Computer Help Required

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I just got a new laptop. Its running Vista as the OS and I spent yesterday updating Vista and getting the Norton up to date.

All I did after that was slap in the discs that came with the computer and set up the email thing.

Today U cracnked it up and it gave me the blue screen of death before anything had happend, so I turned it off, rebooted in safemode and ran a virus scan. Nothing came up.

Considering how its only 2 days old and already has the blue screen showing (although only once), should I be concerned? SHould I run the recovery disc or check anything? Or isn't it that much of a concern?

Any help appreciated.

[Kyle]

I don't know anything about Vista. But wouldn't be too worried about it until it happens a 2nd or 3rd time. :)

What brand is your new laptop by the way?

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Its an ASUS.

Nice and shiny new with a graphics card as well aparently. Even though I never used one before:p

[valkyrie_76]

Might just be a minor crash. Mine has bluescreened I think 3 times and they were due to a USB driver or a video driver (in the 18 months I have owned my laptop). What did the report say when it crashed?

[blackie]

mine bluescreaned 5 times in 3 hrs one day

get avast antivirus and do a before boot scan, that might turn something up :D

[Sam]

My suggestion is to see if you can turn off Norton and go with a freeware anti-virus first (such as AVG or Anti-Vir - both available from download.com), then reboot and see if anything breaks.

Also see if you can find out about the programs / processes that run when the PC starts, and try to disable as many of them as possible.

This way you can isolate and narrow down the source of the problem (e.g. sometimes two or more programs running at the same time may conflict).

Also, how much RAM does your laptop have? I think you should only consider running Vista if you have 2GB or more of RAM, Vista is kinda memory hungry.

I hope these suggestions help.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Thanks for the help guys.

Yeh its got 2gig of ram and Vista came installed on it.

Is Norton a bit of a crappy anti virus, I figured that it would be better than AVG/Avira coz it costs money. I used to use AVG on my old computer and thought it was ace.

[Fungal Infection]

Just cause you pay for something doesn't mean its a better product. I highly recommend Avast - its free, doesn't hog system resources and has NEVER conflicted with anything I've used. ;)

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Just cause you pay for something doesn't mean its a better product. I highly recommend Avast - its free, doesn't hog system resources and has NEVER conflicted with anything I've used. ;)

i hear good things about Avast.

Onto another setup problem.

I have Vista Home Premium and have set up a jap keyboard sos I can do kanji etc, but in my windows mail, some of the characters aren't displaying properly. The Interenet explorer sems to do ok, although there is the occasional site that doesn't work. I can read and type emails in Japanese, just some of the names are off.

Beginning to hate Vista a little bit already...:mad:

Managed to work it out. All is good now. Just had to change the region seting a little so it assumed that script that wasn't encoeded properly was Japanese and it works fine now! HURRAH!

[sifun]

downgrade to XP!

but on the other note, you probably need to reinstall. Maybe format if you can.

[kup]

Yeah, Vista sucks a lot with not just a restrictive interface but also as a resource whore. It is also much more difficult to do things that are out of the norm of what I standard user may do because you run into problems which are hard to diagnose.

I also recommend an XP downgrade, particularly if you are into High end gaming due to performance increases and more tweaking room.

I am waiting till Windows 7 comes out because it appears to be Vista minus the crap. The extra crap is mainly what kept Vista down because at its core, its not too bad of an OS.

[blackie]

I am waiting till Windows 7 comes out because it appears to be Vista minus the crap. The extra crap is mainly what kept Vista down because at its core, its not too bad of an OS.

i had a quick play on a mates laptop with the beta release and tbqh it is just vista with a new startup screen and maybe a few minimal things missing

ive got an install but like the microsoft norm it wouldnt install :P

XP is the best operating system and will most likely be that for the next 5 years IMO.

[kup]

i had a quick play on a mates laptop with the beta release and tbqh it is just vista with a new startup screen and maybe a few minimal things missing

ive got an install but like the microsoft norm it wouldnt install :P

XP is the best operating system and will most likely be that for the next 5 years IMO.

If it fails to be practical (that is really all that is asked!) then I continue my present combo of XP for games and linux for other stuff.

[blackie]

If it fails to be practical (that is really all that is asked!) then I continue my present combo of XP for games and linux for other stuff.

the way i looked at it, after using xp for years and then vista for the last few months, was it was vista, with a few minor alterations

that and theyre giving the beta to anyone :P

[Geminii]

If it only happened once, ignore it.

BSODs aren't usually virus-related, though.

If it keeps happening, make a list of all the drivers and third-party software which load on startup, and try using the computer with one of them removed at a time. If the bluescreens fail to come up, try reinstalling or replacing whichever piece of software you had disabled at the time.

Alternatively, Google the codes from the BSOD and see if they're linked to a common cause. This can be a faster way to diagnose and address some problems, and includes hardware issues.