December 2007 - Posts

• Clean and learn..

  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 promised to fix lots of things, and it did as long as it knew about everything. Unfortunately, anything it didn't know was flagged as a fault, and countless hours could be spent tracking down a fault that 'wasn't!! CleanSweep promised a great deal too. As long as it was installed, it could track installation files as something was loaded, and could then remove all tracked files in the event that the user wanted to uninstall a program or two. That part worked. The removal of duplicate files didn't always work so well, especially in the case of 'CTL3.DLL'. CTL3.DLL came in many guises and was installed numerous times on a computer which had more than just Windows running. Removal of duplicate CTL3 files spelled disaster. It appeared numerous times because it was needed, but CleanSweep didn't know that and neither did many computer users. Norton System Doctor and Nuts n Bolts watched over systems on the fly, all of which sounded good in principle, but anything that ran in the Windows 9x background also ate resources. Nuts N Bolts had gauges displayed in a 'flyout' bar, and one could successfully predict when Windows would crash through a lack of resources. Great stuff eh, but if one shut down or uninstalled Norton SD or Nuts, the system would keep running way longer. Windows 9x was ok as long as it wasn't connected to the Internet. It didn't matter how many icons were on the desktop or even if Norton SD and Nuts were running, but as soon as a firewall, anti-virus, Messenger and IE were started up, down went the resources. The solution for many was to turn off the firewall and A-V, the only protection that they had, and leave the real culprits running!! Regclean worked because it didn't clean in the true sense. It removed only what was absolutely safe to remove. This wasn't a bad thing because registry bloat could bring Windows 9x to its knees, but it never cleaned like some thought it did. A quick foray and search in Regedit often showed bits and pieces left over. If any of the above utilities had been as good as claimed, I would not have called this piece 'Clean and learn', but that is how it was: 'Clean' your system and 'Learn' how to re-install all of it. It was akin to tending an ornamental garden with a 17 HP brush and field mower. It still is!! Forget about snake oil. Forget the old ways. Forget about registry cleaners. And quit using Isopropryl Alcohol to clean the case, because when you pass a cloth soaked in this stuff over your Windows COA sticker, it removes the key code. If you don't want a messed up computer, quit loading crap onto it and using it as a drinks and TV dinner tray. Posted Dec 26 2007, 11:36 PM by mikehall with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Vista, XP, general tip, Windows, Utilities, System Recovery

• Why some games may not play too well..

  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 at either a normal or low level, and this was largely due to video drivers not being all that they could have been. Since those early days, video drivers have improved a great deal, and game play is way better than it was, but some games steadfastly refused to respond. One game in particular, Zuma, was just too jittery to make it playable for more than a couple of minutes. It is one of these annoying yet addictive games where one has to shoot coloured balls at a continuous line of coloured balls, making up groups of three of the same colour and thereby making the group disappear. Anyway, I used it as a benchmark and if Zuma ever played badly in XP, I knew that there was a problem somewhere. Vista's native DirectX level is 10, and there is DirectX 9 support too, but it may or may not surprise you to know that DirectX 9 is not supported as well as it might be. There is a fix. As the text in the web page tells you, DirectX is 'the core Windows® technology that drives high-speed multimedia and games on the PC'. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=en To get the DirectX 9 download, you will have to be running an activated Vista. You will be pleased to note that there is no reboot necessary after installation. What you should notice is that games play better. For me, Zuma plays well again, and I think that detail and movement within Age of Empires III has improved too. There is no time like the present. Posted Dec 24 2007, 02:05 PM by mikehall with no comments Filed under: Vista, software, compatibility, general tip, Games

• Page File Placement..

  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 set boundary of installed RAM. Data is placed in the page file if it is likely to be used again quickly but where storage in RAM would be a waste. You should let Windows look after your page file, and not try to squash it into a tiny corner. Say after me "System Managed is good.. system managed is good.. system managed is good". OK, now remember that. Traditionally, Windows will install the page file in with itself and it does this for good reason. C drive is where all of the action is, and the hard drive heads will not have to move far in order to access the page file. Accessing the page file will incur a time penalty, but it will be small. If you place the page file in a separate partition on the same drive, the heads will now have to move further each time the page file is accessed, thus incurring a greater time penalty. OK so far? I saw this suggested recently. The theory  was that the page file, being the centre partition, would be accessed really fast, but life is not like that. The data file in use will be processed in the orange area until it is no longer required by the computer user. In normal use, the hard drive head will not be traversing constantly across from orange to blue, picking up and dropping stuff into the page file as it goes. There is no benefit in partitioning a hard drive as per the diagram above. Where a single hard drive is installed, the page file should be left where Windows placed it originally. If the diagram represented three separate physical drives, would that be any better? No, it wouldn't because unless the page file drive was a small 4-6gb unit, there would be a tremendous waste of hard drive space, and if it was only that size, it would have to be an old unit with way slower access times than the boot drive. Any speed advantage in having separate heads reading and writing to the page file would be negated by the speed of the heads in the old drive. Assuming a three partition per drive set up which aids organization and cuts down on format times in the event that a partition has to be rebuilt, a single drive installation would look like this..   and a dual drive installation would look like this.. Posted Dec 11 2007, 09:28 PM by mikehall with no comments Filed under: Vista, XP, general tip, Windows

• Office 2007 SP1..

  ... is now ready for download. You can also get Visio 2007 and Project 2007 service packs too. Office 2007 SP1 may require a reboot, presumably dependant upon version is installed, but Visio and project do not.  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/FX101321101033.aspx You can choose to wait for them to appear in WU, of course.. Posted Dec 11 2007, 04:51 PM by mikehall with no comments Filed under: Office, software, SP1