You may think that an OEM is being 'cheap' by putting a recovery partition on a computer and NOT giving you original Microsoft CD/DVDs. They take up valuable hard drive real estate, but the content of a recovery partition is maybe more valuable than the space it occupies. The recovery partition...
A judge has ok'ed the class action lawsuit against Microsoft regarding the 'marketing' stickers applied to the front of XP machines in the months leading up to the release of Vista. We hear that some 'big noises' within the Microsoft empire had misgivings about rather vague 'meaning'...
You know something has worked well when newsgroup 'nay sayers' fall silent or suddenly change sides. Windows XP had problems when first released. Make no mistake, it was a quantum leap forwards especially for Windows 9x/ME users, but it was dogged by incompatibility issues. Anybody who can't...
You don't believe me? So go take a look for yourself.. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310560 It is a DIAGNOSTIC tool. It has never been officially designated an on/off switch, but it became common among Windows 9x users to use it as one. The problem stemmed from a small and finite block of resources...
Since writing the first part, I have reloaded Halo for PC, Combat Flight Simulator 3 and Fable Lost Chapters. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the DirectX 9 'pack' has improved the way the games play now. I can set detail in each game on the highest settings possible, and they will...
Remember 'First Aid', 'RegClean', or 'CleanSweep', 'Norton System Doctor', or 'Nuts n Bolts'? If you were a Windows 9x tinkerer, you might. The idea behind them was to aid the computer user in case of problems, and boy did some people have problems!! First Aid...
When I first started to use Vista, I was surprised at what would run. Virtually everything I had was ok, games included. However, while games in general would run, some didn't run particularly well. The high end games like Fable, CFS3, Halo and Age of Empires III were good as long as detail was kept...
Page files do not exist purely to use up valuable hard drive real estate. Windows is not the only OS to use a page file. The page file is not part of some underhand Microsoft scheme to force you to go out and buy a larger hard drive. The page file exists to help you, to extend your system beyond the...
Prologue Wait up. I hear voices in the wind. ".... I didn't know how to work the program... nobody told me I had to do it... I didn't have any blank CD/DVDs... my friend who is a computer expert told me that it was unnecessary.. I never read all of that crap which pops up when the computer...
Your computer is acting up, and it's not always easy to tell. Some of the symptoms of a virus and/or Trojan are similar to what is seen as a hard drive sings its swan song. Question #1.. Was it always that way? Most computers when first supplied work very well straight out of the box. If, for some...