Speed Up the Interface
Check for Signed Drivers
86 MAXIMUMPC DECEMBER 2003
If it were up to the programming wizards at Microsoft,
the entire world would run signed drivers. You see, a
significant number of crashes and system errors can be
traced back to broken drivers. But signed drivers have
passed through the Microsoft Hardware Qualification
Labs and should be more reliable and robust than
unsigned drivers.
If your machine is crashing, and Windows is blaming
it on a problem driver, go to the Run program under
your Start menu, and fire up sigverif.exe to scan
your system for unsigned drivers and other system files.
Now visit your hardware manufacturers’ web sites to
find more up-to-date and signed versions of the drivers.
Remember: Signed drivers are better, but unsigned
drivers aren’t necessarily bad, especially those that are
updated frequently, like videocard drivers.We think WinXP’s new interface is great, but we also run the
latest hardware, so our machines easily fulfill the operating
system’s performance requirements. If the new Luna UI has
got your older machine chugging along at 486 speeds, there
are a few things you can do to pick up the pace.
First, go to the Display Properties Control Panel (right-
click an empty spot on your Desktop and choose Properties).
Now choose the Appearance tab and click the Effects button.
Uncheck the following: “Use the following transition effect for
menus and tooltips,” “Use the following method to smooth
edges of screen fonts,” “Show shadows under menus,” and
“Show window contents while dragging.” If this doesn’t speed
up things enough, you can turn off the special user interface
altogether by selecting “Windows Classic Style” from the
Windows and Buttons menu on the Appearance tab. In the Lab,
this has given us 5 to 10 percent faster scores in SYSmark.A New Way to Look at Your Files
If you have a big folder full of images from your
digital camera, or unsorted MP3s, the “Show in
Groups” folder option might be useful to you.
It allows you to group your files in the Explorer
window into similar categories instead of just
listing them in the order you specify in the
“Arrange by” menu. If you want to use Show in
Groups to organize shots you took with your digital
camera, choose Arrange by Modified to sort your
snaps based on the day they were shot, then check
“Show in groups” to group them by day. It’s also
convenient for music: Use Arrange by Artist with
Show in Groups to group songs by the same artist
together, or Arrange by Album to group songs
from the same platter.