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Archive for the ‘Windows Vista’ Category


Screen Goes Black After Changing the Resolution

Posted by Rich On June - 23 - 2009

If you’ve changed your screen resolution and the screen went black and stayed black, there is hope! When you change your resolution in Windows, you’ll be asked to confirm the change by clicking Yes. The theory is: if you can’t see the confirmation, you wont click Yes. However, if you hit Enter, or something crazy (but computers aren’t crazy…) goes wrong, you’ll be left with a black screen. A black screen has it’s uses: a mirror, an oversize paperweight, a doorstop etc. However, if you’re not satisfied with your new-found paperweight, follow this guide.

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How To Deal With EXE Issues On Your PC

Posted by Guest Post On June - 17 - 2009

In this guest post, James Ricketts explores how to deal with EXE issues on your PC. Learn more about James at the conclusion of this post.

Solving computer problems on your own means less downtime, less hassle and no or low cost. However, it is important that you know what problems you can handle on your own and which issues are best left to professionals.  For example, it is advised that most hardware-related problems are best left to computer experts. Similarly, it is advisable that you try and analyze most software-related issues yourself, as quite often, they can be easily resolved.

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Remove Windows Vista SP2 [How To]

Posted by Rich On June - 17 - 2009

Windows Guides reader, Jas, asks the following question:

I installed SP2 and ever since my laptop has been a nightmare.  Shutdown takes between 4 and 5 minutes and involves an unnecessary screen  “CONFIGURING UPDATES”.  Boot is not so bad but still takes an agonising 3 to 4 minutes with screens displaying messages that stages 1 , 3 are being updated.  In both cases there are long periods of blank screens which gives the impression that the machine has stopped working completely.

Is there any way in which I can uninstall SP2 completely? I have tried the stand Vista update uninstall but it always fails with the message   “NOT ALL UPDATES WERE SUCCESSFULLY UNINSTALLED“.

This guide shows you how to remove Vista SP2 and answers Jas’ question about uninstalling Windows Vista SP2 when the conventional method doesn’t work.

Yesterday, I showed you how to remove service pack rollback files, which allow you to revert from SP2 to SP1 or from SP1 to no service pack. If you followed these instructions, this guide is of no use to you as the rollback files are gone and you are stuck with SP2.

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If you are happy with your installation of Windows Vista SP2 (UPDATE: go here if you are not), you can remove the files, stored on your computer, that will allow a roll back. I only recommend this if you are looking to save space. With hard drives as big as they are today, I see no need to remove these files unless you are below 10% free disk space on your operating system’s partition.

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Open Old Document Formats [How To]

Posted by Rich On June - 15 - 2009

As software changes, some file formats a deprecated and, if you don’t convert these files, you may find you simply cannot open them anymore. There are a few things you can do to remedy this problem, learn what you can do, to open an old file format, in this guide.

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This quick tip is in response to a couple of readers’ questions on how to forcefully kill a program.

Sometimes a program will hang up and wont close. You can use task manager to kill the process or you can run a simple command. Learn how to do both of these in this guide.

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