I have written about things that may go wrong when you make major changes to to your Microsoft Windows operating system. This was made more apparent when I talked to my neighbor who ruined her Windows XP PC by trying upgrade to Windows 7. I thought it was going to cost her $400 but in fact it cost $700 (you could have bought a new laptop for that) to restore all her data files as well as make the OS work again.
This shows how important it is to always create a manual restore point before you make any major change in your Windows computer.
From Microsoft’s web site:
The System Restore feature is built into Windows XP and is used to return your computer to an earlier state if you have a system failure or other major problem with your computer. The point of System Restore is to restore your system to a workable state without you having to reinstall the operating system and lose your data files in the process.
The way to set a restore point is:
- Click Start, click Control Panel, click System.
- In the system properties select the system restore tab.
- Select the System Properties dialog box, on the System Restore tab, use the slider to increase the allocated disk space, and then click OK.
- Next go to programs -> accessories -> system tools -> system restore and click
- Now select the create a restore point radio button and click next
- You can name it – the date will be added and hit create to create the restore point.
Note that restore points can take up to 200 megabytes of disc space.
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on How to set a Widows XP restore point
Speed It Up! A Non-Technical Guide for Speeding Up Slow Computers
Easy Steps to Speed Up Windows XP: Now That You’ve Had Windows XP for Awhile, How to Make It Run Faster
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ASUS make some of the best motherboards and video cards you can buy. You want to play some of the fastest most graphic intensive games, chances are that you’ll have an ASUS graphic card.
Many of the cards and other ASUS products can have their BIOS updated as well as their driver. If you know how to update the bios manually you’ll have absolutely no trouble updating the driver yourself.
You can download the latest drivers at the ASUS site.
On the other hand, you may wish to use an automatic windows driver updater to save yourself time and hassle.
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on ASUS video card driver
Speed It Up! A Non-Technical Guide for Speeding Up Slow Computers
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Most video cards are manufactured by one of three companies and ATI, a subsidary of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) is one of the three major video card companies.
ATI make a whole range of different cards with different drivers depending on the operating system you have on your computer.
Of course with the release of Microsoft Windows 7 today there are a whole new sets of drivers which are already available at the AMD ATI video card driver update site.
As I have mentioned before you can update all your drivers manually and the only reason you may wish to use an automatic windows driver updater is to save yourself time and hassle.
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on Updating your ATI video card driver
Speed It Up! A Non-Technical Guide for Speeding Up Slow Computers
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Chances are that if you are running Linux your drivers are provided by third party developers.
Linu-drivers.org has a list of hardware compatibility for Linux.
And the good news is that if there are no drivers for a particular piece of hardware you can search various Linux forums and potentially find others in the same boat as yourself and perhaps one pf them will accept the challeng and write your driver.
Even better news if all else fails and you are a software engineer, you can write a device driver yourself or hire a freelance from elance or pone of the many other freelance sites.
Linux-Planet and many other Linux sites will be great help to you.
My back ground was in embedded systems and did not use any type of UNIX too often. Of course it is impossible to be a software engineer for more than thirty years without some use of the “good operating system,” but I always start at Sourceforge whenever looking for any software. Often the free software is better than commercial equivalents.
For example Linux is in reality way better than Microsoft Windows.
And why do I still use Windows?
Because I’m a sucker for punishment?
No, because all my clients use Windows.
Speed It Up! A Non-Technical Guide for Speeding Up Slow Computers
Easy Steps to Speed Up Windows XP: Now That You’ve Had Windows XP for Awhile, How to Make It Run Faster
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There are two methods:
- The free method – is something like this (you’ll end up variations of this if you are using Windows 95, 98, ME, and basically all versions other than XP):
- Open your control panel.
- Open the system properties.
- Go to the hardware tab.
- Click on the Device Manager button.
- The Device Manager opens – select a device you want to update – you don’t know if the driver needs updating – use a free download from one of the bellow links (this one has two choices) to tell you which.
- Next right click on the driver (most devices have more than one driver). The windows hardware update wizard comes up and you ask it to search the Internet for the appropriate update. Then wait and wait and wait….
- The easy method – use an updater. I recommend the following two updaters. Both will give you a free download which will tell you which of your drivers (all of them including the video drivers) need be updated:
- The free download of RadarSync 2009 which is an award-winning PC Updater. RadarSync is a revolutionary service that lets you scan your computer and find out everything you need to update, instantly. It has the bonus advantage that it also updates many of your programs such as Firefox, VLC, Spybot, Ccleaner, Clamwin, Avira, FileZilla and so on.
- The second is an automatic driver updater which will search through all of your drivers (not just those for you display adapter) and update automatically.
Each of the above two programs have advantages and disadvantages and there is always the free way of updating your video driver.
Speed It Up! A Non-Technical Guide for Speeding Up Slow Computers
Easy Steps to Speed Up Windows XP: Now That You’ve Had Windows XP for Awhile, How to Make It Run Faster
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You are minding your own business and your Windows computer slows down and things don’t look good any more and then you die from the dreaded blue screen of death. You reboot and all is well again for a while and then….
Actually you remember that you weren’t quite minding your own business. In fact all was well until you bought that new game, camera or whatever….
So what happened. Chances are that your video driver has not been updated and even so your video card was running fine with your old programs, but this new program or hardware was written with the assumption that your video card had been updated with the very latest of the drivers.
And then again you may have the latest video driver but the problem may be a malware, virus, Trojan horse, or an old incompatible dll, or some other piece of hardware or software incompatibility exists. You pull your hair out and wish that you had bought a Macintosh or were running Linux on your PC.
On Windows XP you can open the control panel and go the advanced tab. Here you may select the device manager and open the display adapters and you may then ask to update. Now a new window opens and you are given the choice of updating the video driver but no assurance that you will get the latest one.
What to do?
Use an automatic driver updater which will search through all of your drivers (not just those for you display adapter) and update automatically.
Speed It Up! A Non-Technical Guide for Speeding Up Slow Computers
Easy Steps to Speed Up Windows XP: Now That You’ve Had Windows XP for Awhile, How to Make It Run Faster
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