, or obvious abusers of linking)
Three-Way Linking – Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, and Site C links to site A (www.three-way-links.com/)
Forums and Blogs – Links from forums an blogs
News Articles (PR Web) – Typically created by web site owners to promote their site. These are effective after 2-4 weeks when Google has crawled them and indexed them within their search results. Never put more than 1 link to any one page per article.
One of the tools mentioned above, linkmarket.net is a good tool, that has spawned many other linking tools that do similar things.
Here’s how it works; You search through their categories for relevant categories. Once you drill it down to the category and click on it, a list of other members will come up as well as their Google PR. You add their link to your website and send them a request. This request will also provide a link for them to insert into their web site. The downfall is that you need to check that the link remains there, or even that its placed in the first place. This is where the work begins.
You need to track all of the links to verify they aren’t taken down. There are tools (Web CEO for one), that will do this for you, but you will still need to record the link page URL so that you can enter it into the tool so it can do the check.

There are many ways to gain back links from a web site. You can offer valuable information on something that an end-user finds useful, such as a map to, or of a destination, a tool such as a mortgage calculator, or even a coupon or shopping tips. This is the way the search engines want you back links to occur…as this is the Natural Link Building process; An end-user finds something on a web site that they feel is useful and they create a link to it.
Another method is purchasing One-Way Links. You must be very careful when attempting this strategy as many things can go awry, and the search engines (especially Google), are looking very hard at how to avoid awarding web sites higher SERP’s based on link building efforts attempting to obtain a more favourable position in their search engine.

Whilst Google Page Rank doesn’t directly affect your SERP’s, the back links from trusted sources do. The way this works is that Google looks at the PR of the referring web site and passes on PR. The influence of this “bleeding” affect is determined by:
• The PR of the referring site
• The number of outbound links on the page containing your back link
• The “trust” rating of the referring web site, according to Google, which is based on the registration date and consistent content, as well as the web sites own back links and these same parameters

This, put in basic terms, means that spending the time that it takes to obtain a back link from a site that has no PR is meaningless.
Here is an example of Google’s “weightedness” (a made up word by Gary);
Site 1 with a PR5 has 50 links (the max you want on 1 page) = bleeds .0012 PR
Site 2 with a PR5 has 10 links = bleeds .430 PR
Site 3 with a PR5 has 2 links = bleeds .776 PR
Additionally, Google seemingly awards back links from .org’s slightly higher, and back links from .edu’s and ‘gov’s significantly higher. This opens many vertical possibilities when taken into consideration whilst planning your long-term back link strategy. Ask me about these if you’re willing to do a lot of hard work.
The following is the same example above, but is based off a back link from a .edu and a .gov
.org/.edu Site 1 with a PR5 has 50 links (the max you want on 1 page) = bleeds .4352 PR
.org/.edu Site 2 with a PR5 has 10 links = bleeds .88721 PR
.org/.edu Site 3 with a PR5 has 2 links = bleeds 1.176 PR
So this means that it is important to get back links from high PR sites, as well as sites that have related content.

The Link
Just as important as the back links, the actual content of the back link is as important.
Because of the overwhelming problem the SE’s are experiencing with Spammers and Black-Hatters overtaking their results and therefore skewing the quality of the overall purpose of their primary intended function, which is search and providing relevant results, each of the main three search engines have introduced, or are soon to introduce an entirely new algorithm that, in purpose, is meant to eliminate the bad, and provide genuine, relevant results, which is what the end-user is looking for.
So Google tweaked their algorithm to place an increased weight on not only back links, but the actual content of the back link.
What this means is that if I were optimising a web site and one of its keyword phrases were “debt consolidation”, I would create a back link that used “debt consolidation” (actually I would use “Get Debt Consolidation” because you need a ‘grey’ word before your keywords in ANY circumstance when doing optimization to avoid obvious SEO red flags), and the link description would also include that phrase. So, a good example of this is here:

Expert Debt Consolidation – Get Cheap Debt Consolidation Now.

This is a basic example. Every web site and back link offer/tool will have different parameters stating how many characters you can use, the length, content, number of caps, number of expletives like “best”, “cheapest”, or “lowest” type. The point I am making here is that you need to take full advantage of the link. You do this with carefully selected anchor text and descriptions. These links need to be carefully created and linked back to SE optimized landing pages that mirror your anchor text and description. These elements are EXACTLY what ALL search engines, especially Google, use to weight or grade the link.
This, coupled with quality content and the correct keyword density and other SEO elements, are core in the future of obtaining high rankings with all SE’s organically, and PPC at a cost well under what the competition is paying.

Link Tools
Alexa (Part of IBP 9.2), WebCEO and many other tools are available that work in an efficient way, and can be very effective if utilized in the correct fashion. These tools will take your selected keyword and based on the parameters that you set up, crawl the search engines and the top ranking web sites that come up for that particular query. They then pull any available emails from the site, if available, or if there isn’t one available, it will default to whatever you select (i.e. webmaster@ or info@).
So lets say you are searching for back links from sites that are related to women’s under garments for Bravissimo. I would enter “women’s clothing” into the search box and these tools come back with the number of sites that you request. The tools give you the amount of back links a site already has, the PR strength, a relevancy grade and so on.
These tools have other optional settings to help in your link building schemes.
• Find web sites with link suggestion forms that can be setup to be completed automatically and submitted;
• Find web sites that link to your competitors
• Find web sites that already link to you (to possibly change the anchor text or add additional deep links)
Investigate the many tools available to find the one that suits your needs the best. Stay away from the cookie cutter approach if possible as link building has been going on for years and most web site owners have received thousands of “canned” requests over the years.

Things to avoid when link building
• Stay away from link farms (http://www.jimprice.com/jim-lnk.htm#people)
• The site has no possible connection to your subject matter whatsoever. The page they put your link on isn't linked to FROM any page, meaning it's floating out there in never-never land and is a ploy to get you to link to their site.
• The page where they put your link is on a URL a mile long and several directories deep so engines will never find it.
• The page looks like a farmer's field with nicely arranged rows of links to hundreds of sites which aren't necessarily organized in any logical manner, but that doesn't matter because someone told them the link is all that counts.
• It's a link and a link only. No description. No proof the person ever actually reviewed the site.
• Signs they'll accept anything that shows evidence of being a "live" link. A true Directory has criteria, frets about the quality of sites it links to and doesn't have people out begging for links. Instead the reverse is true, with people begging to be let in.
• Watch for scams such as sub-domain one-way traffic feeders where the page your site is linked to isn't part of the main website. Study the URLS carefully before you decide to accept a link request.
• Stay away from FFA sites (Free For All)
• Avoid being on a web site that has pages and pages of links. This is viewed as a Link Farm.
• Stay away from sex oriented, gambling, RX and other unsavoury sites.
• Be aware of the possibility of bad neighbours. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy server with a spammer or banned site.
• Don’t waste your time getting a link from a non-ranking page within a site. The page needs to hold a rank of a minimum PR value of 1 below your landing page, particularly if there are going to be other outbound links to other web sites. If there are not going to be other outbound links, or just a few, then a PR of 2 and above will still boost your ranking and benefit your SERP’s as well as your own PR.
• Stay away from link pages called “Link Partners”, “Links” or the like, especially if the term “link” or “links” is part of the URL
• Stay away from pages that have more than 50 outbound links
If you are looking to build long-term rankings, it takes more work and creativity than just sending out automated emails or joining a linking program. Create a daily “hit list” outlining exactly what you will do.

Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. This is the best way to get and keep a link. You can usually find this information at Network Solutions or the web sites “About Us” page.

Lastly, keep at it! Link building is a marathon, not a sprint. You’ve been given what is probably the most important job that influences search engine results. The work you do today, will put a web site a the top of the rankings tomorrow, and keep them there.

Additional Ways To Get Links
(can't remember where I got this)

1. Build a “101 list”. These get Dugg all the time, and often become “authority documents”. People can’t resist linking to these (hint, hint). Like mine at http://www.ppc-manager.blogspot.com. I did a PPC 101 and PPC 102 lists.
2. Create 10 easy tips to help you [insert topic here] articles. Again, these are exceptionally easy to link to.
3. Create extensive resource lists for a specific topic (see Mr Ploppy for inspiration).
4. Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category.
5. Create a list of gurus/experts. If you impress the people listed well enough, or find a way to make your project look somewhat official, the gurus may end up linking to your site or saying thanks. (Sometimes flattery is the easiest way to strike up a good relationship with an “authority”.)
Developing Authority & Being Easy to Link At
6. Make your content easy to understand so many people can understand and spread your message. (It’s an accessibility thing.)
7. Put some effort in to minimize grammatical or spelling errors, especially if you need authoritative people like librarians to link to your site.
8. Have an easily accessible privacy policy and about section so your site seems more trustworthy. Including a picture of yourself may also help build your authority.
PPC as a Link Building Tool
9. Buy relevant traffic with a pay per click campaign. Relevant traffic will get your site more visitors and brand exposure. When people come to your site, regardless of the channel in which they found it, there is a possibility that they will link to you.
News & Syndication
10. Syndicate an article at EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare, etc. The great thing about good article sites is that their article pages actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic.
11. Submit an article to industry news site. Have an SEO site? Write an article and submit to WebProNews. Have a site about BLANK? Submit to BLANKinformationalsite.com.
12. Syndicate a press release. Take the time to make it GOOD (compelling, newsworthy). Email it to some handpicked journalists and bloggers. Personalize the email message. For good measure, submit it to PRWeb, PRLeap, etc.
13. Track who picks up your articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content.
14. Trade articles with other webmasters.
15. Email a few friends when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback and/or if they would mind referencing it if they find your information useful.
16. Write about, and link to, companies with “in the news” pages. They link back to stories and blog posts which cover their developments. This is obviously easiest if you have a news section or blog. Do a Google search for [your industry + “in the news”].
17. Perform surveys and studies that make people feel important. If you can make other people feel important they will help do your marketing for you for free. Salary.com did a study on how underpaid mothers were, and they got many high quality links.
Directories, Meme Trackers & Social Bookmarking
18. This tip is an oldie but goodie: submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions.
19. Submit your site to paid directories. Another oldie. Just remember that quality matters.
20. Create your own topical directory about your field of interest. Obviously link to your own site, deeplinking to important content where possible. Of course, if you make it into a truly useful resource, it will attract links on its own.
21. Tag related sites on sites like Del.icio.us. If people find the sites you tag to be interesting, emotionally engaging, or timely they may follow the trail back to your site.
22. If you create something that is of great quality make sure you ask a few friends to tag it for you. If your site gets on the front page of Digg or on the Del.icio.us popular list, hundreds more bloggers will see your site, and potentially link to it.
23. Look at meme trackers to see what ideas are spreading. If you write about popular spreading ideas with plenty of original content (and link to some of the original resources), your site may get listed as a source on the meme tracker site.
Local & Business Links
24. Join the Better Business Bureau.
25. Get a link from your local chamber of commerce.
26. Submit your link to relevant city and state governmental resources. (Easier in some countries than in others.)
27. List your site at the local library’s Web site.
28. See if your manufacturers or retailers or other business partners might be willing to link to your site.
29. Develop business relationships with non-competing businesses in the same field. Leverage these relationships online and off, by recommending each other via links and distributing each other’s business cards.
30. Launch an affiliate program. Most of the links you pick up will not have SEO value, but the added exposure will almost always lead to additional “normal” links.
Easy Free Links
31. Depending on your category and offer, you will find Craigslist to be a cheap or free classified service.
32. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Yahoo! Answers and provide links to relevant resources.
33. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Google Groups and provide links to relevant resources.
34. If you run a fairly reputable company, create a page about it in the Wikipedia or in topic specific wikis. If it is hard to list your site directly, try to add links to other pages that link to your site.
35. It takes about 15 minutes to set up a topical Squidoo page, which you can use to look like an industry expert. Link to expert documents and popular useful tools in your fields, and also create a link back to your site.
36. Submit a story to Digg that links to an article on your site. You can also submit other content and have some of its link authority flow back to your profile page.
37. If you publish an RSS feed and your content is useful and regularly updated, some people will syndicate your RSS content (and some of those will provide links… unfortunately, some will not).
38. Most forums allow members to leave signature links or personal profile links. If you make quality contributions some people will follow these links and potentially read your site, link at your site, and/or buy your products.
Have a Big Heart for Reviews
39. Most brands are not well established online, so if your site has much authority, your review related content often ranks well.
40. Review relevant products on Amazon.com. We have seen this draw in direct customer enquiries and secondary links.
41. Create product lists on Amazon.com that review top products and also mention your background (LINK!).
42. Review related sites on Alexa to draw in related traffic streams.
43. Review products and services on shopping search engines like ePinions to help build your authority.
44. If you buy a product or service you really like and are good at leaving testimonials, many of those turn into links. Two testimonial writing tips — make them believable, and be specific where possible.
Blogs & the Blogosphere
45. Start a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post regularly and post great content. Good execution is what gets the links.
46. Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.
47. Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.
48. Technorati tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags.
49. If you create a blog make sure you list it in a few of the best blog directories.
50. Start all over again.

This article was taken from here

when I right click the time near the windows notification area, and click adjust date/time and click change date and time I get an error message saying 'Unable to continue you do not have permission to perform this task. Please contact your computer administrator for help'

Go to your control panel click user accounts and family safety then once your in there click user accounts once in there click turn user account control on and off. then uncheck the box and apply restart your computer and it should work.

You can reapply the UAC after you have updated your time as it should keep working from now on.

This is aholding page for links realted to the Sage Development Kit (SDK)

• Sage 50 Software Development Kit (SDK) Official Forum
• Sage Data Objects - a 3rd party website with some really useful SDO examples and code. It is no longer updated.

When you migrate someones email profile you move their PST file and setup their profile on the target machine. When you do this all the email and calendar items are moved but the email AutoComplete is not moved.

The email auto cache is where someone starts typing in an email and outlook auto fills the email or gives you a dropdown list. This cached list is stored in a NK2 file. This file needs to be migrated as well as the PST to maintain the drop down list.

If this list is not migrated the client can be left to use outlook normally and the list will populate over time and normal operation.

• How to migrate NK2 Auto complete cache “suggested contacts” from Microsoft Outlook
• How to import .nk2 files into Outlook 2010

Windows 7 comes with a great feature called HomeGroup that makes sharing between windows 7 machines very easy.

Unfortunately, HomeGroup feature is not compatible with Windows XP and Vista. In this guide, you’ll learn how to enable file sharing between Windows 7 and Windows XP.

• How to Enable File Sharing between Windows 7 and Windows XP

Other Solutions

• Make sure there is a matching username and password on both PCs
• Check for any 3rd Party firewalls. these are renowned for causing connection issues.

Links

• Getting Access is Denied when accessing Windows 7 share from Windows XP - not tried the registry entry in the second post
• How to Disable “HomeGroup” Feature in Windows 7?
• How To Disable or Enable the Homegroup Feature in Windows 7
• How to Enable File Sharing between Windows 7 and Windows XP
• Share a Printer from XP to Windows 7
• Share Files and Printers between Windows 7 and XP
• Sharing files and printers with different versions of Windows
• Windows XP cannot print to Windows 7 shared printer
• File Sharing - Between XP and W7 (and vice versa) - Windows 7 Help Forums
• windows 7 - How to access shared folder without giving username and password - Stack Overflow

Microsoft Outlook - (i have already done an article for this check)

• em Client (emClinet)
  - looks almost identical to microsoft outlook
  - It has a calender built in
  - it is limited to one email account though on the free version
  - Importing from outlook is very easy (simple wizard)
• Thunderbird
  - no inbuilt calendar, but you can add one on and import outlook calendar events
  - you can import from outlook
  - signatures is a bit flaky
  - completely free and updated often

These are some articles on other Outlook alternative

• 3 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Outlook
• FreeOutlookAlternatives.com - Helping you choose the best e-mail client

Microsoft Office

• Libre Office
• Open Office

Security Software

• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Comodo Firewall (you can either have antivirus or firewall installed not both)
• Comodo Antivirus
• Comodo Antispam (basic, uses local lists and passcodes only)
• Comodo Backup
• Rapport - get this from your bank (or natwest)
   
• AVG
• Panada Antivirus
• Avast

Other Softwares

• peazip - unzipping and zipping - it does everything
• xampp - local webserver
• RSSOwl
• RSS Bandit
• filezilla
• KeePass and last Pass - password amangers - check which is best

There are a few things to go through to help you understand MySQL collations before you will understand what collation you should use.

The difference between utf8_general_ci and utf8_unicode_ci

To know the difference between utf8_general_ci and utf8_unicode_ci we need to break down the collation's name.

1. UTF8 - this is the character set to be used. Computer using different languages reference characters with different ascii/binary references such as latin1. UTF8 is a character set which try to cover all characters in one set.
2. This question should be "What is the difference between general_ci and unicode_ci?"
   The difference is the algorithm MySQL uses to search (and interact i think) with the database. general_ci is less resource intensive but not as good as unicode_ci. Because of the power of modern webservers performance is no longer a concern so unicode should be used.

So this means that:

• utf8_general_ci collation uses the UTF8 character set with the general search algorithm with good performance and lower quality results
• utf8_unicode_ci collation uses the UTF8 character set with the unicode search algorithm with lower performance and better quality results

Where possible select utf8_unicode_ci (see notes below)

The difference between UTF8MB4 and UTF8

The correct implementation of all UTF8 characters requires 4 bytes per character but for some reason PHP/MySQL implemented UTF8 using only 3 Bytes and they called this UTF8. It has taken until recent times for servers to fully support this and CMS platforms to catch up, they now call this UTF8MB4 and it is fully backwards compatible with UTF8.

Using UTF8MB4 allows you to use all UTF8 characters including emojis and some international characters and store these in the MySQL database.

So this means that:

• utf8_unicode_ci collation uses the UTF8 character set with a 3 byte storage limiting the UTF8 characters that can be used
• utf8mb4_unicode_ci collation uses the full UTF8MB4 with a 4 byte character allowing the full use of all UTF8 characters
• UTF8 Tables and Databases can be upgraded to UTF8MB with no data loss. The reverse will cause data loss.
• Better international language support because more characters can be used in one collation
• Allows the use of native emoji characters
• UTF8 and UT8MB4 are not language specific

Where are collations used?

We must know that there are several places to use a collation and they are all set seperately.

1. Server Connection Collation - There connection between PHP and MySQL daemon
2. Default Collation - The databases has a default collation
   
3. Table Collation - Tables in the database can have a specific collation set which does not have to be the default collation.

Have you heard the expression "A chain is only as storng as its weakest link", the journey of data from PHP to a MySQL database is not different. So what do I mean? As you can see above there are several places where you can set collations, each of these collations need to be able to support the data you are sending it.

When a UT8MB4 character is sent to the database if any of the steps/collations in the chain are set to UTF8 only, the the character will be trunctacted (the last byte cut off) and a different character will be stored. If you send a UTF8 character down a chain that all supports UTF8MB4 then no data loss will occur because UTF8MB4 is backawards compatible with UTF8.

What Collation should I use?

So now if we take what we have learned and summarise here:

• unicode_ci give better results that general_ci and performance is no longer an issue
• UTF8 Databases and Tables can be upgraded to UTF8MB4 without data loss
• UTF8MB4 is backwards compatible with UTF8
• UTF8MB4 is a correct implementation of UTF8 and allows use of all UTF8 characters
• Most webservers now fully support UTF8MB4
• Most popular CMS are now pushing UTF8MB4
• UTF8MB4 has better international language and allows you to use emoji
• the whole data chain (PHP --> MySQL Database) needs to support the collation you are using

Which means you should ideally use the following:

1. Server Connection Collation - utf8mb4_unicode_ci
2. Default Collation - utf8mb4_unicode_ci
3. Table Collation- utf8mb4_unicode_ci (when needed)

In Summary

You will be using the UTF8MB4 collation for the whole chain which fully supports all UTF8 characters (3 and 4 byte) and is backwards compatible with UTF8 (3 byte) allowing all languages to be used. The unicode_ci search algorithm is used for better results as the performance hit is not longer noticable.

Links

• UTF-8: General? Bin? Unicode?
• What's the difference between utf8_general_ci and utf8_unicode_ci?
• Difference between MySQL collation “utf-8-general-ci” and “utf-8-unicode-ci”?
• Difference between utf8 general ci and utf8 bin

Does not turn on or do anything when power button is pressed

• this is most likely the power regulator has been blown, checked with multimeter to see if the power gets past the FETs and regualtor as per tutorial
• see if the laptop powers on with the battery and/or the mains
• clear bios sometimes works

when power button is pressed the fan powers up and lights turn on. they either follow a pattern of a laptop reseting or they stay on as you would expect normally and the hdd powers up but nothing on screen either internal or external

• this is most likely a faulty graphics chip and the solution is to reflow. sometimes it can be the chipset chip but this is rare unless there is not dedicated graphics chip in which case it is the chipset chip
• this can also be caused by a dodgy bios, clear bios

I can't create an empty text document. I right-clicked on my desktop, pointed on New and then I can't see the 'New Text Document' option. I was able to make empty text documents a few weeks ago, but now I can't because the option is lost from the menu. I guess some software modified it.

This fault can be caused by different routes

The following links are from Windows 7 - 'New Text Document' missing?

Solution 1

Search on the thread for 'How repair a missing New Text Document in the Context Menu for Windows 7'

this is a post which basically gets you to install a registry file to restore the damaged section of the registry

Solution 2

I had the same problem with "Text Document" missing from the New menu. In my case, the Default value in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt had been changed. All I had to do to fix the problem was to change the Default value back to txtfile

I know in XP that changing the file associations under HKEY_CURRENT_USER was optional, but I guess in Windows 7 it's mandatory.

The following link is from 'Windows 7 | Context Menu | new text file Missing?'

Solution 3

There is a registry file on this thread which might be the same as from seven forums

Related Articles

• How to Add Shortcuts to the Windows 7 Context Menu with Icons
• How to Remove and Restore the Default Windows 7 "New" Context Menu Items
• How to Add / Remove Items from “New” in Windows Context Menu?

I tried to install SP1 on a customer's Vista laptop today. It took about 2 hours then eventually a black screen appeared and it started working through 95,583 files until it reached 3790/95583 and stuck, where it remains now.

The white writing is as follows..

!! (4) !! 3790/95583 (wdf01000.sys)

The screen flickers as if trying to move on but can't get beyond this point.

I have tried restarting using last known good config but the same thing happens.

I have also tried the repair option of system restore but that ran for about 4 hours without anything happening.

Is there anything I can try or would it be easier to backup and reinstall from scratch?

I have fixed the problem by simply copying another copy of wdf01000.sys from the winxs folder to c:\windows\system32\drivers and the service pack installation carried on normally after that and Windows booted with everything working..