windows

Tips for Keeping Vista Running Smoothly

As we all know, people are having issues with Windows Vista. While personally I know that these issues truly aren’t the fault of Windows itself, the world seems to want to think of it that way. Here are some tips to keeping Vista running smoothly:

• Don’t buy your computer cheap. Now, I know this doesn’t help people who already own a computer with Vista, but for anyone looking to get a new machine in the near future, my advice is to not go cheap. Ultimately, you’ll be getting bad or unstable hardware which will cause you a plethora of problems with Vista in the future. If you’re buying a desktop, I’d recommend spending at least $700 for the tower itself, not including the monitor and peripherals. This way you know you’re most likely getting higher quality hardware.
• Keep your computer clean. Don’t be installing tons of software you’re only going to use once. I personally go through my Remove Programs list once a week and uninstall anything I don’t need again. Don’t let programs launch when Windows starts up. Only open programs when you need them. If you don’t know how to turn off a program from starting up when Windows starts, there’s a great way to stop it from happening.
  1) Hit Windows + R and type “msconfig”. Hit Enter. If Windows asks you to allow, hit Allow or Continue.
  2) Go to the Startup tab and uncheck any programs you don’t need running when Windows starts up. This includes things like Adobe, MSN, AOL, Quicktime, Java, or iTunes. Be sure not to disable any Microsoft items or Antivirus/Antispyware!
• Have a computer with a dual core or quad core processor? Use it! For some strange reason, Windows will not use multiple cores when booting up the computer. Once you’re in Windows it will use them, but not during the boot process. This significantly slows things down. Here’s how you can turn on the other cores:
  1) Hit Windows + R and type “msconfig”. Hit Entier. If Windows asks you to allow, hit Allow or Continue.
  2) Go to the Boot tab and click Advanced Options. Check the “Number of Processors” box and from the drop down, select 2 or 4 or however many processors your computer has. Note that if you only have 2 cores, only 2 will be listed. If you have 4, only 4 will be listed and so forth, so chose the maximum number in this list.
• Use a good Antivirus and Antispyware program. By “good,” I mean a few things. Firstly, the detection rate needs to be high. Secondly, is it a “lightweight” program. What I mean by this is how much resources does it use on your computer? The number 1 cause of slowness on computers is not the hardware but the Antivirus program that is running in the background. Absolute no-go programs are Norton, McAfee, or AOL protection. These programs will bring your computer to an absolute crawl regardless of how powerful it is. The #1 program that I recommend is Kaspersky Internet Security (kaspersky.com). Kaspersky is a full internet protection suite protecting you against both viruses and spyware. It is extremely lightweight and runs in the background without you even knowing it’s there. Another recommendation would be Trend Micro Internet Security (trendmicro.com). I personally don’t like this as much as Kaspersky, but it is a very decent solution.
• Keep your desktop clean. Surprisingly, the number of icons you have on your desktop can affect the performance of your computer. While this isn’t as much of an issue with higher-end machines with good graphics cards, you’ll notice performance hits on lower end machines since the computer needs to re-render all of these icons every time you go back to your desktop. Folders are a Godsend. Use them.
• Useless programs, while sometimes fun, can actually hurt your computer. This includes stuff like Weather programs which keep you updated (use the Sidebar in Vista!), programs that change your mouse cursor, or toolbars for your browser. More often than not, these programs also contain high amounts of viruses and spyware. Stay away from them.
• Leave your computer on all the time. In the pre-Windows XP days, leaving your computer on 24/7 was a sin. The reason for this was that the hardware in your computer wasn’t meant to be kept running for that long. These days, the same exact hardware that’s going into enterprise-level servers is pretty much what you’ve got sitting in your computer. It can more than withstand staying on all the time. The advantage to this is huge: Windows Vista will automatically perform maintenance on the computer while its not in use, such as defragmenting the hard drive. Also, constantly shutting down/booting up your computer will effect performance of things like Superfetch as it has to not only load Windows, but commonly used applications when booting up.

So there you go. That’s my list of tips for running Windows Vista smoothly. I hope they can be of help to you.

Just When You Think You Have it Perfect

It all started with this, my awesome keyboard. Three weeks ago, the Logitech bluetooth receiver decided to go bad on me, leaving me with no keyboard other than a 8 year old Microsoft PS/2 model which I’m surprised still has more than half of the keys working.

Just prior to this time, my motherboard’s PCIe-x16 slots went out as well. Luckily, ASUS has a relatively no-questions-asked Warrenty Exchange policy and I shipped it out for an exchange. It just so happens that I had a brand new Intel motherboard sitting around which I was planning on using for a secondary machine which would, in turn, become my server. I installed my Intel board, and with a quick reactivation of Windows, I was on my way. Then, the keyboard receiver gave out.

Unfortunately, the Intel motherboard doesn’t have any PS/2 ports, which left me without a keyboard for around 24 hours. I quickly picked up a $10 wired USB keyboard from my local Best Buy. I then proceeded to call Logitech and, once again, ship out the bad receiver for a no-questions-asked warranty exchange of the receiver.

Two days ago, the receiver arrived in the mail and I was quite ready to get rid of that horrible wired keyboard and go back to the diNovo Edge. My ASUS motherboard also arrived. Upon plugging in the receiver to my computer, Windows seemed unable to locate any drivers for the device. This was rather strange considering it shouldn’t need any drivers and the fact that Logitech doesn’t even provide any.

After a lot of diagnosing and registry tweaking, I determined that somehow, somewhere, the malfunctioning USB receiver corrupted some driver somewhere on my Windows installation and I for the life of me couldn’t figure out how to reverse that damage.

I also recently decided to upgrade from a total of 380GB of HDD storage to 2×500GB drives for a total of 1TB. Given the current events, I thought it best just to pull my old hard drives out, switch back to my ASUS motherboard, throw in two brand new drives, and reinstall Windows completely. I begin this process at around 11PM. Formatting my new 500GB HDD took around two hours first.

Three hours later (that’s 2AM), I’m back in Windows Vista x64 and everything seems to be working perfectly, including my diNovo Edge keyboard.

Oh boy was I wrong.

An hour into installing all of my commonly-used applications (now 3AM), and right in the middle of formatting the secondary 500GB hard drive, my computer suddenly shuts itself off without warning. There was no crash. It was as if someone pulled the power cord out of the wall.

I think to myself, that was odd, and reboot the computer. Once again, I come back into Windows and all seems to be running fine for about 5 minutes when it happens again.

At this point, I start thinking that my BIOS settings are messed up or I didn’t install the CPU’s heatsink on the motherboard properly so my CPU was significantly overheating and shutting the unit off. Upon going into BIOS and looking at the hardware monitor, I discover that, indeed, the CPU is running farely warm. About 50 degrees Celsius too warm for idling. I instantly think this is the cause of my issues, so I remove the heatsink, reset the processor, and reattach the heatsink. (now around 4AM)

Now, the problem I faced at this point was two-fold. 1) The thermal compond was a bit old and needed to be replaced and 2) the brackets which latch the heatsink to the motherboard were worn and the heatsink wouldn’t set tight enoguh on the motherboard. I decided that, considering it’s 4AM, it would be best I go to bed and continue this journey in the morning.

Bright and early (that means 10AM for me), I wake up and take a drive out to run a few errands, including picking up a new heatsink and fan. I decided that while I’m out, I might as well buy some external hard drive enclosures in order for me to easily transfer the data off of my old HDDs to my new ones. I also picked up a brand new computer case which would help with cooling significantly.

After driving a total of 75 miles all over the city of Tampa just to find stores that have what I need in stock, I arrive back home around 3PM and begin assembling my computer from scratch as I now need to switch cases.

Around 4PM, I finish this process, plug my computer back in, and, to my surprise, it actually boots the first time. The CPU is running extremely cool as are all the other components thanks to the new case. Windows sees that there was a problem shutting off previously (no kidding) and proceeds to run chkdsk on the primary partition. However, about 10 minutes into running chkdsk, it suddenly locks up and does absolutely nothing. I rebooted the computer, and again, experienced the same thing.

At this point I’m just about to lose all self control. I say to myself, “Screw it” and reformat and reinstall Windows once again. Two hours later (around 6:30PM), Windows is installed and I proceed to install drivers. To my despair, halfway through this process, I lose all power to the unit just like before.

I was at a full and complete loss for what to do next. I thought I’d tried everything … until I noticed one key issue.

The fan on my power supply wasn’t spinning.

As it turns out, the issue with the power loss was because the power supply (not the CPU) was overheating and shutting down automatically. This was ridiculously odd considering I have only owned that PSU for around a month.

I rebox it, and head back to the Best Buy where I purchased it and get an exchange.

To make a long story short (it’s too late I think), just over 24 hours later, my computer is back up and running perfectly smooth.

Let’s hope it stays that way for a VERY long time…

The Email Client

For the past two weeks, I’ve been using Windows Live Mail exclusively for my email client. I was giving it a try to see if it was a viable (and productive) option to move permanently to it, away from my regular usage of Mozilla Tunderbir

While I was using it, I found a good number of things I liked about it: how it was so simple and straightforward, yet got the job done brilliantly. On the other hand, I did find a few annoyances as well.

However, in the end, it seems the good significantly outweighs the bad. Windows Live Mail is a solid product. It has a clean and sleek design, and its features offer everything I need for desktop email and more

Congratulations Windows Live Mail, you’ve won this geek over.

Tier 2 support rep, please!

Staying on topic with my previous two posts about my upgrade to Windows Vista, I’m still very happy I made the upgrade and absolutely loving Vista. However, with that said, I have one persisting problem.

Randomly throughout the day while I’m browsing the internet I suddenly cannot connect anymore. Sounds like a typical connection problem, right? Think again. What’s even more strange about this issue is that only my browser connectivity cuts out. I always have mIRC open with an active connection to various networks. I always have Trillian open with several chat windows open. I have Thunderbird open which is regularly downloading any new email. Every single application outside of my browsers is able to connect perfectly fine. Yet as soon as I try to do something in a browser (whether it’s Firefox, Opera, or IE7), I have absolutely no connectivity.

But wait, it gets stranger. I can’t even connect to my router. Even worse, I can’t even connect to localhost. Yet I can do pings and tracerts in the command line to absolutely anywhere I like with no problem whatsoever.

Clearing all cache has no effect. Disabling/enabling the network card has no effect. Releasing and renewing my IP does nothing. Flushing the DNS cache does nothing. Manually editing my HOSTS file to point to a specific IP is pointless. Updating to the latest drivers doesn’t work. Heck, I can log off my user account and log back in and nothing budges.

And to top it all off on the weirdness scale, there is absolutely nothing in the Event Viewer to indicate anything strange or any error occurred at any point anywhere close to the time I lost connectivity. No failed drivers, no security restrictions, no memory allocation errors. Nothing.

I don’t consider myself to an MCSE or anything, but I’ll be honest and say I know a heck of a lot and I know how to fix most any issue that comes up. But this one has me completely and utterly stumped.

So I decided to buckle down and call Microsoft. So after going through 30 minutes of verifying that my version of Vista Ultimate had actually been activated, I’m put on with a tech support rep who had a hard time firstly understanding what the problem was, and secondly understanding that I probably knew a infinite amount more than her about Windows. But I decided to play along for the time being.

But after she asked me to uninstall the Google Toolbar from IE7 and use a proxy server, I put my foot down and said clearly that Internet Explorer is not the problem! I mean, come on? The first thing I said to this rep when I got on the phone was it wasn’t local to Internet Explorer. It happens with any browser and anytime I try to access something via the HTTP protocol. Apparently that flies over her head.

I also indicated very clearly the only way I had found to temporarily resolve the problem was to reboot the computer. Yet she instructs me to reboot into Safe Mode after I put my foot down and corrected her about the toolbar/proxy. At that point, I gave up and asked to be moved to a Tier 2 rep. After a bit of trouble with that, I at least get on with someone who knows what they’re talking about.

I can at least talk to this guy in technical jargon and he trusts me when I say I’ve tried things that haven’t worked.
So he gave me a slightly modified driver to try … which unfortunately required me to reboot.

I honestly don’t think it’ll work. So basically, at this point I’m just waiting for the issue to pop its head up again.

Lesson learned: ask for a Tier 2 rep right off the bat.

Windows Vista - One week after installation

Just under a week ago I upgraded my laptop (running Windows XP MCE 2005) to Windows Vista Ultimate. You can read more about this in my previous post: (here).

As I indicated in my previous post, I was outright impressed with the quality job that Windows Vista did when it upgraded my system. In the past, Windows upgrades were almost a taboo in the computing world. Windows 98 to XP? Forget it. Not happening. However, with Vista, this is completely changed around. It’s now a pleasure to upgrade.

Of course, it hasn’t come without its downfalls. For one, my printer drivers aren’t working properly since HP has yet to release Vista compatible drivers for their printer line (at least my models). My antivirus software (CA Antivirus 2007) supposedly works on Vista with a minor patch. This isn’t the case. I discovered that whenever my computer was idling and CA attempted to update, the system would entirely lock up, requiring a hard reboot. From CA’s website, another patch won’t be around until the end of March. I can’t wait that long. I’ve since switched to Windows Live OneCare. On a side note, I must say that when I was BETA testing OneCare, I wasn’t impressed. Since the release, I’m very impressed with its quality, and most of all, how it works in the background without so much as making a peep.

I also was enlightened to the fact that Intel’s 945GM chipset drivers for Vista weren’t as compatible as Intel claimed they were. However, that was readily fixed with another patch. And at this point, I’ve not seen any glitches pop up.

All in all, the only issues I’ve experienced have been with third-party applications causing problems (like VLC media player switching the interface back to Vista Basic every time a video is played). Vista in itself is ridiculously stable. And in the rare event of an error, it’s readily able to recover completely.

I’m thoroughly enjoying my experience on Vista. I hope you make the decision to upgrade soon. It really does, as the ad campaign says, make you “wow!”

I took the plunge - Windows Vista

I had downloaded the BETA of Windows Vista when it became available publicly and used it on both my desktop and laptop through a dual-boot scenario. This really got me used to the new changes in Vista so I feel very comfortable with it.

However, on my laptop, I have Intel’s 945GM onboard graphics card, which in the beta, and serious problems with Vista’s Aero Glass style (transparency, flip 3D, etc). Any of the new graphical things in Vista also were quite sluggish. This is why I originally didn’t plan on buying Vista until I replaced my desktop.

Just last night, I did a bit of research and discovered that Intel released a new driver for their 945 series graphics chipsets which support Vista to the smallest iota, including the Vista premium features (Aero Glass). So today, I took the plunge and purchased Vista Ultimate and upgraded my laptop’s XP MCE 2005 to Vista Ultimate.

In the past, you dared not upgrade a Windows installation if you didn’t want to have to deal with a ton of compatibility issues afterwards. I had reports of how smoothly Vista’s upgrade is compared to previous Windows versions, though when I was using the BETA, I did a clean installation and not an upgrade. I hadn’t experienced it firsthand until earlier today.

I must say with great enthusiasm that Vista’s upgrade procedure was absolutely flawless. Every file, ever folder, every setting, everything was perfectly preserved. My email, my music, my photos, my recently viewed/opened files, my playlists, heck, even my browser’s cache was preserved in the upgrade from IE6 on my XP installation to IE7 on Vista. Not one thing has gone missing. Not one application has given errors. Not one incompatible driver. I am thoroughly impressed with Vista’s upgrade procedure.

I also must point out that significant improvements have been made since the BETA in terms of speed, reliability, aesthetics, and ease of use. Vista is truly almost twice as fast as my XP installation on the same hardware. Vista can actually take advantage of my dual-core processor with 2GB of RAM, unlike XP. File searching is incredible and fast. Application launches are even faster. Boot time was almost cut in half, and I’m not exaggerating.

Vista’s new style is gorgeous. It has wonderful Aesthetics. 3d animations and hardware acceleration features execute with absolutely zero lag. Media Center is vastly improved over MCE 2005, and it runs flawlessly.

Vista is absolutely wonderful. Period. Kudos to Microsoft for getting away from their stereotypical bug-filled, unstable, and unusable operating system. Vista is amazing. I’ll leave it at that.