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Kotuku

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Everything posted by Kotuku

  1. The Recovery partition is put there by your computer assembler (Like Dell or HP) and contains an exact copy of your system as at the time you bought it. IT IS NOT to have any other files added and certainly not for your own backups. If you have a system failure to the point where you can't recover, then pressing a certain key combination when it boots up puts you into a point where you can restore the system to exactly how it was the day you bought it. For most that would be a pain in the butt and certainly you lose all data UNLESS it is backed up. Buy an external USB drive for your backups, they are cheap enough and get a 1 Tb one for less than $100 (or close to that) and set up automatic backups to that device. If your system is running well and you have all the programs installed that you want, firstly make a disk image to the new USB drive, it may take half a day (depends on what is on your computer) but now you can use the Operating System disk to restore your computer exactly to this point in time. If you have deleted all the files on the original recovery partition, then you REALLY need to get this USB based backup and disk image done this weekend!
  2. Best double dose of protection I have found is Prevx3. Runs silently with a small footprint and makes an excellent second tier protection. I would also use Microsoft Security Essentials as the first line of defense. At least it behaves well with the installed MS OS. I think you need to get to the bottom and eliminate the poor Avira uninstall. Try installing either of the free programs REVO UNINSTALLER or ZSOFT UNINSTALLEr and see if it can root out the left overs from Avira. You may even have to install again Avira and then use REVO in aggressive mode to clean it properly out of the registry. Note the Free Revo doesn't work on 64 bit OS only the paid version. I have found Malwarebytes better to run as a batch process, say once per week, and not have it running in the background. Certainly not needed if you use Prevx3, as that does a good job on most things
  3. If you qualify to join Microsoft Technet, then you can pay US$150 (approx) and get access to EVERY MS program for evaluation purposes and 10 legitimate licence keys for each program. A bargain if you are running a network with more than one PC and Office 2010 alone for 2-3 PC's covers your cost.
  4. So if you go in via Control Panel/SOUND are you able to set it up as 5 in 1 and Test and hear them play? Have you tried the Free VLC Media Player, does that give 5:1 sound?
  5. If CHKDSK continues after every reboot, that may have encountered another problem, where a dirty flag (to tell it to run CHKDSK) is not cleared. You can google for a fix if this continues. And you are right, the so called recovery disk doesn't seem big enough!
  6. If everything is returning to what it was, are you booting from the hidden Manufacturers recovery partition each time? I have never heard of that happening, but seems the only logical explanation Make sure you have hidden files displayed and then if you go to COMPUTER do you see a smaller recovery partitition (approx 4 Gb)? If so, note the drive letter and go into the BIOS and check what is the first boot priority. Run CHKDSK /R/F To make sure nothing strange going on Run sfc /scannow Do that from an elevated command prompt see what that shows Before deleting anything in you cleanup, make a couple opf reboots and make sure it is doing that cleanly.
  7. Firstly do a CTRL-ALT-DEL and check in the processes Tab that The Visual Studio is not still running, if it is,. kill it. Follow this http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/117229-i...he-rebuild.html That should correct the problem with minimum fuss
  8. OK, well at least you checked. The card is a low end cheap but resonable one, supports DX10 etc, so I would imagine better than the Integrated one, but I have no direct experience. You have re-run the Windoews Experience score, right? It may pay to check the RAM is working OK on the card (not specifically sure how to do that) or complain to the shop you bought it from and try another card? Google for Riva Tuner and check the card is working on all fronts.
  9. Did you install the latest Nvidia drivers from their Web Page? version 190.62 WHWL is the latest. You haven't said if you have 32 or 64 bit Vista. Also (and excuse me if I am wrong), isn't the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator just Integreated Graphics, not a separate card? If it is integreated Graphics, have you turned thta off in the BIOS set-up?
  10. When it freezes, do you get a BSOD? Assuming not, can you hit the WinKey or CTRL/ALT/Del to get out of it or are you forced to hit reset? If you have used the reset button, you MUST do a CHKDSK. Not sure how new you are to this? You need to open a command prompt AS AN ADMINISTRATOR and then type CHKDSK /R/F Say Yes at the prompt and do a reboot and let CHKDSK run. Ity may take some hours. If you have been resetting, you are bound to have some file errors now. What does the EVENT VIEWER say caused the problem? Type EVENT VIEWER in the START SEARCH box at the Orb and click EVENT VIEWER that will be at the top. Report back what it says has happened. What Video driver are you using? Have you updated that? Are you running Aero? If so, turn that off and see if that helps, report how mauch RAM you have and if a dedicated Video card or Integreated graphics More info will help track the problem down. And YES, you can get HD problems on a 2 week old computer (and note you said 2 years in the original post)!
  11. I believe you are correct, you can install from any disk and use your legal key, BUT the key on the Notebook is probably an OEM key and it will probably only allow the same version to be installed as original. Are you sure there is not a hidden partition on your friends notebook with a shadow copy of the whole OS and installed programs? If not, there has to be a way to get an ISO from the manufacturer of the Notebook.
  12. Assume you followed the installation instructions and did NOT have the printer connected when the software was installed? You have to only plug it in at the point in the installation tells you to, that way it finds the correct port.
  13. If they will let you install other programs on the Laptop, install VLC Media Player from www.videolan.org That plays everything and adds all its own codecs and runs fine in 64 or 32 bit OS
  14. I assume the Adobe Folder you deleted is not still in the Recycle bin? If it is, you can get it back. Assuming it is not, can you do a system restore to back before you did the delete, that would be the best solution. As you have deleted a folder without uninstalling the program, can you go to PROGRAMS & FEATURES and see if the Adobe CS3 is still there as a program and try uninstalling? It may give you an option to fix the registry errors. With HP Auto Updates, you need the HP Total Care Advisor open and this will give you the permissions correctly for the install. If that is not active in the tray, then the updates fail. The problems you are seeing are NOT Vista bugs!
  15. Every gadget you add puts a new sidebar.exe process. This is normal. As to why Windows is running slowly, just uninstall the gadget and see if it improves. What Gadget was it?
  16. You may like to install Secunia PSI http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/ It will make sure most programs and some hardware are up to date and offers a simple one click to fix them. It happily sits alongside other AV or Firewall software. You may also like to learn how to use the Reliability and Performance Monitor? Click the Orb and type in Reliability and click on at the top, RELIABILITY & PERFORMANCE. On the new screen that pops up, click the RELIABILITY MONITOR at the left side. Now you see a timeline of events since the computer was first started. Click on any event (as a Yellow triangle on the timeline) to see what happened on that day. It also rates your computer with a score, 10.00 is perfect. Most computers start at or near 10.0 and go down. They go up when you fix problems or don't uninstall software.
  17. OK, this is something to do with Bitdefender, I assume you have this for Anti Virus? Also it is only showing as a warning, so may not be the reason your system restarted. Also, it is to do with Bitdefender scanning the DVD drive, which you probably don't need to happen if there is no disk in there? 1. You should raise this in the Bitdefender Forum help page on their web site. I see by a quick Google there were a lot of these problems in late 2007. 2. Within the Bdefender setup, there should be a tick box to not scan optical drives, you should make sure it isn't scanning them Report back if your problem is solved, so others can learn
  18. It is probable that the Windows solution message is from a previously checked problem by the OS, not necessarily the restart problem. It usually takes a few days for solutions to appear as an offering to you. Does Gateway not offer a solution centre for their machines like Dell and HP? If so, that is your best solution, to allow the Laptop to interact with the Gateway Solution centre and download and update drivers. RAID controller drivers are integral to you being able to access the Hard Disk, so installing the worng driver is a potential for problems! You can check what caused the failure via EVENT VIEWER. If you click the Orb in the lower left and type in the START SEARCH box, the words EVENT VIEWER you will see up the top of that frame, under the program sub heading, the actual Event Viewer. Single click that and it will open Event Viewer. In the left box, click the > next to CUSTOM VIEWS and then single click on ADMINISTRATION EVENTS. In the centre box will appear MANY detected problems. Most are trivial and can be ignored. They are arranged in a time scale, so try to find the one that triggered your reboot and explore in the lower centre pane, what it said happened. It may point you in the right direction Kotuku
  19. OK, well if the problem is there in safe mode, then it isn't ESET. Are you playing the wav file with Windows Media Player? That (unless you turn the features off in set-up) accesses the web to find information. Disable that or better still grab VLC Media Player (www.videolan.org) and associate wav files with it. It is free and does a superb job and makes a point of not phoning home. WHat happens if you dosconnect from the web and then try and play the file? Assuming you have some other big wav files (from a different source) do they exhibit the same problem. Have you run CHKDSK /R/F from an elevated command prompt, just in case the file is damaged
  20. I would have said you don't have enpugh RAM, but you have 3 Gb. Have you run a Ram tester to make sure it is all OK, especially the 2 Gb stick. What Anti Virus are you using? In Safe Mode the AV is not running. Can you stop your AV running in Normal mode and see if that improves it. Have you got the latest Audio driver?
  21. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vis...-menu-in-vista/ This may assist the Ultimate machine find the NAS. That worked for me, although still only have access to the Public Folder, but I just make other folders within that one for Backups of my 4 attached PC's And I assume that is 1 Tb not Gb HD <smile>
  22. Until you get things going, try turning off the Media sharing and the printer sharing. Make sure there is no Password required. Reboot both computers, one at a time. You should be able to see the Public Folder of the other computer from the other computer. If not, your firewalls are interfering and/or your AV product, particularly if you have a suite. Try turning off the firewall, first on one computer and then the other. This is a pretty good write up http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727037.aspx
  23. Google is your friend! http://www.vista4beginners.com/Add-and-rem...-Vista-features Expand each + sign to make sure Windows sound is installed
  24. OK, under that Menu, what sound scheme do you have selected? Usual to use WINDOWS DEFAULT (Modified) It maybe that you do not have all the Windows sounds installed? In which case you will need to go and add in missing windows features and then SAVE the sound scheme in the Sound/Sound drop down menu
  25. Do you have integreated sound or a sound card? In either case have you gone to the manufacturers web site to get latest Vista driver? You can probably get rid of it by disabling it in Device Manager. If you sound keeps playing OK, then it probably means the OS has identified some hardware as Sound, when it isn't, so you would need to find out what it really is
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