mode by repeatedly pressing the F8 key while
your computer is booting. Safe mode should
resort to a bare VGA display, which will allow
you to perform a number of troubleshooting
options on your PC.
From the Control Panel, go to System
Properties. Go to the Device Manager and
uninstall your videocard’s display drivers.
Restart your computer; you should be able to
enter your normal Windows XP operating sys-
tem. Then hop online, grab the latest drivers
for your card, and install them.
If you’re still finding no success, you prob-
ably have a critical Windows issue. To test this
theory, fire up Vista and back up all
your critical XP files. Then wipe your
XP partition and reinstall the OS—this
will give you some funky boot-loader
issues since you’ll be installing an
older OS after Vista, but you should be
able to pull up both OSes after running
Vista’s boot repair wizard.
VISTA KILLS NETWORK
TRANSFERS
I just built a new PC, and I’m dual-booting
Vista and XP. When in Vista, I cannot seem
to transfer files to my file server. In XP, on
the same machine, it works great. When I
transferred a 72MB folder across the wired
network using Vista, it took over two hours.
The same files in XP took less than two
minutes. Oftentimes, Vista times out with a
“program not responding” error. Any suggestions
before I totally banish Vista?
—Shannon B. TatuQuite the brouhaha is raging on the Internet
right now regarding Vista’s slow transfer
speeds — the operating system seems to keel
over and die when it tries to copy files on
a single drive, across drives, or especially
across a network.
Microsoft has yet to come up with a
solution for your woes, though it has man-
aged to find a potential reason for the prob-
lem. Network transfer speeds will be drasti-
cally diminished if you’re running
an application that uses Vista’s
Multimedia Class Scheduler while
transferring files. For example,
Windows Media Player will kill
network-transfer speeds.
Aside from that, your best betis to install the most recent Vista SP1 release
candidate. It isn’t the final SP1 release, so
caveat emptor, but this update dramatically
improves network-transfer performance.
Updated Vista rigs are capable of transfer
speeds that are three times faster than those
of non-updated Vista machines. While the
Doctor hasn’t experienced the extreme slow-
ness you’ve described, the numerous tweaks
and fixes in SP1 might very well set your
transfers right. Give it a shot, as really, it’s
your only option right now.WHATCHA GOT, MOM?
I want to upgrade a few things in my mom’s
PC—namely, the RAM. We live on opposite sides
of the country. Is there a way she can find out for
me what kind of RAM is in her computer?
—CraigHave your mom grab CPU-Z (www.cpuid.com).
When she runs the app—a single no-installa-
tion-needed executable—a ton of information
about her computer will pop up. She’ll be able
to tell you about her processor, socket type,
and motherboard, as well as the kind of RAM
currently installed in her machine.CPU-Z gives you oodles of information about
your rig, although you should be able to
figure out most upgrading issues by simply
looking at your motherboard’s specs.The Doctor plans to release a version of himself
that’s entirely wireless. With the Doctor Air, you’ll be
able to clone his mass of knowledge and carry it with
you. Unless, of course, you just feel like emailing
[email protected] for old time’s sake....Ask the Doctor
Diagnosing and curing your PC problems