Marc said about 2 hours later

This is almost definitely a video card driver, but it can be as simple as your resolution being incorrect.

Go into Safe Mode (F8 between the BIOS and Windows startup screen). There's not really a good way to set your resolution and have it stick from within Safe Mode (and even harder from Normal mode when you can't see anything ;) ). So your easiest solution is to uninstall the video card driver. Go into Control Panel -> Device Manager and find your video card and uninstall the driver for it.

At this point, you can either try installing the latest driver for your card from the manufacturer website, or you can try to boot into Normal mode and let Windows try to find one for you. I recommend getting the one from the manufacturer. After that, make sure your Windows Updates are up to date and you should be good to go.

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Steve said about 2 hours later

I'll give that a shot. I also tried loading in safe mode, going to msconfig and disabling all start up things (per someone else's suggestion), no luck.

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Geoff said about 24 hours later

Marc nailed it. Game, set, match.

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Marc said 1 day later

Another option: http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-22454-screen-goes-blank-after-starting-windows Although this one would be odd to just crop up randomly.

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GJ said 1 day later

More information needed. While the video card driver is likely the issue, there could be more at play.

Steve--are you seeing the hard drive continue to run after the screen winks out? Does it seem to behave like it's booting the rest of the way into windows, or does it seem to halt all work at the point where the screen dies?

Does the keyboard respond (can you toggle the caps lock light on or off) once the screen dies.

Depending on your answers, you could also be suffering from a virus attack, or more likely, a disk drive failure. Call me tonight and I'll be happy to walk you through debugging the machine.

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GJ said 3 days later

So, are you back up and running?

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Steve said 7 days later

No luck yet, waiting on getting home and getting a different video card out of my stash of old computer bits.

My motherboard does not have on board video.

I've tried uninstalling the drivers both from device manager and from add/remove programs. I've manually installed the drivers I had been using (from 2007) and the latest drivers, neither were successful.

Weird thing is, when the drivers are installed, there are two entries under display adapter - XP1600 blah blah blah and XP1600 blah blad blah SECONDARY. Now when I went through add/remove programs to remove these, it showed one as AGP type and one as PCI type. I'm not sure why, it's an AGP card. Now, the drivers are universal drivers for lots of cards, perhaps the drivers are set up to function with some AGP cards and some PCI cards?

Newbie question - can I buy a PCIExpress video card and plug it into my current motherboard (which is AGP but obviously has PCI expansion slots) and use that kind of video card?

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Steve said 9 days later

Also tried last night to remove just the secondary display adapter. At first I thought it was working, because windows seemed to boot much further along, but then same issue. Dang. Headed home tonight to get a different video card, and will give it a shot again Monday night.

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GJ said 9 days later

No, PCI Express are not compatible with PCI slots. :) Sorry! PCI Express is more modern than AGP, and like AGP, has a dedicated slot on the motherboard pretty much in the place where your AGP slot is now.

You've spent more time that I would have on this--at this point, I'm pretty sure it's a driver issue. I'd just rebuild the dang thing's OS. I can say that AGP drivers were the biggest pains in the ass since the days of DOS. I don't have nearly the same problems with newer PCI-E cards.

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Steve said 9 days later

I'm giving it one more shot - swap out video cards. After that, yes, I'll rebuild the OS. I can just do a simple uninstall and reinstall, right? Will I need to reinstall all the programs that are currently installed? I don't want to format the drive, just uninstall and reinstall.

I really haven't spent that much time - I was gone from Friday through Wednesday. And I have my work laptop, and Parsla has her own laptop, so I'm not really missing it too much. Only thing I'm missing is downloading the latest Top Gear episodes, which I'll do tonight at my house using Parsla's old PC (which is installed at my house).

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GJ said 10 days later

You could do a repair install of Windows first--that'd keep your apps.

What I was talking was a full install--which means, you wipe the drive and start fresh. Generally speaking, it's good to have a spare drive around so you can save all of the old drive so you don't later find a "whoops, I missed something!"

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GJ said 10 days later

the repair install doesn't clean up the drivers much though--so I don't think it'll work, but it may be worth a first shot.

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Steve said 10 days later

I do have two drives in this machine, but I think I foolishly installed all of my programs (MS Office, etc) on the same primary drive as the OS. If I have format the drive, I'll be putting all of the other programs on their own drive. Found two video cards here at home, a GeForce 2 Titanium and an ATI radeon All In Wonder, both 64 mb DDR. Pathetic compared to my 512mb ATI radeon XP1600 Pro that is causing me issues, but since I don't really play games on my computer (other than bejewled 2), It should work to help diagnose the problem.

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Geoff said 11 days later

Drop ATI, and go Nvidia. I had nothing but problems with my ATI video cards (driver problems). Ever since I replaced them with Nvidia, everything has been going great. You can get a 512 AGP Nvidia card for dirt cheap. I've got an GeForce 7300GT that has been working great for me for a few years now.

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GJ said 11 days later

Nice religious post, Geoff. I've had tons of problems with both Nvidia and ATI AGP cards, and the most stable AGP I ever ran was an ATI All in Wonder 9600XT. I have a couple of those babies lying around here, if you want one Steve. If you want a really unstable but fast and noisy AGP card, I have a Zogis (nvidia) 6800XT (256mb 128bit ddr2 memory). It's unstable as all hell but very powerful for an AGP card. Probably too powerful, thus the stability issues. Have lots of memory lying around that might fit your machine too, so let me know and I can send you all kinds of crap. Drives, too, but none are very big or very new. Figure on 40-60-80 mb sizes.

Now, fast forward to today, and I am having zero issues with my current Nvidia cards--one an 8800GT and the other a GT240 Superclock. OK, OK, I've seen a BSOD once in a while (oh yeah, bioshock would do that endlessly on the 8800GT) and KOTOR 1 and 2 are still unstable as all hell on ANY nvidia card, but other than that it's golden.

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Geoff said 13 days later

Just going by my experience. I've owned a few of their cards, including an expensive FireGL. Had nothing but driver problems. No issue to date with either of my Nvidia cards that replaced them. I've got an 8800GT and works just fine. ATI simply doesn't support their cards as well. They refused to release a proper driver for the FireGL card for Windows Vista/7, which renders it useless. Quite dissatisfied with ATI. There are obviously some cheap versions of each which I could understand if they sucked. The FireGL card was supposed to be a premier workstation graphics card (I paid $650 for it). Had problems from the get go and now sits collecting dust. But that old bargain $40 nvidia card, works like a charm. Go figure. Go Nvidia.

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GJ said 13 days later

LOL, you can run a FireGL in Vista/7. It's just not very straightforward because ATI didn't write an official driver. Think your biggest mistake was spending that much on a video card in the first place. :)

Trying to run an AGP card with Win 7 and/or Vista is silly, however. If you aren't into PCI-E land by then, you definitely don't want to be beyond XP. It's not so much the power of the graphics card, it's more that the mobo/chip is likely too old and slow to run either system sufficiently. Contrary to what some techs are saying, Win 7 is far heavier than XP.

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Geoff said 13 days later

At the time that was the only dual DVI video card with sufficient memory to handle the 3D graphics and video I work with. It was indeed, a very poor purchase, I agree.

I can tell you no system can run Vista well. So just skip that one altogether. Win7 however runs quite nice. You are probably correct though that an old system with an AGP card should stick with XP. Still doesn't excuse ATI from writing a proper driver. It is especially difficult to try and fix the driver on your own, when you can't view your screen properly either :)

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GJ said 13 days later

That's why you need 5-7 video cards lying around the house, like me!

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Steve said 13 days later

Well, I have 3 video cards. Swapping out video cards did not help. Grumble. And of course I left my windows XP installation disk back at my house. So yes, GJ, I'm not about to reformat and reinstall. Yippee! As you said, should have done that a while ago. I just can't help myself in trying to figure out what went wrong. But last night, I came to the conclusion that I will never be able to figure out what went wrong.

My ATI card worked great for years. I can't complain one bit. I'm pretty sure it's not an ATI problem but something else screwed up my computer. Maybe I'll try my old GeForce2 titanium just to try a different brand (the old video card I tried yesterday was an old ATI A-I-W Radeon 7500 64 mb).

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GJ said 14 days later

Well, given that it's not a hardware issue, and you've played with the drivers, Windows is definitely the cause. At the minimum, do a repair install. Worst case, do the full rebuild.

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Steve said 18 days later

Grrrr. Reinstalled windows, formatted C drive, issue still persists.

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GJ said 18 days later

Assuming this: format C drive, install windows, doesn't matter which video card, and you're still having issues. Monitor bad? That's pretty rare, but it happens. Have another one you can try?

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Steve said 19 days later

But if the monitor were bad, why would it work in safe mode? I have one at my house, will be a while before I can try it.

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GJ said 19 days later

safe mode runs in a lowest common denominator in terms of monitor abilities--640x480, 60hz, 16 colors. Your monitor may no longer be able to run in a higher mode. This is not uncommon if you're using a CRT monitor. While they last damn near forever, when they go they can lose their ability to operate at higher frequencies, which keeps you from using the resolution you probably have it set for in windows.

If you have a flat screen LCD monitor, this isn't likely the case since they operate on a totally different hardware implementation (in other words, they're not a cathode ray tube!).

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Marc said 20 days later

Your video cards don't happen to require a power source do they? If so, the power supply can be an issue as well. Might only plug in the minimal hardware that is absolutely necessary to get the computer running and/or try a different power supply.

• paid a crook $90
• effectively installed TWO pieces of bad code on your machine
• given your credit card info to that same crook.
• probably given this to your friends, either directly, or that bad code sitting on your box helpfully passes it to them.

Marc said about 4 hours later

Well put GJ. There really needs to be an Internet Safety class that everybody should go through before being allowed to use it.

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Abby said about 8 hours later

Hah. BH-BL offers practically everything BUT Internet Safety. Instead of recommending Keyboarding, they should put together an internet safety course and recommend that.

...instead they just block two-thirds of the entire Internet. (not cool!)

Marc said about 2 hours later

Netbooks are essentially mini-laptops used for simple computer usage. The lack in hardware is merely to aid in making it more portable. There's tons of netbooks out there and all are probably pretty closely matched. One thing to keep in mind is that many have about a 7" screen and for some reason a ridiculous huge resolution (only wide though, they have small vertical screens) for such a small screen. This adds up to you needing some awesome eyes to see things. The keyboards are also usually 70-80% smaller than a regular keyboard. I have tiny fingers and it's still hard for me to type on them.

Personally I would recommend a smaller laptop, but not something that is advertised as a netbook. There's some Thinkpad X60s that are small and the Macbook Air is really thin and pretty small (but full size keyboard and good screen size to resolution ratio), although the Air isn't cheap.

Alternatively, there's a new tablet device coming out likely next Wednesday from Apple. It may or may not be released immediately, but I imagine it will be under $900 and will be easy to use and do basic computing with it. I'll post an update here when I hear more about it.

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Steve said about 3 hours later

I would also suggest you go for a laptop instead of a netbook, mainly due to the small keyboard.

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GJ said about 12 hours later

I've seen a fair number of my older clients go for netbooks. While the keyboards are smaller, this is more an issue for two handed typists like Marc and I than it is for hunt and peckers. If all you're doing is email and web surfing, buying more than a netbook is a waste of money, imho. As far as the screen resolution, most of them have an easy zoom to make reading easier on the eyes. I'd look for that feature if you go for a netbook for Drew's mom.

Just my $0.02.

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Abby said 2 days later

Hmm... I'm a two-handed typist and you said I should get a netbook instead of dragging my desktop to college. Hm. Then again, I got used to typing on my iPod touch, and that's an itty bitty keyboard...

Haven't used a netbook before, though. So don't mind me :]

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GJ said 2 days later

If you're going to college to write papers, do homework, and do the email/web thing, get a netbook. If you're going to school for computer science, get a laptop. Same advice if you're going to college to play video games, but Abby won't be doing that. Riiiiight?

A desktop makes absolutely no sense at college, unless you already have one and don't have the money for a laptop or netbook. I had a desktop at college, but I also lived in a converted high school classroom at the time and space wasn't an issue for me. I also drove a full size van, which helped to move the giant metal desk I got with the computer.

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Abby said 2 days later

...of courseee nottt. :D that's what I have an iPod touch for!

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Geoff said 3 days later

and if you plan on doing cool stuff like me, get a laptop :)

Microsoft Paint is really computer intensive.

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GJ said 4 days later

Yeah, I hear MS Paint in Win 7 requires dual-core processors, minimum.

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Kristen said 4 days later

Hum, not sure. Definitely not interested in spending over $500. She does have horrible eyes though--she can barely use her cell phone (probably overdue for an eye exam by like, 10 years.). You know what they need to invent? You know how they have that jitterbug cell phone? We need a jitterbug laptop/computer for older folks. Email, internet, word processing, pictures. Bingo! Pardon the pun.

Let me know when you guys hear of something like this. If it's not invented yet, tell Steve Jobs Marc.

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Kristen said 4 days later

Drew says, don't tell Steve Jobs. You invent a prototype, and then Drew is (ever so graciously) offering to help get a patent and pitch it.

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Marc said 5 days later

Like I said, there's an Apple Tablet coming out Wednesday, for all we know it'll solve that problem too. :) You'll know if it's worth it if I end up creating a post about how ridiculously cool it is and how it's going to change things. But, more than likely, I won't be impressed. I hate tablets.

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Geoff said 5 days later

Of course you can probably tack on another 0 to that $500 for the Apple Tablet. The Apple logo itself generally costs $500 to begin with. Everything else is extra.

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Marc said 5 days later

Yea, I'll guarantee it'll be out of the $500 price range. The iPhone was that price when it came out.

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Marc said 7 days later

Wow, I was wronged! You can get an Apple iPad, 16GB for $499 (in 2 months). Check out the info:

http://i.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-tablet-latest-creation-event/?sort=newest&refresh=30

This will likely blow the doors off any netbook in the area of web browsing, email, media, games, eBook reading, etc. The only better eBook reader is likely the Kindle, only because of its screen. But if you don't have a beef with reading off the glossy screen, this thing does it all. If you want Wifi access wherever you go, you'll have to up the price a bit, but if you just want Wifi, there's no competition IMO.

It also has a FULL SIZE keyboard, on screen of course, and can be docked to a real keyboard if desired.

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Geoff said 7 days later

http://www.apple.com/ipad/#video

there you go baby, your answer.

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GJ said 8 days later

uh, Marc, I don't think it touches the notebook you and I were discussing. :) Even though that one is twice the cost.

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Marc said 8 days later

I said netbook, not notebook, two totally different uses. If you're willing to pay a little more for the iPad, no netbook is in the same ballpark, unless you're one of those silly people trying to accomplish a lot on a netbook to begin with, in which case: You're doing it wrong. :) I think Apple put it pretty well: There's a mobile need, and a laptop need. iPad is the in between, when you want to just quickly browse the web, quickly look at photos, quickly check e-mail, read a book, quickly play a little game, etc. This is the market netbooks are trying to hit, but do you really need a full operating system getting in the way of accomplishing that, not to mention all the software you need to add on top to, keep updated, etc. If you're looking for something that just works and gets the job done, this kills any netbook.

If, however, you do need more than that, a netbook or a laptop is a better option. For instance Abby is not suited for an iPad when going to college; a netbook would probably be better suited. But if the price looks right, Drew's Mom is looking for an iPad. If the price was lower than $500, it would be a no brainer, but $500 is a bit high, although reasonable IMO.

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Geoff said 8 days later

For an Apple product, $500 is very reasonable for something this new and cutting-edge.

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Kristen said 8 days later

Drew seems to think his mom may not be able to figure out how to turn the iPad on.

That might make for a slow start...

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Geoff said 8 days later

it does require some hand-eye coordination. GJ may have problems as well.

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GJ said 8 days later

marc--gotcha
geoff--only in your world would $500 sound reasonable. :) Never mind I'm going to pay $1k for a notebook shortly.

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Geoff said 9 days later

:) dude the cool factor. Gotta calculate that into the equation.

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GJ said 9 days later

OK, I've looked at the iPad. Have no idea why this is better than a netbook. With a netbook, I can configure it how I want--I can run whatever I want on it out of the box, limited only by the hardware present on the machine. That's why a netbook is still a computer. The iPad is just a big-screen iPod touch.

Now, I'm not saying that it's worse for email, or web surfing. I'm just saying that this is nothing special. It may wipe out the netbook market, but it's not going to be the end-all, be-all device tech consumers have been dreaming of.

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Marc said 9 days later

I think that's precisely why it's perfect for its target. The netbook's main argument now is only price, from a size and use perspective if you want more of a "computer" a netbook is still better than the iPad, but if you really just looking for a coffee table/kitchen device that you can use to check e-mail, browse web, etc. the iPad is just way more fun, useful, and to the point. I do agree though, $500 isn't cheap. For Apple it is, but people are going to be less likely to just pick it up at this price. Give it time though, it will drop in price after their sales aren't quite as high as they were hoping. I give it 6 months (8 from now, since it won't be out for another 2) before that happens.

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Geoff said 9 days later

$500 for a tablet device, common guys. That isn't a bad price. The iPod touch sells for $200 and those things are hot cakes. For $500, I bet this iPad is going to blow the competition out of the market. Just you wait.

What do people besides us geeks actually use their computers for: Email, surfing the web, writing documents, and playing games. This does all that. What more could you really ask for? Not to mention you don't have to pay for or worry about viruses. I'd love to hear an argument for what this can't do, that the general public would want it do to.

I'm not quite convinced this can't be used for college students. I mean, it wouldn't work for a designer or software engineer, but for the other 75% of newbie college students who don't have a clue what they want to do, would allow them to research, write papers, and chug beer (in fact, now a keg of beer instead of the tiny glass you get on the iPhone/touch).

Not to mention, I bet it is a whole lot easier to connect to a wireless signal than it is in Windows. I still can't get that Lenova laptop to connect consistently.

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GJ said 9 days later

When you say "play games" keep in mind you mean "play little crappy games." No Supreme Commander 2 for you, my friend.

Would it work for college students? Depends entirely on what they need. Again, it's not a computer, and that's my point. Well, that, and you won't find me getting one as a result. :)

Ease of wireless connections is all about the driver program. Has nothing to do with Windows if you don't use the windows connection manager, silly. And Windows isn't the only game in town, either.

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Geoff said 9 days later

Windows and Mac...and mac lovers will probably want the iPad, and that is the only "netbook" offered by apple. I don't know too many average users who run Linux, or even know what Linux is.

speaking of which, have you played any of these "little crappy games?" Some of them are quite good, and cost little to nothing. Sure beats paying $50 for a "big crappy game."

Regardless, I doubt too many netbooks or even notebooks for that matter will play (insert your top notch game title here) very well.

The fact remains, this TABLET pc can do more than look pretty. I keep saying the iPhone is an incredible device and a terrible phone (AT&T is mostly to blame at this point). Since the iPad isn't being sold as a phone, I'm fairly confident it will gobble up the competition and be a hit for students and business professionals. It's light, thin, and can do just about anything I need it to do for business travel (even connect to a projector). I'm sure I'll have one sooner than later.

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Marc said 9 days later

You may be right Geoff, it could be good enough for most people in college, especially if you get the dock integrated with the keyboard. It certainly will rock that you can download all of your college books and keep them in the iPad and not have to carry around a huge book bag (Calculus books are heavy!)

I wouldn't call them little crappy games either, this thing has full OpenGL support, and I've seen some pretty awesome games on the iPhone. Granted, it's not the best interface for many popular types of games (FPS, anything that really should be played with a controller). Basically, Real Time Strategy, driving, and any other kind of motion sensing/touch game. "Flight Control" is one of the most addicting games I've played in a while and it's such a simple, nice looking app that utilize touch...things like that people would love to play. I can see RTS being pretty popular on the iPad too, screen real estate was a big problem on the Touch and iPhone.

This will cause a lot of vendors to change their idea of what a netbook should be. One big problem for Apple is Windows 7 is very touch friendly supposedly, and the first person to make a device similar to the iPad running Windows 7 could gobble up some of the market. Not too surprisingly though, I think it's a slim chance since everybody else seems to follow Apple's lead WAY too slowly. Not to mention Windows 7 is still a pretty hefty operating system, might be hard to run it on such terrible hardware.

We'll see what Google's Chrome OS has to offer for netbooks, but if it's anything like Android, it'll just be a laughable attempt at entering the market. Supposedly 'droid is plagued with memory leaks due to multitasking support; Apple got it right after Windows Mobile fell into this same trap, go figure!

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Geoff said 9 days later

Yeah I think this iPad has some tremendous potential. I just wished they gave it a different name. Too darn close to iPod lol. I do like Pad better than tablet, but just gets confused with iPod.

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GJ said 9 days later

Other companies followed Apple's lead on the iphone pretty freaking quickly in my book. Just look at what's on the market these days. I think you'll see iPad competitors pretty quickly if the iPad sells well beyond the fanboy boost in the first few months.

I would still call them crappy little games. Let me know when you get Civ IV running on it. Or Bioshock 2.

Android laughable? Not by a long shot. I think the mobile phone market is in for another shift in the next six months, and Apple won't be leading that charge. But then again, I don't get paid for my technical predictive prowess. :)

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Geoff said 9 days later

I may eat my words a little here...didn't occur to me that the iPad will likely not support Flash. That is a big bummer for web browsing since most sites use it in some way...even if it is advertising :)

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/ipad-flash/

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GJ said 9 days later

Didn't take very long. http://www.itworld.com/personal-tech/94697/msi-ready-launch-ipad-alternative

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Geoff said 9 days later

Yup, saw that too haha

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Marc said 9 days later

MSI sucks, everybody knows that. Show me a real competitor. :)

I don't see a real big deal with Flash support, I think it's going to see some big competition from HTML5. Yea, all the Flash based websites won't work, but people complain about Flash because they can't get their video streaming without it (except YouTube, which is probably 60% of the market anyway). HTML5 has built in support for streaming video and has been implemented by all major browsers except, you guessed it, Internet Explorer. YouTube has even jumped on the HTML5 bandwagon and has support for streaming video if you join their beta. I'm happy to be without the Flash ads though (especially lately on Yahoo's homepage, holy crap people), so I consider it free ad blocking. Thanks Apple! ;)

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Marc said 9 days later

Although Adobe sympathizes with everybody, they appear pretty pissed at Apple: http://theflashblog.com/?p=1703

This is a rather long discussion that could come from this, but Stevie J. himself gave a very good reason for not supporting Flash (besides it likely being CPU intensive and thus battery draining): How do you bring the Flash experience to a device that doesn't have a mouse. You'd be surprised how many Flash based applications utilize mouse movement as an important user interface interaction. How do you replicate that with a touch device accurately? Apple actually just picked up a patent that uses proximity sensing that would enable that, but that's likely a year out, if not more.

Supposedly Android supports Flash, has anybody seen it in action?

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GJ said 10 days later

No, I'm still using the equivalent of a 386 for a phone.

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Geoff said 10 days later

HTML5 won't be replacing Flash anytime soon. It may support video, but as far as I know, it can't provide the interactivity and game play that Flash offers. Until another service can do this with the penetration that Flash has, it isn't leaving! Flash is currently the defacto standard for most videos on the web and until HTML5 is fully supported on all major browsers with enough penetration, I doubt providers will jump aboard. I have no doubt in time HTML5 will offer up some competition, but I will say it is about time the Flash player leveraged hardware acceleration. This is a huge leap forward for Flash...finally.

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Marc said 10 days later

Oh no, it won't replace Flash as a whole, just maybe the video portion of it. I agree though, hardware acceleration is a must for Flash to take the interactivity to the next level.

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Geoff said 11 days later

Yup...same with video as HD surges. It takes a lot of processing power to play HD material and hardware acceleration takes care of the problem.

Marc said 22 minutes later

If you're on a PC, hit your "PrtSc" or "Print Screen" button and then go into MS Paint and go to Edit -> Paste.

If you're on a Mac, hit Command(Apple key) + Shift + 3 at the same time and you'll see the image file on your desktop.

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Kristen said about 1 hour later

Dang, it timed out before I could!! It was pretty darn funny though!! I tried to hit print screen but didn't know about the ms paint step.

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Eric said 1 day later

Typically you have to hit "Alt" + "Print Screen" to copy the window. Then you can paste it into Paint, Word, Powerpoint, Excel, or basically any program that allows you to paste pictures into it. In case you get something like that in the future. But I doubt you'll be lucky enough to catch that again!

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Abby said 1 day later

Since when? I've always used just Print Screen to copy my screen. :] I've actually never heard of combining it with the Alt key.

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GJ said 2 days later

Combining it with the Alt key copies just the current app, not the whole screen. Saves you from having to edit your pic later to remove the rest of the desktop, should you just want a copy of the app's window.

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Geoff said 2 days later

haha I never knew that...I just used print screen. Although with Windows 7, you get a built in screen capture program which gives you lots of flexibility to copy whatever part of the screen you want. I was kind of surprised to see that included in Windows 7....too bad for SnagIt.

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Marc said 2 days later

Windows 7's screen capture program is pretty sweet. Mac OS X has one as well that's essentially the same, which lets you visually pick a window, the whole screen, or a selected part of the screen.

The Alt combination is quite useful though, good suggestion Eric.

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Kristen said 3 days later

I will be fully armed with copying procedures the next time my computer tells me it farted! Thanks guys!

Marc said 27 minutes later

Sounds like you've got lazy palms syndrome. :) Most likely while you're typing your palms are touching the track pad on the laptop. Since most laptops default tapping on the track pad as a mouse click, anytime you let your palm down it taps the track pad and registers a mouse click. Hopefully your Thinkpad isn't much different then mine, so try this:

Start > Control Panel > Mouse

In the Mouse window that pops up, look for "UltraNav" or some equivalent. You'll notice it's an IBM added tab because it has an icon and it looks horrible. In there is a section for TouchPad. If you never use the TouchPad, you can uncheck Enable TouchPad and you'll be good to go. If you just want to disable the tap-to-click feature, click on "Settings..." under that section. You'll see a new window come up with a list of things on the left. Click on "Tapping." You should see a checkbox for "Enable Tapping." Simply uncheck this and click OK. Problem solved.

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Kristen said 42 minutes later

Ahh...I see a drew vs. kristen dilemna brewing. I prefer the mouse, he likes to use the touch pad. I guess I need to cure my lazy palms. LOL thanks Marc!

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Marc said about 3 hours later

The touch pad can still be used, he just would have to give up the tapping. Laura would never give up tapping, but like you I've got the occasional case of lazy palms and can't stand when that happens. I disabled the touch pad tapping on my mac, but on my IBM laptop, I don't seem to have the problem, probably because the touch pad is much smaller.

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GJ said about 6 hours later

Whereas I just disable the damn thing permanently. :)

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Steve said about 9 hours later

Thanks Marc, I've had the same problem when I don't use a mouse. Fortunately, thanks to someone leaving their wireless laptop mouse in the trunk of a rental car I rented, I haven't used the touchpad much at all!

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GJ said 1 day later

You must smack that person! :)

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Abby said 1 day later

I get the same problem on our school computers... unfortunately I'm not allowed to change the settings :(

Marc said 2 minutes later

I forgot to mention, but User Account Control (UAC), which was introduced in Windows Vista, has been greatly scaled back in terms of being annoying. You used to see it trying to do basic operating system operations. Now it pretty much only shows up when copying files to system folders or installing a new program.

And finally, MS Paint has been updated. It's a huge update too, you can accomplish a lot of the basic functionality you can get out of Photoshop and GIMP, although I don't think there's any Layers, but it certainly gives you much more control of things you can do with it.

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GJ said about 5 hours later

Thanks for the excellent write up...of course, the problem is, since XP64 is doing pretty much everything I need now, I'm not shelling out a hundred dollars or more for a shiny new interface--at least, not until they drop support for XP, which is still a ways out.

Does it handle memory and multi-core processors any differently than XP64? I'd be most interested in that--XP64 is a vast improvement over vanilla XP in that aspect, but I've found that a certain hardware suppliers are pretty much ignoring XP64 in terms of driver support (Hewlett Packard, I'm looking at you, mofo!).

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Geoff said about 7 hours later

the fact that XP64 didn't support iTunes, is just plain insane. For that and that reason alone, I uninstalled it. No way I can design and listen to music through, god forbid, Windows Media Player.

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Marc said about 10 hours later

In terms of memory and multi-core, I believe they've made both of those significantly better. So no more 3GB limitations on memory like you saw in XP. This time around Microsoft has really focused on making sure driver suppliers are ready for Windows 7. From what I've read and seen from my own experience installing this on an iMac, most of the drivers are there out of the box. I only had to reinstall a new audio driver, but that was it. My bluetooth keyboard and mouse worked during the install process, which has never happened and was much appreciated!

The XP64 iTunes support is Apple's fault. I'm not sure why they are so far behind on supporting that, but I agree, it's ridiculous. And don't look to Windows 7 for a much improved Windows Media Player, it still sucks.

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GJ said about 10 hours later

The 3GB thing was fixed in xp64, btw.

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Geoff said about 14 hours later

and Vista...I'm running 8 gigs.

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GJ said about 19 hours later

8 Gigs is far more than most folks need. 2GB is all you need if you surf the web with lots of tabs open. Play games, you could get by with 2GB just fine. Run heavy apps? Might need 4GB. Rendering? Ok, now 8GB makes sense. App server? Keep going. :)

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Marc said 1 day later

Yea, I knew Vista had the removal of the limit, but you're one of the few who uses it. :) Plus you can't really say 8GB since Vista probably wastes about 2G constantly.

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Geoff said 1 day later

if not more.

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Geoff said 6 days later

Hey Marc, how is the demo version of Windows 7? Should I wait for the final release? Is it fairly stable?

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Marc said 6 days later

Demo version seems pretty stable, but I'd wait, it's only a month and a half until release I believe. The big reason to wait: There's no magic switch you can throw to convert to the final release. The only way out of the Windows 7 RC to final is to do a full reformat.

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Geoff said 6 days later

gotcha...thanks!

Marc said 11 minutes later

I would contact the police. Most likely they will tell you they'll look into it and completely disregard it, but they should take it very seriously. You can explain to the police what happened and give them the information as well as PayPal's recommendation and they may investigate it. To be honest, when it comes to the internet, the police typically stay clear of it, but they may pass it up to the FBI if they feel there is good reason.

Be very wary of deals from Slickdeals.net. If the deal is coming from a very crappy looking website, it's not worth the possible scam to save yourself some dough. I usually stick to bigger name companies when getting things from slickdeals (Amazon, Best Buy, etc.). More the most part, you probably are safe, but I've come across some sites on there that scream setup.

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GJ said about 1 hour later

As Mark said, call the police. You will have no right to sue if you don't take all appropriate actions. Document all conversations you've had with Paypal, the police, and any other involved party.

I don't follow how Kaspersky Labs figures into this. Kaspersky is a legit software provider--and I think they use Digital River for their online payment work. Was that what was bought with your account?

NEVER ever use financial passwords as passwords to any other site. In fact, try not to even replicate user IDs across those kind of systems. This is a very common ploy.

If you haven't done this already, change all of your secure passwords NOW. Change any other web password that used this compromised one (or even a variant of it) to something different than your secure passwords, and do that now too.

Might be time for me to host a family security seminar. :)

Marc said 22 minutes later

This certainly won't replace e-mail, but this will be a great tool to use for communicating in groups.

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GJ said about 18 hours later

For those that use it, it will replace email. It looks kind of like a blackberry for the web. The key for me--does it work seamlessly with other users who do not use Wave? Can it interact with traditional email, IM, etc.? (I didn't watch much more than 20 min of this, so maybe they covered that).

Looks neat, but it's not definitely a home run--yet.

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Marc said 1 day later

It doesn't look like it integrates with regular e-mail just yet. Integrating with regular IM is practically a given...they have a relatively extensive API, so you can bet that will be developed.

I can see this being extremely popular in the college scene. All of the team projects would benefit greatly from the threadlike e-mails and collaborative document editing.

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GJ said 1 day later

It'll be popular with the Facebook crowd, too. :) Business crowd, I'm not sure if this will catch on or not. In order for it to be successful, it'll require a change to the mindset of the average business user in how they approach email. I don't see this necessarily reducing the amount of time people spend in email--and that's one thing that most folks want to see drop.

Geoff said about 13 hours later

This won't end console wars, not by a long shot. There is nothing unique about the actual GAME PLAY. Who gives a rats butt how it is distributed. It may be where things are heading eventually, but good luck getting 5MB's on your local broadband to stream HD. We have pretty good cable broadband here in Rochester, and I'm lucky to get half that on my network.

The Wii was a revolution because it changed the way we played games. Until someone can top how we interact with games, I see nothing revolutionary about this system. Sounds more like a business model than a gaming console.

I don't see this going anywhere unless they have a HUGE advertising budget, and some kick butt games designed only for this system.

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GJ said about 16 hours later

You miss the point. First, 5MB broadband isn't very far off--you can already get it in many countries, it's just not generally available here in this backwater country. Second, and more importantly...the client hardware is irrelevant to the game being played.

Got an XB360, but want to play a PS3 title today? You're out of luck. This system--no problem.

Got an older computer, way behind specs to play any games released in the past three years? Today, you're out of luck. This system--no problem, since the game runs on the server hardware.

So, Geoff--it ends the console wars by making consoles obsolete. Make sense now?

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Geoff said about 16 hours later

Kind of. But generally speaking the games sell the system. If this virtual console has no good games, then you still need your console. That's the one thing most consoles are usually good at providing...a few killer games. Obviously you have your universal EA, SEGA, etc... games, but Nintendo isn't giving up Mario. Will the Rock Band instruments works with this system? Who knows. Time will tell whether THIS will be the ultimate system. It's definitely a cool idea...but they are going to need some serious server space and power to run this on a global scale.

And about Broadband...read this puppy:
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/41834997.html

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GJ said about 18 hours later

He's talking about broadband as it exists today in the States. Remember my "backwater" comment? The USA is way behind Europe and Japan / Korea in terms of broadband speed available to consumers. What's required by this service exists in other locations--and the USA doesn't dominate the worldwide consumer market like it once did, so they could potentially roll this out and not have to worry about the US catching up right away.

You talk about games selling the systems--I would agree. With the glaring exception of Nintendo, however, the big sellers on console systems are not made or distributed by the console makers. If an alternative arrives that can wipe out the upgrade cycle, it will cream the hardware market.

Now, of course, you bring up a good point about backwards compatibility. That'll be an interesting nut to crack, especially for games like GH which have system-specific hardware. GH isn't the end-all, be-all software, if anything it's at its apex and will decline from here. I don't know that it will be as big a problem in a year's time.

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Geoff said about 18 hours later

This may be on a topic all on it's own, but is our inferior communications systems have more to due with our geographic size? By comparison, Japan and other European countries are tiny. Probably a bit easier to lay down FIOS lines in those smaller countries. And of course, Japans invents just about every cool electronic device there is, so it's natural they get dibs first.

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GJ said about 19 hours later

It is more due to politics than geography. If it was geography, speeds would be lickety split in the cities, wouldn't they?

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Geoff said about 19 hours later

Guess I'm thinking more about TV. This digital transition is like pulling teeth....

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GJ said 1 day later

I've been digital for as long as I can remember. :)

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Geoff said 1 day later

Yeah it must be those yahoos in Montana who have giant antennas for watching terrestrial analog and extraterrestrial aliens

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GJ said 1 day later

Speaking of streetlights, anyone catch the one Google Street View caught the other day?

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Marc said 1 day later

I'm very skeptical this product will work well, let alone ever exist. This smells like future vaporware to me. If it does come out though, it certainly could be a big player in the market.

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GJ said 1 day later

It *is* the guy from WebTV, and we all know how well that worked out.

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Geoff said 1 day later

Yeah I find it hard to believe they have an infrastructure to support this. There would be some serious server load and bandwidth needed to run this. Not to mention storing everything you do on the their system?

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GJ said 1 day later

It's called virtualization, dude. It's been around before, this time around they call it cloud computing or somthing asinine like that. It does take some serious horseypower, but it's physically doable. It's the economic model I'm trying to figure out. Ad-revenue won't support this puppy.

GJ said about 23 hours later

This is why I'm still running XP. My next system will be DOS 6.22.

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Geoff said 1 day later

Marc is on XP on his work computer :) I don't get this message on Vista. I get this message after it asks me if I'm sure I want to open my computer.

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GJ said 1 day later

OK, let me also clarify that I have not installed IE7, nor Window Live Search, or any other of this more recent crap from MS. So, my 64-bit version of XP and my 32-bit version of XP don't do this.

Marc, you a fan of Bill Ingvall? "here's your prompt" heheheh.

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Marc said 1 day later

Speaking of updates, I just picked up a .NET framework update yesterday. After a reboot, I started up Firefox and it let me know Microsoft installed a .NET add-on to Firefox. Can't say I'm too thrilled Microsoft is injecting add-ons into non-Microsoft products as part of a required update.