A modern PC with Vista Home Edition takes about one and a half minutes to boot. An older machine with XP is about the same. That’s 30 seconds for the PC itself (the BIOS) to boot up, plus a minute for the Windows operating system to boot. Sometimes, you need to reboot Windows (e.g. when installing new software), but there is no need to restart BIOS, too. However, the default is to reboot both. (That’s called doing a “cold boot,” rather than a “warm boot.”) There’s a trick that works on both XP and Vista to get it to do a warm boot instead, thus saving you 30 seconds per cycle.
The trick is to hold down the SHIFT key when invoking the restart. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 37 Comments »
Windows Vista comes with a rich feature set of diagnostic and repair tools that you can use in the event that your computer is not operating correctly. These tools allow you to diagnose problems and repair them without having to boot into Windows. This provides much greater flexibility when it comes to fixing problems that you are not able to resolve normally. This guide focuses on using the Startup Repair utility to automatically fix problems starting Windows Vista. The tutorial will also provide a brief description of the advanced repair tools with links to tutorials on how to use them.
If you are having problems starting Windows Vista, then your first step is to use the automated repair tool called Startup Repair. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 7 Comments »
The issue with either Windows XP or 32-bit Vista really isn’t the OS itself, but the legacy of the old IBM PC. The BIOS reserves a certain amount of memory for memory-mapped I/O. Still, even Win XP could “see” well over 3GB of RAM. It and 32-bit Vista do support something known as PAE (physical address extension), which allows applications written for PAE to use more than 2GB of memory.
However, Vista itself likes having more than 2GB of RAM. The reason is SuperFetch, the smart caching technology built into Vista. Read More»
Posted in Hardware, Windows Vista | 2 Comments »
I just installed Windows Vista Business on my laptop. I’d never advocate being an early adopter at the enterprise level, but I’m enough of a geek that I really wanted to get my hands on the latest and greatest. Having played with preview releases, I was certainly impressed by the polish, appearance, and apparent security.
Besides, since my experience with 64-bit Windows had been less than stellar and my wireless drivers had just crapped out on my latest Linux install (Fedora Core), I figured now was the time to move. We also have several new machines coming in that will be running XP, but are eligible for upgrade, so I wanted to start evaluating in our environment now. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | No Comments »
February 01, 2007 by
Jason
BIOS Backup: Sometimes the BIOS program on your motherboard can become corrupt and your PC will not function properly. So, you need to always keep a backup of a good version of the BIOS on a floppy disc. If something ever goes wrong with the BIOS, you can flash (overwrite) it with your backup. The software used to backup or flash the BIOS is usually available on the motherboard driver CD or on the motherboard/BIOS manufacturer’s website. Refer the motherboard manual for step-by-step instructions on using the BIOS flash software.
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Posted in Computer, Software | No Comments »
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