the Zen of Communication.

Windows 7 will install a hidden 100mb partition at the front of your drive when you do a clean install.  It uses this for system recovery if your install goes belly up, and/or bitlocker headers for drive encryption.

I need neither.  And the kicker is some apps (like TrueCrypt) don’t function correctly with the 100mb partition.  In fact, TrueCrypt CAN’T encrypt your system drive because the bootloader is on the other partition.  Not very helpful.

MyDigitalLife shows how to work around this – http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/08/20/hack-to-remove-100-mb-system-reserved-partition-when-installing-windows-7/ .  See part three, “Method 3: Trick to Remove 100.00 MB System Reserved Partition During Setup” .

In a nutshell, when you’re installing Win7 (note, if you’re reinstalling, this will erase your data, no two ways about it) and you reach the portion allowing you to select your partition, erase your existing 100mb system partition, and your existing OS partition.  Then pick the freshly unallocated space and tell it to install there.  It will say “We’ll create a hidden system partition for your protection” – say OK.  Now delete the new OS volume – not the 100mb partition. Yes, delete the new partition it created for your OS.

You should have a 100mb system partition, unallocated space, and maybe another partition for your data, if that’s how you roll.

Next select the hidden partition, and click Extend.  This will allocate the rest of the unused space (from the system partition you just deleted) to the hidden partition – giving you a single OS volume with no hidden partition.

Ta-da.

Thanks MDL – saved me some headache there.

Note: this trick only works during reinstallation of Windows.  They have a couple other hacks to remove the hidden partition after you’ve installed, but they didn’t suit my purpose.  AGAIN: THIS WILL ERASE YOUR DATA. Don’t cry to me if you didn’t back it up.

Anyone who’s used KDE, Gnome, or most any other Linux window manager (WM) will know about Desktop Paging, though maybe not by that name.  It’s a built in functionality which allows you to have several “virtual desktops”.  The programs remain running all the time, but you can arrange windows in certain ways, and move programs or windows from desktop to desktop.  Confusing?  I’ll bet.  Lets clarify:

I have four (4) “virtual desktops”.  On Desktop 1, I have Outlook open, with 3 emails in separate windows, and my calendar in a new window (thanks to Outlook 2007).  In this configuration this takes up my entire desktop real estate, but I need to keep them arranged this way.  And now, I want to open Sharepoint to pull down a Word document.  That’s two more windows, in an already crowded screen, with a configuration I don’t want to lose.  Add to that I’ll need to copy and paste some text between the Word doc and an email, and you start to have a problem.

So, I switch to Desktop 2.  I start with a blank canvas – a desktop that would look just as it would if I minimized everything, or had just restarted my computer.  From here, I open Firefox, browse to my Sharepoint site, and download my Word document.  I open my Word document, find my text, and copy it.  Now I need to get back to my open email to paste it in.

I push a hotkey and switch back to Desktop 1.

Desktop 2 is minimized, the arrangement is saved, and Desktop 1 is brought up just the way I left it! I paste what I want into Outlook, send the email, and now I want to open a remote desktop terminal session, but I need to keep Sharepoint accessible within Firefox.

I push a hotkey and switch to Desktop 3.

Desktop 2 is minimized, Desktop 3 is brought up as a blank canvas again, and I can open Terminals to start my TS connections.  I need to see an Email to retrieve an issue I’m working on?  Push my hotkeys, I’m back to Desktop 1, open my email, find what I’m looking for, and hotkey back to Desktop 3.  Just that quick.

So this is built into Linux, but how can Windows users incorporate such power-user-like glory?  A virtual desktop application known as VirtuaWin .  Designed to bring the same functionality Linux users enjoy, to the common Windows desktop.  It’s a small application that will sit in your system tray, and allow you to switch back and forth between your new “virtual desktops”.  You can download add-on modules to it, and view a mini-representation of your window layout, so you have a hint as to what desktop has what layout (several small windows on 1, that must be Outlook, big window on 2, oh that must be Remote Desktop, etc.).  As a SourceForge project it’s free, and I’ve been using it for several months with high stability.  You can move windows between desktops, create rules (always open Acrobat on Desktop 3, etc), and do almost anything else one could imagine wanting to do with a tool such as this.

I have four desktops open right now, each with applications running on them.  One desktop has Outlook, another Firefox, a third has IMs, and the fourth is my blog tool that I write this with.  While each application still uses the same amount of memory, VirtuaWin itself is presently using 5,624k , or just over 5 and a half megs, and I don’t even see it register on the CPU usage.  It’s a very lightweight app, but accomplishes an amazing amount in a very user-friendly way.

It’s not quite like having a quad-monitor setup, but it’s as close as I can come with a laptop, especially on the road.