MaximumPC 2008 04

how 2 IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE, ONE STEP AT A TIME

IT ALL WENT BLANK

I recently purchased an LCD monitor, but when I

installed it, no picture appeared. When I replaced the

new monitor with the old monitor, I again got just a

black screen. The computer is running and the con-

nections are correct. I’m deciding between building

a new computer or just buying a graphics card and

hoping the picture returns. Is there a better solution

or has the motherboard been fried?

—Stephen Janes

The Doctor is willing to venture that you haven’t

toasted your motherboard merely by plugging

in a new monitor, though it is curious that your

older monitor no longer works. Odds are good

you’ve jiggled something out of place. Unplug

your monitor, unplug your computer,

open up your computer, and reseat your

videocard—detach it from the side of

your case and remove it from the con-

nector on the motherboard. Dangle the

card in the air for a few seconds and

then reattach it. Make sure the card is

firmly and properly placed, you’ll usually

hear a clicking noise if you’ve done this

correctly. Screw the card into place, plug

your computer and monitor back in, flip

the power switch, and see if that doesn’t

fix your problem.

OEM VISTA REPAIR

I have Vista Home Premium. After doing a

Windows update, my computer would not

boot. The OS reported that the registry was cor-

rupted. I tried to boot off my Vista DVD to start a

System Restore from outside of Windows, but to

my surprise, Windows Vista Home Premium doesn’t

offer a repair utility option when booting from the

DVD. I have a Lenovo Laptop 7757.

What options do I have? How does one

perform a manual restore of the registry files if

Microsoft doesn’t offer System Restore from out-

side of Windows?

—Leon Garfield

It sounds as though you have an OEM version

of Vista, which lacks options for repairing Vista

installations when you boot from the DVD. First,

try to boot into Safe mode. Jam on the F8 key

while your computer starts to pull up Vista’s

Boot menu. Boot the computer into “last known

good configuration” first — ideally, that should

fix the problem. If it doesn’t, head back to the

Boot menu and select Safe mode. Once there,

select Vista’s System Restore feature and roll

back to an earlier restore point.

If you can’t boot into Vista, try to borrow a

non-OEM Vista disc from a friend and boot off

of it into Repair mode. From there, you can run

a chkdsk or let Vista automatically repair the

operating system. But you’ll never get to that

option from an OEM disc.

SPEED ME UP, SCOTTY

I am paying for a 5Mb/s cable download speed.

I have a router that has both wireless and wired

connectors on it. I have two stand-alone full-size

tower PCs connected to the router by wired con-

nectors. When downloading very large files, I

noticed that my top download speed is 660Mb/s.

I believe that the bottleneck is my 1Gb/s NIC

card, so I would like to use two ports on my router

and use two NIC cards in my computer to increase

my bandwidth. In my opinion, it does not make any

sense to pay for a truly high-speed cable connection

if you have a severe bottleneck with the network

interface card. Right?

—Walter

The Doc is scratching his head over this one,

but since you say your broadband connection

is 5Mb/s, he’s going to assume that the top

download speed you’re seeing is 660 kilobytes

per second, which is about what you’re paying

for. Even so, it’s difficult to formulate an answer

without more information, such as how you’re

measuring your download speed and where

you’re downloading from.

For starters, there’s a massive speed differ-

ence between the connections(be they wired

or wireless) on your local network and your

connection to the Internet. Even an awesome

net connection will be an order of magnitude

slower than Gigabit Ethernet. Even if your net-

work interface card and the wired portion of

your router are both of the Gigabit variety and

you’re using Cat5e or Cat6 Ethernet cable, you

won’t get a full gigabit per second of through-

put due to protocol overhead.

But it’s also important to note the dis-

tinction between your connection speed and

the speed at which you can download files

from a given website. Bandwidth can

be costly, so most sites put limits on

the speed at which a remote client can

download files. Just because you have

a 5Mb/s broadband connection doesn’t

mean every website will allow you to

suck down files at that pace because

they have to pay for the bandwidth con-

sumed at their end of the pipe.

If you want to measure your

Internet connection speed, point your

web browser to a site equipped with

a tool designed for that purpose, such

as Speed Test, (www.speedtest.net). If

this tool indicates that your connec-

tion speed really is 660Kb/s, then you

should ask your service provider to

explain why you’re not getting what

you’re paying for.

As for your idea of combining two router

ports and two NICs to double the bandwidth

of a single PC, it just won’t work with typical

consumer hardware. You’d need to buy spendy

enterprise hardware to do that.

NO LOGIN SCREEN

My old computer’s login screen won’t display. When

I boot the rig, I get past the XP loader only to get a

black screen, where the user accounts should be.

I’m currently dual-booting XP and Vista on one hard

drive. The computer has an Intel chipset with a

Pentium 4.3GHz CPU and a 400-watt PSU. Is there

any way to load XP without wiping my hard drive?

—Kyle Windsor

The Doctor is willing to venture that you’re hav-

ing an issue with something display related, be

it your monitor, videocard, or drivers. Enter Safe

Speed Test is a great online application

that lets you keep a history of download

and upload speed measurements.

Ask the Doctor

Diagnosing and curing your PC problems

64 MAXIMUMPC | APR 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com