Ever tried to figure out exactly how much memory Google Chrome or Internet Explorer is using? Since they each show up a bunch of times in Task Manager, it’s not so easy! Here’s the quick and easy way to compare them.

Both Chrome and IE use multiple processes to isolate tabs from each other, to make sure that one tab doesn’t kill the whole browser. Firefox, on the other hand, just uses a single process for everything.

Rather than pulling out a calculator and adding them all up, you can just open up Google Chrome, and type in about:memory into the location bar to see a full list of each browser’s memory usage.

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On my test system with 6 GB of system RAM, I’m running the Development channel version of Chrome, and I’ve got about 40 different tabs open, which is why the memory usage is so high. Firefox has 8 tabs open, and IE is enjoying being opened for the first time in forever.

Want to help cut down on memory usage and keep your Chrome browser running fast? Disable all unnecessary extensions, and then make sure you disable any plug-ins that you don’t need either.

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Foobar2000 is a great audio player that is fully customizable, is light on system resources, and contains a lot of tools and features. Today we show you how to use it to rip an audio CD to FLAC format.

Note: For this tutorial we’re going to assume this is the first time you’re ripping a disc with Foobar2000. We’re running it on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

Install Foobar2000 and FLAC

First download and install Foobar2000 (link below). The main thing you’ll want to make sure to enable during the install process is Audio CD Support…

And the freedb Tagger which are located under Optional Features, then continue through the rest of the install wizard.

Next you need to install the latest version of the FLAC codec (link below) following the defaults.

Rip Audio CD

To rip a CD, place it in your CDROM drive, launch Foobar2000 and click File Open Audio CD.

Select the appropriate CD drive and click the Rip button.

Next you’ll want to lookup the disc information with freedb…or you can manually enter in the track data if it’s a custom disc.

Select the proper tag information in the freedb tagger window, then click Update files.

The data will be entered in, make sure the radio button next to Go to the Converter Setup dialog is selected, and click the Rip button.

In the Converter Setup screen, here you can select the output format, where in our case we’re selecting FLAC.

In this window you can choose several other options like the output path, merging the tracks into one or individual files…etc. When you have those settings completed click OK.

Next you’ll need to find flac.exe which is located wherever you installed it. On our 64-bit Windows 7 system the default path is C:Program Files (x86)FLAC

Now wait while your CD is ripped and converted to FLAC.

You’ll get a Converter Status Report…after you’ve checked it over you can close out of it.

If you set the option to show the output files after conversion you can take a look, make sure all tracks were converted, and play them right away if you want. You can play the tracks in Foobar2000 or any player that supports FLAC. If you want to use WMC or WMP see our article on how to play FLAC files in Windows 7 Media Center or Player.

That’s all there is to it! If you’re a fan of Foobar2000 and enjoy your music converted to FLAC format, Foobar2000 does the job quite well. There are a lot of customizations and tools you can use in Foobar2000 that we’ll be taking a look at in future articles. For more information check out our look at this fully customizable music player.

Foobar2000 run on XP, Vista, and Windows 7

Links

Download Foobar2000

Download FLAC

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Are you switching back to Outlook 2007 after trying out Office 2010 beta?? Here’s how you can restore your Outlook data and keep everything working fine after the switch.

Whenever you install a newer version of Outlook, it will convert your profile and data files to the latest format.? This makes them work the best in the newer version of Outlook, but may cause problems if you decide to revert to an older version.? If you installed Outlook 2010 beta, it automatically imported and converted your profile from Outlook 2007.? When the beta expires, you will either have to reinstall Office 2007 or purchase a copy of Office 2010.

If you choose to reinstall Office 2007, you may notice an error message each time you open Outlook.

Outlook will still work fine and all of your data will be saved, but this error message can get annoying.? Here’s how you can create a new profile, import all of your old data, and get rid of this error message.

Banish the Error Message with a New Profile

To get rid of this error message, we need to create a new Outlook profile.? First, make sure your Outlook data files are backed up.? Your messages, contacts, calendar, and more are stored in a .pst file in your appdata folder.? Enter the following in the address bar of an Explorer window to open your Outlook data folder, and replace username with your user name:

C:UsersusernameAppDataLocalMicrosoftOutlook

Copy the Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) files that contain your data. Its name is usually your email address, though it may have a different name.? If in doubt, select all of the Outlook Personal Folders files, copy them, and save them in another safe place (such as your Documents folder).

Now, let’s remove your old profile.? Open Control Panel, and select Mail.? In Windows Vista or 7, simply enter “Mail” in the search box and select the first entry.

Click the “Show Profiles…” button.

Now, select your Outlook profile, and click Remove.? This will not delete your data files, but will remove them from Outlook.

Press Yes to confirm that you wish to remove this profile.

Open Outlook, and you will be asked to create a new profile.? Enter a name for your new profile, and press Ok.

Now enter your email account information to setup Outlook as normal.

Outlook will attempt to automatically configure your account settings.? This usually works for accounts with popular email systems, but if it fails to find your information you can enter it manually.? Press finish when everything’s done.

Outlook will now go ahead and download messages from your email account.? In our test, we used a Gmail account that still had all of our old messages online.? Those files are backed up in our old Outlook data files, so we can save time and not download them.? Click the Send/Receive button on the bottom of the window, and select “Cancel Send/Receive”.

Restore Your Old Outlook Data

Let’s add our old Outlook file back to Outlook 2007.? Exit Outlook, and then go back to Control Panel, and select Mail as above.? This time, click the Data Files button.

Click the Add button on the top left.

Select “Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst)”, and click Ok.

Now, select your old Outlook data file.? It should be in the folder that opens by default; if not, browse to the backup copy we saved earlier, and select it.

Press Ok at the next dialog to accept the default settings.

Now, select the data file we just imported, and click “Set as Default”.

Now, all of your old messages, appointments, contacts, and everything else will be right in Outlook ready for you.? Click Ok, and then open Outlook to see the change.

All of the data that was in Outlook 2010 is now ready to use in Outlook 2007.? You won’t have to wait to re-download all of your emails from the server since everything’s still here ready to be used.? And when you open Outlook, you won’t see any error messages, either!

Conclusion

Migrating your Outlook profile back to Outlook 2007 is fairly easy, and with these steps, you can avoid seeing an error message every time you open Outlook.? With all your data in tact, you’re ready to get back to work instead of getting frustrated with Outlook.? Many of us use webmail and keep all of our messages in the cloud, but even on broadband connections it can take a long time to download several gigabytes of emails.

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There are lots of utilities to recover deleted files, but what if you can’t boot up your computer, or the whole drive has been formatted? We’ll show you some tools that will dig deep and recover the most elusive deleted files, or even whole hard drive partitions.

We’ve shown you simple ways to recover accidentally deleted files, even a simple method that can be done from an Ubuntu Live CD, but for hard disks that have been heavily corrupted, those methods aren’t going to cut it. In this article, we’ll examine four tools that can recover data from the most messed up hard drives, regardless of whether they were formatted for a Windows, Linux, or Mac computer, or even if the partition table is wiped out entirely.

Note: These tools cannot recover data that has been overwritten on a hard disk. Whether a deleted file has been overwritten depends on many factors – the quicker you realize that you want to recover a file, the more likely you will be able to do so.

Our setup

To show these tools, we’ve set up a small 1 GB hard drive, with half of the space partitioned as ext2, a file system used in Linux, and half the space partitioned as FAT32, a file system used in older Windows systems. We stored ten random pictures on each hard drive.

We then wiped the partition table from the hard drive by deleting the partitions in GParted.

Is our data lost forever?

Installing the tools

All of the tools we’re going to use are in Ubuntu’s universe repository.

To enable the repository, open Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System in the top-left, then Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.

Click on Settings > Repositories and add a check in the box labelled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)”.

Click Close, and then in the main Synaptic Package Manager window, click the Reload button. Once the package list has reloaded, and the search index rebuilt, search for and mark for installation one or all of the following packages: testdisk, foremost, and scalpel.

Testdisk includes TestDisk, which can recover lost partitions and repair boot sectors, and PhotoRec, which can recover many different types of files from tons of different file systems.

Foremost, originally developed by the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations, recovers files based on their headers and other internal structures. Foremost operates on hard drives or drive image files generated by various tools.

Finally, scalpel performs the same functions as foremost, but is focused on enhanced performance and lower memory usage. Scalpel may run better if you have an older machine with less RAM.

Recover hard drive partitions

If you can’t mount your hard drive, then its partition table might be corrupted. Before you start trying to recover your important files, it may be possible to recover one or more partitions on your drive, recovering all of your files with one step.

Testdisk is the tool for the job. Start it by opening a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and typing in:

sudo testdisk

If you’d like, you can create a log file, though it won’t affect how much data you recover. Once you make your choice, you’re greeted with a list of the storage media on your machine. You should be able to identify the hard drive you want to recover partitions from by its size and label.

TestDisk asks you select the type of partition table to search for. In most cases (ext2/3, NTFS, FAT32, etc.) you should select Intel and press Enter.

Highlight Analyse and press enter.

In our case, our small hard drive has previously been formatted as NTFS. Amazingly, TestDisk finds this partition, though it is unable to recover it.

It also finds the two partitions we just deleted. We are able to change their attributes, or add more partitions, but we’ll just recover them by pressing Enter.

If TestDisk hasn’t found all of your partitions, you can try doing a deeper search by selecting that option with the left and right arrow keys. We only had these two partitions, so we’ll recover them by selecting Write and pressing Enter.

Testdisk informs us that we will have to reboot.

Note: If your Ubuntu Live CD is not persistent, then when you reboot you will have to reinstall any tools that you installed earlier.

After restarting, both of our partitions are back to their original states, pictures and all.

Recover files of certain types

For the following examples, we deleted the 10 pictures from both partitions and then reformatted them.

PhotoRec

Of the three tools we’ll show, PhotoRec is the most user-friendly, despite being a console-based utility. To start recovering files, open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type in:

sudo photorec

To begin, you are asked to select a storage device to search. You should be able to identify the right device by its size and label. Select the right device, and then hit Enter.

PhotoRec asks you select the type of partition to search. In most cases (ext2/3, NTFS, FAT, etc.) you should select Intel and press Enter.

You are given a list of the partitions on your selected hard drive. If you want to recover all of the files on a partition, then select Search and hit enter.

However, this process can be very slow, and in our case we only want to search for pictures files, so instead we use the right arrow key to select File Opt and press Enter.

PhotoRec can recover many different types of files, and deselecting each one would take a long time. Instead, we press “s” to clear all of the selections, and then find the appropriate file types – jpg, gif, and png – and select them by pressing the right arrow key.

Once we’ve selected these three, we press “b” to save these selections.

Press enter to return to the list of hard drive partitions. We want to search both of our partitions, so we highlight “No partition” and “Search” and then press Enter.

PhotoRec prompts for a location to store the recovered files. If you have a different healthy hard drive, then we recommend storing the recovered files there. Since we’re not recovering very much, we’ll store it on the Ubuntu Live CD’s desktop.

Note: Do not recover files to the hard drive you’re recovering from.

PhotoRec is able to recover the 20 pictures from the partitions on our hard drive!

A quick look in the recup_dir.1 directory that it creates confirms that PhotoRec has recovered all of our pictures, save for the file names.

Foremost

Foremost is a command-line program with no interactive interface like PhotoRec, but offers a number of command-line options to get as much data out of your had drive as possible.

For a full list of options that can be tweaked via the command line, open up a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type in:

foremost –h

In our case, the command line options that we are going to use are:

• -t, a comma-separated list of types of files to search for. In our case, this is “jpeg,png,gif”.
• -v, enabling verbose-mode, giving us more information about what foremost is doing.
• -o, the output folder to store recovered files in. In our case, we created a directory called “foremost” on the desktop.
• -i, the input that will be searched for files. This can be a disk image in several different formats; however, we will use a hard disk, /dev/sda.

Our foremost invocation is:

sudo foremost –t jpeg,png,gif –o foremost –v –i /dev/sda

Your invocation will differ depending on what you’re searching for and where you’re searching for it.

Foremost is able to recover 17 of the 20 files stored on the hard drive.

Looking at the files, we can confirm that these files were recovered relatively well, though we can see some errors in the thumbnail for 00622449.jpg.

Part of this may be due to the ext2 filesystem. Foremost recommends using the –d command-line option for Linux file systems like ext2.

We’ll run foremost again, adding the –d command-line option to our foremost invocation:

sudo foremost –t jpeg,png,gif –d –o foremost –v –i /dev/sda

This time, foremost is able to recover all 20 images!

A final look at the pictures reveals that the pictures were recovered with no problems.

Scalpel

Scalpel is another powerful program that, like Foremost, is heavily configurable. Unlike Foremost, Scalpel requires you to edit a configuration file before attempting any data recovery.

Any text editor will do, but we’ll use gedit to change the configuration file. In a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal), type in:

sudo gedit /etc/scalpel/scalpel.conf

scalpel.conf contains information about a number of different file types. Scroll through this file and uncomment lines that start with a file type that you want to recover (i.e. remove the “#” character at the start of those lines).

Save the file and close it. Return to the terminal window.

Scalpel also has a ton of command-line options that can help you search quickly and effectively; however, we’ll just define the input device (/dev/sda) and the output folder (a folder called “scalpel” that we created on the desktop).

Our invocation is:

sudo scalpel /dev/sda –o scalpel

Scalpel is able to recover 18 of our 20 files.

A quick look at the files scalpel recovered reveals that most of our files were recovered successfully, though there were some problems (e.g. 00000012.jpg).

Conclusion

In our quick toy example, TestDisk was able to recover two deleted partitions, and PhotoRec and Foremost were able to recover all 20 deleted images. Scalpel recovered most of the files, but it’s very likely that playing with the command-line options for scalpel would have enabled us to recover all 20 images.

These tools are lifesavers when something goes wrong with your hard drive. If your data is on the hard drive somewhere, then one of these tools will track it down!

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If you use Windows Media Player 12 in Windows 7, you may notice some of your media is missing information when displayed in the library. Today we look at how to edit and update metadata and cover art in WMP 12.

By default, Windows Media Player will pull metadata, such as the title, artist, album, and cover art from the Internet. If you did not accept that default option during setup, we’ll need to turn the feature on first.

Select Tools > Options from the top Menu bar.

On the Library tab, ensure that Retrieve additional information form the Internet is checked. Click OK.

Editing Metadata

Now we’re ready to update some files. Find a media file with incorrect details or cover art. Right-click on the title and select Find album info.

This will bring up the Find album information window. Here you’ll see the existing information that Windows Media Player interpreted as correct on the left side. The results of? WMP’s search for the media information are on the right.

Click on Artists,? Albums , or Tracks to scroll through the search results and try to find a match. You can also type in new keywords in the Search box and hit enter (or click the Search button) to perform a new search.

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If you find a correct match for your media file, click to select it and click Next.

You’ll be prompted to confirm your selection, then click Finish.

You should now see your media file displayed properly in Windows Media Player.

Manually Entering Metadata

If your search for the correct media information comes up empty, you can always manually enter the information yourself.

On the Find album information window, click Edit under Existing Information.

You can edit the existing information in the text boxes or the Genre dropdown box.

There are a couple hidden text boxes below. Click next to Contributing Artist or Composer to enter that information.

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Choosing Your Own Cover Art

If your media file doesn’t pull the proper cover art, or if you simply wish to find a different image, you can add your own. Search online for a suitable image. An ideal size would be around 300 x 300 pixels, give or take. Right-click on the image copy the image.

You’ll need to switch to Expanded title (if you haven’t already) to paste the image.

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Paste your new image by right-clicking on the current image and select Paste album art. Note: If the image is not suitable size or type, the Paste album art option will not be available.

Your new cover art will appear in Windows Media Player.

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Even though it is pulled from the Internet, cover art is cached on your computer and will still be available when you are disconnected from the Internet.

Are you new to Windows Media Player? If so, check out our article on how to Manage your music with Windows Media Player.

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Is the ability to see the addresses for weblinks the only reason that you keep the Status Bar visible? Now you can hide the Status Bar and move that address display to the Address Bar in Firefox.

Before

Here is the normal “Status Bar” address display for the weblink we were hovering the mouse over in our browser. That is nice but if you really prefer to keep the “Status Bar” hidden what do you do? Move that display to a better (and definitely more convenient) location.

After

Once you have the extension installed that is all there is to it…you are ready to go. Notice the address display in “Address Bar”. That is definitely looking nice.

Just for fun we temporarily left the “Status Bar” visible as a demonstration while hovering over the link.

And then with the “Status Bar” totally disabled…more screen real-estate is always a good thing.

Note: The Status Address Bar extension does not show the original address behind shortened URLs.

Conclusion

If you are looking for an alternate way to see the address behind weblinks and acquire more screen real-estate, then the Status Bar extension will be a wonderful addition to your Firefox Browser.

Links

Download the Status Address Bar extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

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If you are worried about the websites that your children could accidentally visit while browsing, then you may want to have a look at the Kid Safe – LinkExtend extension for Google Chrome.

Kid Safe – LinkExtend in Action

Before going any further you may want to have a quick look at the options. Everything is enabled by default but it is recommended that you disable the “Allow entering unsafe sites Option”.

For our first example we visited “chatroulette.com”. As you can see in the screenshot WOT and McAfee SiteAdvisor gave the website a “green rating” but when it came specifically to its’ level of appropriateness for children LinkExtend gave it a “yellow rating”.

Our second example was “hotbabes.com”…obviously not a good website for any child to visit. You can see that the entire window area has been totally “blacked out” and the available information for this site from each of the six ratings sources. The “Toolbar Button” is also displaying a “red rating”…

Notice the two links at the bottom of the ratings screen…both will be visible if the “Allow entering unsafe sites Option” is not disabled (see Options above).

You can see the difference for the links at the bottom of the ratings screen if you have the “Allow entering unsafe sites Option” disabled. Definitely much much better…

Clicking on the “Find Kids Sites Link” will navigate the tab to the Yahoo! Kids website.

The extension will also place “ratings buttons” beside search results at Google. As you can see in the screenshot below not all of the results had information available for them at this time. But it is certainly a lot better than nothing at all when it comes to keeping your children safe.

A close-up look at the ratings for one of the search results.

Conclusion

While no browser add-in makes for a perfect solution the Kid Safe – LinkExtend extension will definitely be a helpful addition to your family’s Chrome browser.

Links

Download the Kid Safe – LinkExtend extension (Google Chrome Extensions)

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Would you like to start your own blog or website?? With a free WordPress? account, it’s free and easy to get started creating your own professional quality blog site.

This is the first part in a series on how to create your own professional quality blog site. No, we’re not talking about some cheapo looking blog from Blogger or something on Facebook, but creating a quality blog you can be proud of and present to millions of readers online.

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms, powering hundreds of high-profile websites and blogs around the world.? It’s both powerful and easy to use, which makes it great whether you’re just starting out or are a blogging pro.? To start out with your blogging project WordPress is completely free, and you can use the online interface or install the WordPress software on your own server and blog from there.

Getting Started

You can start a blog in just a few minutes.? Head over to WordPress.com and click Sign up now on the right-hand side of the main page.

Enter a username and password, check that you agree with the legal terms, select the “Gimme a blog” bullet, and click Next.

WordPress may inform you that your username is already taken, simply choose a new one and try again.

Next, choose a domain for your blog.? This will be the address for your site, and cannot be changed, so be sure to choose exactly what you want.? If you’d prefer your address to be yourname.com instead of yourname.wordpress.com, you can add your own domain for a fee after your blog is setup…but we’ll cover that later.

Once you click signup, you will be sent a confirmation email.? While you wait for the email to arrive you can go ahead and enter in your name and a short bio about yourself.

When you receive your confirmation email, click the link.? Congratulations; you now have your own blog!

You can view your new blog immediately, though the default theme isn’t very interesting without your content and pictures.

Back on the page you opened from the email, click Login to access your blog’s administration page and to start adding stuff to your blog.? You can also access your blog’s admin page anytime by from yourname.wordpress.com/admin, substituting your own blog name for yourname.

Enter your username and password, then click Log in to get started.

Adding Content to your WordPress.com Blog

When you sign in to your WordPress blog, you’ll first see the WordPress Admin page.? Here you can see recent posts and comments, and you can see stats of how many people have visited your site.? You can also access all of your blog tools and settings right from this page.

To add a new post to your blog, click the Posts link on the left, then click “Add New” either on the left menu or on the top of the Edit Posts page.? Or, if you want to edit the default first post, hover over it and select Edit.

Or click the New Posts button on the top of the page.? This menu bar is always visible whenever you’re logged in, so it’s an easy way to add a post.

The editor lets you easily write anything you want in a Microsoft Word-style editor.? You can format your text, add lists, links, quotes, and more.? When you’re ready to share your content with the world, click Publish on the right side.

To add pictures or other files, click the picture icon beside “Upload/Insert”.? Your free blog account can store up to 3Gb of pictures and documents which will definitely give you a good start.

Click Select Files, and then choose the pictures or documents you want to add to your post.

When the pictures have uploaded, you can add a caption and choose how to position the picture.? When you’re finished, select “Insert into Post”.

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Or, if you want to add a video, click the video button.? You have to add a paid upgrade to upload videos directly, but you can add YouTube and other online videos for free.

Click the “From URL” tab, and then paste the link to the YouTube video and click Insert into post.

If you’re a code geek, click the HTML tab in the editor and edit the HTML of your blog post the geeky way.

Once you’ve added all your content and edited it the way you want, click the Publish button on the right of the editor.? Or, you can click Preview to make sure it looks right, and then click Publish.

Here’s our blog with the new blog post containing a picture and video.? While you’re getting to know you’re way around the controls in WordPress, the Preview feature will be your best friend while you try to organize the content to your liking.

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Conclusion

It only takes a couple minutes to get started blogging at WordPress.com. Whether you want to write about your daily life, share pictures of your children, or review the latest books and gadgets, WordPress.com is a great place to get started for free.? But we’ve only covered a small portion of the WordPress features…but this should get you started. Check back for more WordPress and blogging coverage coming up soon!

Links

Signup for a free WordPress.com account

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Have you ever needed the standard Microsoft fonts such as Times New Roman on your Ubuntu computer?? Here’s how you can easily add the core Microsoft fonts to Ubuntu.

Times New Roman, Arial, and other core Microsoft fonts are still some of the most commonly used fonts in documents and websites.? Times New Roman especially is often required for college essays, legal docs, and other critical documents that you may need to write or edit.?

Ubuntu includes the Liberation alternate fonts that include similar alternates to Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New, but these may not be accepted by professors and others when a certain font is required.? But, don’t worry; it only takes a couple clicks to add these fonts to Ubuntu for free.

Installing the Core Microsoft Fonts

Microsoft has released their core fonts, including Times New Roman and Arial, for free, and you can easily download these from the Software Center.? Open your Applications menu, and select Ubuntu Software Center.

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In the search box enter the following:

ttf-mscorefonts

Click Install on the “Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts” directly in the search results.

Enter your password when requested, and click Authenticate.

The fonts will then automatically download and install in a couple minutes depending on your internet connection speed.

Once the install is finished, you can launch OpenOffice Writer to try out the new fonts.? Here’s a preview of all the fonts included in this pack.? And, yes, this does included the infamous Comic Sans and Webdings fonts as well as the all-important Times New Roman.

Please Note:? By default in Ubuntu, OpenOffice uses Liberation Serif as the default font, but after installing this font pack, the default font will switch to Times New Roman.

Adding Other Fonts

In addition to the Microsoft Core Fonts, the Ubuntu Software Center has hundreds of free fonts available.? Click the Fonts link on the front page to explore these, and install the same as above.

If you’ve downloaded another font individually, you can also install it easily in Ubuntu.? Just double-click it, and then click Install in the preview window.

Conclusion

Although you may prefer the fonts that are included with Ubuntu, there are many reasons why having the Microsoft core fonts can be helpful.? Thankfully it’s easy in Ubuntu to install them, so you’ll never have to worry about not having them when you need to edit an important document.

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There are several scenarios where you may run into trouble uninstalling the 2010 Beta and trying to install the RTM (final) release. Today we’ll cover the problems we ran into, and how to fix them.

You would think upgrading from the Office 2010 Beta to the final release would be an easy process. Unfortunately, it’s not always that simple. In fact, we ran into three different scenarios where the install wasn’t smooth whatsoever.

If you currently have the 2010 Beta installed, you have to remove it before you can install the RTM.? Here we’ll take a look at three different troublesome install scenarios we ran into, and how we fixed each one.

Important Note: Before proceeding with any of these steps, make sure and backup your Outlook .pst files!

Scenario 1 – Uninstall Office 2010 Beta & Fix Install Errors

In this first scenario we have Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta 32-bit installed on a Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit system.

First try to uninstall the Office 2010 Beta by going into Control Panel and selecting Programs and Features.

Scroll down to Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, right-click it and select Uninstall.

Click Yes when the confirmation dialog box comes up.

Wait while Office 2010 Beta uninstalls…the amount of time it takes will vary from system to system.

To complete the uninstall process, a reboot is required.

Fixing Setup Errors

The problem is when you start the installation of the 2010 RTM…

You get the following setup error even though you uninstalled the 2010 Beta. The problem is there are leftover Office apps or stand alone Office products. So, we need a utility that will clean them up for us.

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Windows Installer Clean Up Utility

Download and install the Clean Up Utility (link Below) following the defaults.

After it’s installed you’ll find it in Start All Programs Windows Install Clean Up …go ahead and launch the utility.

Now go through and remove all Office Programs or addins that you find in the list. Make sure you are just deleting Office apps and not something you need like Java for example. If you’re not sure what something is, doing a quick Google search should help you out. For instance we had the Office labs Ribbon Hero installed… just highlight and click Remove.

Remove anything that has something to do with Office…then reboot your machine.

Now, you should be able to begin the installation of Office 2010 RTM (Final) Release without any errors.

If you do get an error during the install process, like this one telling us we have old version of Groove Server…

Navigate to C:UsersusernameAppDataLocalMicrosoft (where username is the computer name) and delete any existing MS Office folders. Then try the install again, this solved the problem in our first scenario.

Scenario 2 – Not Being Able to Uninstall 2010 Beta from Programs and Features

In this next scenario we have Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta 32-bit installed on a Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit system.

Another problem we ran into is not being able to uninstall the 2010 Beta from Programs and Features. When you go in to uninstall it, nothing happens.

If you run into this problem, we again need to download and install the Windows Installer Clean Up Utility (link below) and manually uninstall the Beta. When you launch it, scroll down to Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 (Beta), highlight it and click Remove.

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Click OK to the Warning Dialog box…

If you see any other Office 2010, 2007, or 2003 entries you can hold the “Shift” key and highlight them all…then click Remove and click OK to the warning dialog.

Now we need to delete some Registry settings. Click on Start and type regedit into the Search box and hit Enter.

Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Office and delete the folder.

Then navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Microsoft Office and delete those keys as well.

Now go into C:Program Files and find any of these three folders…Microsoft Office, OfficeUpdate, or OfficeUpdate14…you might find one, two or all three. Either way just rename the folders with “_OLD” (without quotes) at the end.

Then go into C:UsersusernameAppDataLocalMicrosoft and delete any existing MS Office folders. Where in this example we have office, Office Labs, One Note…etc.

Now we want to delete the contents of the Temp folder. Click on Start and type %temp% into the Search box and hit Enter.

Use the key combination “Ctrl+A” to select all the files in this folder, then right-click and click Delete, or simply hit the Delete key.

If you have some files that won’t delete, just skip them as they shouldn’t affect the Office install. Then empty the Recycle Bin and restart your machine.

When you get back from the restart launch the Office 2010 RTM installer and you should be good to go with installation.

Because we uninstalled the Office 2010 Beta manually, you may have some lingering blank icons that you’ll need to clean up.

Scenario –3 Uninstall 2007 and Install 2010 32-Bit on x64 Windows 7

For this final scenario we are uninstalling Office Professional 2007 and installing Office Professional Plus 2010 32-Bit edition on a Windows Ultimate 64-bit computer. This machine actually had Office 2010 Beta 64-bit installed at one point also, it’s since been removed, and 2007 was reinstalled.?

Go into Programs and Settings and uninstall Microsoft Office Professional 2007.

Click Yes to the dialog box asking if you’re sure you want to uninstall it…

Then wait while Office 2007 is uninstalled. The amount of time it takes will vary between systems.

A restart is required to complete the process…

Again we need to call upon the Windows Installer Clean Up Utility. Go through and delete any left over Office 2007 and 2010 entries.

Click OK to the warning dialog that comes up.

After that’s complete, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Office and delete the folder.

Then navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Software Microsoft Office and delete those keys as well.

We still need to go into C:Users usernameAppData Local Microsoft (where username is the computer name) and delete any Office folders. In this example we have Outlook Connector, Office, and Outlook to delete.

Now let’s delete the contents of the Temp folder by typing %temp% into the Search box in the Start Menu.

Then delete all of the files and folders in the Temp directory.

If you have some files that won’t delete, just skip them as they shouldn’t affect the Office install. Then empty the Recycle Bin and restart your machine.

If you try to install the 2010 RTM at this point you might be able to begin the install, but may get the following Error 1402 message.

To solve this issue, we opened the command prompt and ran the following:

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%infdefltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose

After the command completes, kick off the Office 2010 (Final) RTM 32-bit edition. This solved the issue and Office 2010 installed successfully.

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Conclusion

Except for the final scenario, we found using the Windows Installer Clean Up Utility to come in very handy. Using that along with deleting a couple folders and registry settings did the trick. In the last one, we had to get a bit more geeky and use some command line magic, but it got the job done.

After some extensive testing in our labs, the only time the upgrade to the RTM went smoothly was when we had a clean Vista or Windows 7 system with a fresh install of the 2010 beta only. However, chances are you went from 2003 or 2007 to the free 2010 Beta. You might also have addins or other Office products installed, so there are going to be a lot of different office files scattered throughout your PC. If that’s the case, you may run into the issues we covered here.

These are a few scenarios where we got errors and were not able to install Office 2010 after removing the beta. There could be other problems, and if any of you have experienced different issues or have more good suggestions, leave a comment and let us know!

Link

Download Windows Installer Clean Up Utility

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