We're being audited next week and I need to ensure that each and every PC in the office has a valid, activated, certified genuine copy of Microsoft Windows 7 installed on it and running. I've much anxiety about this: how do I ensure everyone's running an activated, verified copy of Win7?

I know how to install and change themes in Windows XP, but I haven't figured out the same in Windows 7 yet. Can you step me through the process of downloading and applying a new Windows 7 theme, Dave?

Finally, finally, I upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 and it's pretty, but the interface is a lot slower. Is there some way to turn off some of the fancy zoom, shadow and transparency effects so Win7 speeds up?

I think I have automatic updates set for my Windows PC, but it never seems to tell me there's an update, and my experience with Windows and Microsoft is that there are updates typically every week or so. Is there some way i can manually run a Windows Update to see if there's anything pending or available for my Win7 laptop?

I'm confused: It used to be that when I closed windows -- really, minimized windows -- in Windows 7 that they'd show up as a tab along the bottom in the Taskbar. Now, however, a lot of them just vanish. They're still there, the app's still running, but the Taskbar is all too often empty. What happened to my Win7 programs?

Every time I plug in my iPhone to my Toshiba PC laptop running Microsoft Windows 7, it promptly tries to import all the pictures and place copies of them into "My Pictures". It's driving me crazy. How the heck do I stop Windows trying to import my iPhone photos?

Every time I double-click on a .JPG image in Windows 7, I find that it opens up the wrong program. I don't want Photoshop, I want MS Paint to open because I almost always just want to scale or trim the photo. How can I change the default program?

I'm running an old version of Windows Vista and just downloaded an install disk for Windows 7 from Microsoft to try out. Cool. Except I have no idea what to do with the 3GB ".ISO" file that I received. How can I burn it to make an install DVD and proceed?

I know that if I had my iPod sync'd to a Mac system it'd be easy to manage my contacts, but I'm on a Windows system and, darn it, I would love to have a list of phone numbers on my iPod. I mean, the capability is there with the "Contacts" area. So how do I manage contacts, names and phone numbers on my iPod Nano if I'm using iTunes on my Windows PC?

It's a problem common to all laptop users, whether you're running a Mac or a PC: how do you get the maximum battery life out of your computer so that you can minimize the hunt for a power plug and the need to tote along a power cable? In this article, I'm going to focus on best practices for people running Windows since there are so darn many of 'em.

For reasons that I can't figure out, my Windows 7 laptop thinks that everything's fine with the sound system, but I can't actually hear anything when I try to play music or watch videos on YouTube. Is there some easy way to diagnose these sort of sound or audio problems on Win7?

Sometimes when I'm using my laptop running Microsoft Windows 7 (win7) it pops up with information about OS and system updates to apply, which is great, but I want to know how to manually search for updates and apply them on my Windows PC. Is that still possible in Windows 7?

I run Internet Explorer on my work PC and Firefox on my Mac at home and would love to have their bookmarks stay in sync. I have a Mobile Me account that I got with my Mac and seem to recall that can work with Windows systems too. Can that be used to keep my browser bookmarks in sync across Windows 7 and Mac OS X?

When I click "Start" to open the menu window in Microsoft Windows 7, the "Search" choice (above recent items) is missing. How can I add it to my start menu?

I've been experimenting with Microsoft Windows 7 beta on my Mac OS X system through using VMware Fusion and while I don't know of anyone else doing this, I have read on the Internet that it's a viable combo. Problem is, when I actually try it, I find that there's no Internet access and Windows 7 complains that there's no "Ethernet driver" installed? How do I fix that?

I have been hearing good things about Windows 7 from industry sources and am wondering if you think it woudl be a good idea for me to migrate from Vista? For that matter, what about Mojave? Is that a good interim choice, and if so, where do I download that?