Fatal error: the system has become unstable or is busy,” it says. “Enter to return to Windows or press Control-Alt-Delete to restart your computer. If you do this you will lose any unsaved information in all open applications.”
You have just been struck by the Blue Screen of Death. Anyone who uses Mcft Windows will be familiar with this. What can you do? More importantly, how can you prevent it happening?
In the Windows 95/98 era, conventional wisdom held that you should manually set your virtual memory [i.e., pagefile] size to at least 1.5 times the amount of RAM in order to optimize performance. [By default, Windows will manage pagefile on its own: You will likely find the initial pagefile size set to 0.5x or 1x the amount of RAM you have]. We were skeptical about this tip, but our benchmarks surprised us: Some systems showed no change at all, but some(particularly older machines) showed substantial improvement beyond the usual random noise we see in benchmark results. We got at least a 10 percent jump after we upped the initial pagefile size to 2x amount or RAM on two separate machines. It won’t work for all computers, so the jury’s still out on this one, but because it’s so easy to do and there are no negative consequences, it’s worth a shot just to see if it has any effect.
SUPERFETCH BOOSTS PERFORMANCE
Superfetch is an update of the XP Prefetcher, designed to more intelligently load applications into RAM based on frequency of use. With Superfetch on, your PC should theoretically get faster over time, particularly when loading frequently apps. You won’t see improvement in general performance, like rendering Photoshop files, but Superfetch does tend to make apps load10 to 20 percent more quickly, depending on their size.
Video editors and motion-graphics artists have been poorly served by laptops, with even the most expensive notebook components proving inadequate for heavy renders or editing. Canadian manufacturer Eurocom has a cunning solution: shoehorn desktop components into a laptop chasis. The results is the beefy D900C Phantom-X, with a desktop processor and the option ( as tested) of dual SLI graphic cards.
A simple package that combines two detection engines for maximum efficacy
German security specialist G Data has been producing anti-virus software for over 20 years, but there’s nothing retro about anti virus 2008.
Open it up and you see a basic user interface giving direct access to the main functions (starting and scheduling scans and updates), as well as a few information panels. Click on “Options” and you can set some default behaviors and toogle options like heuristics. As with Spyware Doctor . the emphasis is on practically.
DISABLING UNUSED NETWORK CONNECTIONS WILL IMPROVE BOOT TIME
Say you set up a network drive for a network drive for a computer you had months ago but is no longer on your network: When Windows boot, it spends at least some time reconnecting to that drive, wasting precious seconds you could be spending on Facebook. While XP and Vista are better than older versions of Windows about network connections [who can forget those interminable “Connecting…’ messages?] it still makes sense to disconnect from network shares you no longer need. You won’t actually boot noticeably faster without those extra drive letters, but Explorer will become usable more quickly after launch. This is especially noticeable in Vista, which has a helpful “loading” progress indicator that overlays the address bar: Having any number of network shares will cause it to take any extra 10 to 20 seconds to fully load.
Vista/XP
SUPERFETCH BOOSTS PERFORMANCE for vista
Superfetch is an update of the XP Prefetcher, designed to more intelligently load applications into RAM based on frequency of use. With Superfetch on, your PC should theoretically get faster over time, particularly when loading frequently apps. You won’t see improvement in general performance, like rendering Photoshop files, but Superfetch does tend to make apps load10 to 20 percent more quickly, depending on their size.
An old favourite gets a new look.
Now in version 8.0, AVG’s latest release appears to have taken a page or three form from Vista. A redesigned interface sports high-resolution icons and a more colorful palette, and even the system tray icon feels borrowed from Microsoft’s newest OS;turn off one of the security modules and the icon turns red, alerting you to impending doom, even if you’ve only disabled the spam filter. That’s just wacky. Thankfully, you can turn off the ominous notifications.
Most enthusiasts view McAfee as just another resource hog often found in OEM systems alongside perfomancepillaging bloatware. Fair assessment or not, this is the perception McAfee’s up against in trying to win over the PC elite. It helps that the company isn’t blissfully unaware of the importance placed on perfomance; its latest edition promises to raise the bar with a more efficient engine that won’t drag your system down.
