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btmp
AskWoody LoungerI came across something similar after I switched from an AMD back to an NVIDIA card after many years. Thankfully, in my case the solution was easy enough though I had never encountered it with previous NVIDIA cards.
If you have an NVIDIA Card you’ll want to open the ‘NVIDIA Control Panel’ > Goto ‘Display’ > Goto ‘Adjust Desktop Color Settings’ > Look down for ‘Content type reported to the display’ and switch it from ‘Auto’ to ‘Desktop programs’ -
btmp
AskWoody LoungerMost likely they are talking about Mega-BITS not Mega-BYTES so far as speed goes so you may want to double check which measurement is used on the ‘speed testing site’. If this assumption is accurate the best speeds you could hope for (download wise) is close to 75 MegaBYTES/s (upload tends to be much lower) with the 600 MegaBITS/s downstream.
Next up is the fact that your NIC only supports speeds up to 100. There are actually Ethernet cards which can support 10/100/1000 quite commonly these days. It might mean you’d want to grab a NIC card if you have the space for it in the system (free PCI/PCIe slots). They also have USB devices which can act as a NIC but I’m not a fan.
In addition to all that there’s the fact that ‘max speeds’ generally don’t get funneled well, in my experience (I’m also a Spectrum user), in well populated neighborhoods. So even though they say you can get ‘up to’ 600MB/s your average download speed may end up being much lower depending on where you live (and the time of day) even if you did get a NIC that supports 1G :-/
As you mentioned already, your ethernet cable may not be rated for 1G even if you get a NIC that supports it. This has been less of an issue in my experience but short of installing the new NIC (and drivers) you can’t really test your current cord (you may be able to check for printed info along the cord and look that up on google). These days they can generally handle 1G but some cheaper ones, or even older ones, may not have been designed for it so you may want to consider grabbing a new cable ‘just in case’ if you do end up ordering a NIC.
The network will always be as slow as the slowest part of the chain. This can also include routers and the modem itself. Most likely the Modem will be fine and is probably even supplied by the Cable Company (Some also include routers) so unless either of these are really old they may not be an issue. I’ve found that with onboard NICs the CPU (especially older models) can also be a limiting factor depending on how heavily it’s in use.
Hopefully someone else will chime in if my drunk butt mucked up some of the info….
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btmp
AskWoody LoungerYou may also want to consider running SFC /SCANNOW
While I’d normally also suggest doing a scan with DISM I don’t believe Windows 7 supports the ScanHealth option =(
While I can’t really call explorer one of the most stable programs, I’ve had my share of cases where it freezes or crashes over the years, sometimes such instability can be caused by other applications, usually third party ones with some Context Menu Handlers or Shell Service Objects inserted. Before going all out on reinstalling windows you may want to grab Autoruns and then check the Explorer tab inside of Autoruns for non ‘Microsoft Corporation’ additions. Unchecking some of the non-Microsoft ones with autoruns will disable (move) the entries so that after a reboot (or user logout/login) they won’t be active. To restore them you can open Autoruns and re-check them followed by another reboot (or user logout/login). I’d suggest playing with only a few at a time, for instance all items from the same publisher to try and figure out what might be involved (if in fact it is even related to those) Keep in mind that doing this will cause said software entries in explorer to not be available while disabled.
If none of that helps I’d take a good look at the installed software, especially keeping an eye out for overlapping security products, theme and skin managers or anything that ‘adds’ functionality to explorer and consider removing them one at a time followed by a reboot until the freezes stop and you find the culprit (if any). You may want to ensure you have copies of the installers for those program versions before doing so.
If you aren’t going to do a factory restore and are sure you want to re-install windows from scratch you’ll first need to ensure you have a valid disc or an iso, perhaps an OEM one came with the computer? These days they tend not to ship out discs with OEM builds an may instead have the wim stored on the factory recovery partition which won’t be easy to access if you aren’t familiar with diskpart or using some third party tool. You’ll also want to get a copy of your current OEM key saved so you can use it later. Sometimes they’ll have a sticker on the side or back of the case that is a key you could use but won’t actually be the same as the OEM key that came with the PC.
Once you have all that you’ll need to decide if you want to add the updates to the windows image to install it with the updates or let it run for many hours (may still require a manual Servicing Stack and SHA2 or a few others, been a long time since I reinstalled a non-updated version of Windows 7) perhaps even days going through the updates cycle online over and over. Another option would be to update the WIM itself and if you wanted to get started on adding the many updates you can use the Windows Update Catalog to grab them one at a time and apply them to the wim using DISM. There are likely well over 150 of them by now that will apply to the version of your image (and others that won’t) and that’s assuming your image is already containing the ServicePack! Another option to help automate this process would be a third party application, there are a few out there but back before I switched to just using DISM I used NTLite. It’s not entirely free but some aspects of it are and I can’t really recall if updates was one of those free options as I haven’t touched it in several years. I’m sure others here can suggest ones that they like if you think you may take that route.
1 user thanked author for this post.
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btmp
AskWoody LoungerDid a quick search and found two pages on Microsoft that may be what you’re looking for. Ones for Word and Excel and the other for Outlook but they seem to be similar.
Not really an Office user myself so I wasn’t able to test them but I hope those pages are at least somewhat helpful in getting you what you want…
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btmp
AskWoody LoungerGlad to hear that was it after all.
I must say I was impressed that you caught the fact that the initial issue was caused by magnets you were wearing. Even if I had been physically there to see you using it I likely wouldn’t have caught that and would have been so confused!
Thanks for letting us know it’s all taken care of though. Some people (on other forums at least) vanish and you never know if the problem is solved so it’s nice to hear that it actually was solved in this case.
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btmp
AskWoody LoungerSadly that’s one of those more ‘generic’ BSoD entries and usually means you have a driver issue. If it happened on a system I was working with I’d likely start by loading the dump in BSoD View to see if it has any likely culprits to show (highlight). Please keep in mind though that you may need to look at a few different dumps (if they are saved) to get closer to an answer. Sometimes it can show different drivers as being ‘potentially’ involved but generally with a few different dumps you can see what pops up most often and occasionally (depending on the drivers involved) can try to update them or even uninstall (offending programs, device drivers that also have basic Windows versions etc) the most common one to see if that fixes it…on the other hand they can also crop up after a new Windows update and short of rolling those back can be even harder to check for let alone fix as you eventually want to update!
So short answer I guess, check that your drivers and software are all up to date to start with (This may require you to check each vendor as Windows Update doesn’t always have the latest). Then if still happens, and you feel like it, you could try the BSoD View software to check the dumps to see if you can glean any more information to steer you in the appropriate direction?
Sorry I can’t be of better help without more information but hopefully some guru here can help you more. Good Luck!
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This reply was modified 4 months, 1 week ago by
btmp. Reason: Added more information with clarifications
2 users thanked author for this post.
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This reply was modified 4 months, 1 week ago by
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btmp
AskWoody LoungerFigured I’d throw in my two cents here. I use a program called Actual Window Manager which has the ability to create multiple tabs in explorer. It’s not for the feint of heart though as it has soooo many settings and possibilities. I primarily use it for the extra options to move specific windows to a certain monitor or quickly change the sound device for a program instead of digging through windows settings each time and things like transparency but it can do a lot if you invest the time into tweaking it to your needs.
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btmp
AskWoody LoungerHey there. I’d suggest checking Personalization > Lock screen > Screen saver Settings. It may be set to 5 mins with a Blank Screen saver (eg Black screen)
Technically neither the screensaver or power settings should trigger while you’re active doing something as typing so something is certainly messing up there but I’m afraid I can’t think of anything else that hasn’t already been suggested atm. Good luck!
1 user thanked author for this post.
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btmp
AskWoody LoungerThe svchost is the generic “service host” used by most windows processes and is trusted and comes with a few instances that already use LaunchProtected, which is how the system knows to protect that service. You can also check the PsProtectedSignerWindows-Light status to verify that it is in fact running as protected after setting the LaunchProtected dword and a reboot. However that is actually all mostly unrelated to the issues I’ve noticed after KB Updates. Thanks though.
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