Replies

I’ve seen this, and IMO Win Explorer is simply broken.

If MS disagrees, they’re inadvertently stimulating a market for replacement file managers.

Vicki, that’s a great tip…I had that trouble for a long time too, and disabling it in CPanel halted the trouble….until I went to reload XP from scratch, and it was enabled and acting so erratic that I couldn’t perform the install. Since I never use the thing, I lifted the keyboard (a snap-in panel and two easy screws) and cut the leads from the pointer clean off.

Problem solved permanently. Otherwise, I need a new keyboard.

In Control Panel, check the mouse hardware settings. There might be one for “tapping” which is when you tap the touchpad to click. You should be able to turn that feature off, which isn’t a bad idea at first. Flip it back on once you get more comfortable with the touchpad….maybe you’ll like it, maybe not.

In my experience, a LOT of users have trouble and feel frustrated with the tapping feature. Personally, I simply can’t use it, no matter how I try and practice I end up clicking way too much. I’ve also seen some older new computer users give up on the computer entirely because the tapping is too sensitive.

But get a mouse anyway. I have a trackball attached to my laptop, which I use on a desk quite a bit.

-John

Latitude keyboards…I’ve had this D600 for almost five years, and from the day I got it I have had extra e’s and r’s. It’s the hardware, I’m certain, but it’s gotten better over the years.

Jean, I should have said that I have other machines that are collecting restore points on a regular basis, by default. I’ve seen inconsistent operation so far. Maybe this is connected to available HDD space? Win 7 apparently needs a lot of space for the restore points.

If you have no restore points and need to repair Windows, those instructions are the next step. If this happens to you with a real problem you will wish you had a recent system image or a backup, because the restore points are very helpful.

-John O

Note that the change is strictly for XP mode…Windows Virtual PC still won’t run as a stand-alone app on Win 7 without virtualization. As the unlucky and random owner of a non-virtualization CPU, I’ve been using VirtualBox with excellent results. Maybe I’m missing some performance, but at least it works.

-John O

Jean, I’ve seen Sys Restore disabled on a couple machines I’m using for testing. I’m certain I’ve never turned it off.

Thanks, that’s a handy file to have. Looking at it I see that Edit lives on, but not within the Win RE.

But, I did find this in the parameters list for “freedisk” (which won’t run anywhere, even under cmd.exe):

Checks for a specific amount of free disk space. You can specify in bytes, KB, MB, GB, TB, PB, EB, ZB or YB.

Yottabytes. I love those things.

If you are the only user and you are the administrator, then no, it probably doesn’t effectively matter, especially if you trust yourself. But if you are the administrator and someone else is the user, a standard user account makes a lot of sense.

Gaahhh! I wrote a long reply, and for the second time in a couple weeks when I click Add your reply….it has vanished.

That Add your reply button is confusing up there ^^^…..apparently I need to click the little Post button at the bottom instead.

And as for the SR comments nevermind, I don’t have time to write it all over again.

A classic case of simplify and reboot?

Disconnect everything from the PS but the motherboard and see what happens. Then try removing expansion cards and see what happens…pretty soon you have a mobo with a single memory stick and CPU.

Don’t forget …a nice PCIe video card in the 16x slot may be a double-wide, covering up a 1x slot. If that’s the only 1x slot, SOL.

Ken…MS just removed the hardware virtualization requirement for Virtual PC. Any CPU will work.

I’ve got a P5PE-VM that’s almost new, and needs a home. It was used for a day or two once, and that’s it. I’ll trade you something for it.

It’s got an LGA775 socket (P4), and can handle 2GB of DDR, AGP 8x, 3 PCI, 2 SATA and 8 USB. Manual, rear panel shield, and an IDE cable.

…XP mode is only available if you have a CPU with virtualization capabilities. In fact, Virtual PC won’t run at all under Win 7 without a proper CPU. Check the Intel site for a list.