Friendly Neighborhood Tech Support

Great article here by my boy, Scott Hanselman, on how to help set up and maintain Windows systems for friends and family members who are lacking in tech savvy.

Adding my own $0.02:

• join.me is handy for small stuff, but it might require something more heavy-duty for extended remote maintenance sessions. I haven't tried gotomypc.com yet, but it seems like a more stable solution for hours-long support sessions with lots of rebooting due to installs/uninstalls/updates/etc. Free for 30-days.
• Install an SSH server for command-line authoritah. You can use DynDNS and their IP updater tool to keep track of dynamic IP addresses.
• I used to install all kinds of crap back in the day to deal with security: AVG anti-virus, Lavasoft Ad-aware, ZoneLabs firewall, and so on. Today it looks like Microsoft Security Essentials and the built-in Windows firewall (XP and higher) can handle it all by themselves. It really prunes the system tray of a bunch of intimidating icons.
• Portableapps.com has just about everything anyone could need for software. No more asking to "borrow" your copy of Microsoft Office. The best part is that the PortableApps menu can now update all the apps at once. Perfect.

Airport Printer Install for Windows 7

Installing Apple's Bonjour Print Services for Windows? No need!

1. Get printer's IP address.
2. Start > Control Panel > Devices and Printers
3. Add a printer > Add a local printer
4. Create a new port Standard TCP/IP Port
5. Enter IP address, "IP_{address}" for the name  
6. Make sure the box “Query the printer and automatically select the driver to use” is checked.
7. Choose Custom, then Next.
8. Select printer driver.

Source: http://thingsiknowabout.com/wordpress/?p=21

Delete an EFI Partition from Windows 7

The Windows 7 Disk Management tool has issues deleting those pesky EFI partitions so commonly found on Mac-formatted drives. Use the diskpart command utility instead.

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: RAY

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          465 GB      0 B
  Disk 1    Online         2794 GB  2794 GB        *

DISKPART> select disk 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list part

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    System             200 MB    24 KB

DISKPART> select part 1

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> detail part

Partition 1
Type    : c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
Hidden  : Yes
Required: No
Attrib  : 0000000000000000
Offset in Bytes: 24576

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
* Volume 6                      RAW    Partition    200 MB  Healthy    Hidden

DISKPART> delete part override

DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

Source: http://superuser.com/questions/56958/can-i-delete-efi-system-partition-without-harming-other-data-on-drive