If you are installing a device driver for a new piece of hardware, or more often, installing the same driver as part of a re-installation process, you may find that the installer will run but the driver wont install.
There are many reasons for this, but, more importantly, the question is 'if the installer program wont install the driver, how do I get the driver put in?'
The answer is to go to Device Manager, find the piece of hardware you are installing, right-click on it and click on 'Update Driver'. Then you follow the prompts, browse for your device driver, and click OK.
This should allow the driver to be installed.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Cats are bad for laptops
Especially when they urinate on the keyboard when no-one is looking.
If you have a laptop, and are not sure of your kitty's temperament, always close the screen on your laptop when you walk away from or are not using it.
If you notice any sort of liquid on your laptop, and it is running, turn it off. DO NOT move your laptop or attempt to drain off the liquid; there are enough cracks and seams on the face of a laptop that any movement will allow the liquid the run inside and cause additional damage.
Instead, take a paper towel or anything handy that is absorbent and pat up the liquid. Once you have patted up all the liquid you can see, remove the battery while keeping the laptop as level as possible.
If the liquid appears clear and is thought to be water, let the laptop sit open so the water can evaporate.
If the liquid appears colored, pat up all the liquid you can, then get a hand towel or several paper towels and lay them over the wet area and gently close the lid.
What we want to happen is that the weight of the lid will force the towel(s) close enough to any remaining liquid so that over the course of several hours or overnight the towel(s) will soak up any remaining liquid.
After letting the laptop sit, replace the battery and attempt to start Windows. If Windows does not start normally, shut down the laptop, remove the battery and call a repair person.
And pray that your backups are up to date. You have been making backups of everything you can't lose, havent you?
If you have a laptop, and are not sure of your kitty's temperament, always close the screen on your laptop when you walk away from or are not using it.
If you notice any sort of liquid on your laptop, and it is running, turn it off. DO NOT move your laptop or attempt to drain off the liquid; there are enough cracks and seams on the face of a laptop that any movement will allow the liquid the run inside and cause additional damage.
Instead, take a paper towel or anything handy that is absorbent and pat up the liquid. Once you have patted up all the liquid you can see, remove the battery while keeping the laptop as level as possible.
If the liquid appears clear and is thought to be water, let the laptop sit open so the water can evaporate.
If the liquid appears colored, pat up all the liquid you can, then get a hand towel or several paper towels and lay them over the wet area and gently close the lid.
What we want to happen is that the weight of the lid will force the towel(s) close enough to any remaining liquid so that over the course of several hours or overnight the towel(s) will soak up any remaining liquid.
After letting the laptop sit, replace the battery and attempt to start Windows. If Windows does not start normally, shut down the laptop, remove the battery and call a repair person.
And pray that your backups are up to date. You have been making backups of everything you can't lose, havent you?
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Is this the year of Microsoft's success?
I think the answer is Yes.
When you consider that the 3 major products that Microsoft is releasing this year, Windows 7, Bing! search, and Security Essentials(code-named 'Morro'), have all gotten positive reviews by some of the biggest critics of Microsoft, it looks Microsoft has achieved something truly memorable for the company and its products.
Windows 7 has become more than 'just Vista Service Pack 2'; Microsoft has improved all of the things that worked about Vista to make them easier to use, fixed or otherwise adjusted all of the things that Vista's critics felt were unusable.
The smallest amount of computer hardware needed to run Windows 7, and have it not feel like swimming through molasses, is equivalent to what Windows XP was running on when Vista was released (2 Ghz CPU, 1GB of RAM, and video hardware capable of running Direct X 9).
This is like running tomorrows high-needs programs on a three year old computer and never noticing the difference in speed.
Bing! search is now what Google was like to begin with but with all of the knowledge of what people want and how they look for it. Bing! isnt quite as good as Google, yet, but there are some areas where the supplemental information that Bing! provides alongside the search results make it as or more useful than the same search on Google.
Search engine reviewers say that if Microsoft focuses on making Bing! searches better, rather than more marketable or whatever Microsoft usually does that turns a bright idea into garbage, that in 2 years Bing! will be a serious competitor to Google.
Don't hold your breath on that, though; this is Microsoft we're talking about here. They somehow always find some way to turn a diamond into glass.
Microsoft's Security Essentials software, which is their latest attempt at serious and effective protection software, is a suite of programs that includes anti-virus, firewall and anti-spyware.
It appears that the third time really is a charm for Microsoft's attempts at security software; reviewers who have tried out the test, or 'beta', release have had positive things to say about it.
Which is unusual for an industry which has grown accustomed to warning people about avoiding certain Microsoft programs.
There you have it; the very real possibility of Microsoft having a year of successes for the first time since Windows 95, perhaps for the first time in the company's history.
When you consider that the 3 major products that Microsoft is releasing this year, Windows 7, Bing! search, and Security Essentials(code-named 'Morro'), have all gotten positive reviews by some of the biggest critics of Microsoft, it looks Microsoft has achieved something truly memorable for the company and its products.
Windows 7 has become more than 'just Vista Service Pack 2'; Microsoft has improved all of the things that worked about Vista to make them easier to use, fixed or otherwise adjusted all of the things that Vista's critics felt were unusable.
The smallest amount of computer hardware needed to run Windows 7, and have it not feel like swimming through molasses, is equivalent to what Windows XP was running on when Vista was released (2 Ghz CPU, 1GB of RAM, and video hardware capable of running Direct X 9).
This is like running tomorrows high-needs programs on a three year old computer and never noticing the difference in speed.
Bing! search is now what Google was like to begin with but with all of the knowledge of what people want and how they look for it. Bing! isnt quite as good as Google, yet, but there are some areas where the supplemental information that Bing! provides alongside the search results make it as or more useful than the same search on Google.
Search engine reviewers say that if Microsoft focuses on making Bing! searches better, rather than more marketable or whatever Microsoft usually does that turns a bright idea into garbage, that in 2 years Bing! will be a serious competitor to Google.
Don't hold your breath on that, though; this is Microsoft we're talking about here. They somehow always find some way to turn a diamond into glass.
Microsoft's Security Essentials software, which is their latest attempt at serious and effective protection software, is a suite of programs that includes anti-virus, firewall and anti-spyware.
It appears that the third time really is a charm for Microsoft's attempts at security software; reviewers who have tried out the test, or 'beta', release have had positive things to say about it.
Which is unusual for an industry which has grown accustomed to warning people about avoiding certain Microsoft programs.
There you have it; the very real possibility of Microsoft having a year of successes for the first time since Windows 95, perhaps for the first time in the company's history.
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