Windows 7 BitLocker has been enhanced to provide a better experience for end users. Without having to navigate the Control Panel or configure any difficult settings, users can easily protect USB removable storage devices.

Windows 7 beta 1 includes some handy new shortcut key combinations that allow you to navigate and manage the Windows workspace more efficiently. Here are 10 new Windows 7 shortcuts that will help you speed up your workflow.

This is a simple, but cool new feature. If you have too much clutter on your desktop and want to minimize everything but the application you’re working in, you can “shake” all the other Windows off your desktop. Shake simply minimizes all the windows leaving only the top window available.

If you’ve ever worked a help desk and become extremely frustrated while trying to coax an end user into accurately describing the problem that has been encountered, you are going to love a new tool in Microsoft Windows 7 called the Problem Steps Recorder. When started, this new tool will essentially record each and every step a user takes and document the entire operation in both screen captures and step-by-step details. When stopped, the Problem Steps Recorder will save the recorded information as a compiled HTML file and package it up in a ZIP file that the end user can then e-mail to the help desk.

If you're dying to try out Windows 7 but aren't ready to give up your installation of XP or Vista, let's take a look at how to dual boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista.

If you have a Network drive mapped onto your Windows 7 system, it may prompt you enter the password everytime the system is rebooted even if the “Save Password” is selected.

When trying to access a network share on a Mac OS X network share supporting Windows Sharing Service from a Windows 7 PC you may be thrown with errors like Network path not found error (0×80070035) or go in cycles prompting for logon passwords.

The host file is the one where one enters hostname and IP Address pair manually as against being served by a Name server (ex: DNS). As always the “host” file is under C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ or %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\ and hence cannot be edited by normal users.

Disk Write Caching is a feature which allows you to increase the performance of your Hard Disk. While this can improve performance, it comes attached with its own risk. If the system or disk loses power then there is every possibility that the data gets corrupted or lost in the event of a power failure. Depecnding upon the criticality of the data and the reliability of the power and power backups and UPS,  enabling or disabling Disk Write Caching should be enabled or disabled.