Keyboard.Here you can check the operation of your built-in keyboard
and set some preferences, including character repeat rate and cursor
blink rate.
Mouse. The maker of your laptop or some of its components can cus-
tomize a panel here to control many of the features of the built-in mouse,
pointing stick, or touch pad. You can also adjust the button configura-
tion (switching primary and secondary buttons if you choose) and set
the double-click speed for selection of options.Power Management Utility.Especially important to the operations of
a laptop computer, this utility — usually customized by the system
manufacturer — allows users to customize the processor speed and
the screen brightness under AC power and battery power. You can also
set alarms to warn of the approaching depletion of power.
Security Center. Microsoft added a central control panel in Service Pack
2 of Windows XP to help oversee and manage important security fea-
tures including firewall, virus protection, and automatic updates. The
maker of your antivirus software may place a customized control panel
here or adapt Microsoft’s options.Microsoft’s Security Center may not recognize some third-party
antivirus and security programs and must be controlled by their own
panel. That doesn’t mean they’re not fully capable, just that in some
way they diverge from the definitions laid down by the masters of your
machine’s world at Microsoft.
Sound and Audio Devices.The maker of your sound card likely placed a
panel to control some of its hardware features, including recording and
playback settings. Some makers rename the panel with custom titles
such as AudioHQ (used by Creative Labs).Other features, unrelated to repairing and upgrading a laptop, include
panels to control Internet options and special-purpose programs related
to Web image display or streaming audio or sound stored on your
machine. These features include Internet Options, Java Plug-In, QuickTime,
RealPlayer, and Speech controls.For the first few generations of PCs, users had to be very aware of which IRQs
are used by the system (IRQs are system interrupts, which are the equivalent
of the hardware waving its hand back and forth asking for the processor’s
attention) and which DMA channels are in used (direct memory access chan-
nels allow data to be transferred between peripherals and internal memory
without involving the microprocessor). Today, though, the facilities of cur-
rent Windows versions — including self-configuring plug-and-play devices
and the magically expandable USB system — make these kinds of problems
almost a nonissue. Almost. If the Control Panel’s Device Manager tells you66 Part II: Explaining What Could Possibly Go Wrong