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Posts with tag crash

29% of Windows Vista crashes caused by NVIDIA drivers

Vista crash chart

If you were an early adopter of Windows Vista, there's a pretty good chance you became familiar with one of Vista's coolest new features: an automatic crash reporting utility that will recommend solutions if and when they become available. Or to put it another way, if you tried running Windows Vista on many machines, there was a good chance your computer crashed. A lot. Even if the manufacturer had slapped a shiny new label proclaiming the computer to be "Vista Capable."

There's a class action suit working its way through the courts to determine whether Microsoft changed the definition of "capable" to help Intel sell computers chips. But some of the documents released in the case (PDF link) are interesting in their own right. For example, Microsoft has a chart that lists identified causes of Windows Vista crashes during an unspecified period in 2007.

The folks at Ars Technica took it upon themselves to convert that data into the pretty chart you see above. The number one culprit graphics chip maker NVIDIA, a company that had a difficult time updating its graphics drivers for the new operating system. Next up is Microsoft itself, and really there's no good excuse for that, is there?

Top 12 ways to overcome PC disaster

PPC disasterPC World has put together a round-up of ideas to save you from the worst things that could happen to you. These end-game scenarios include:
  1. Your computer won't boot
  2. You just told off the CEO in an e-mail and instantly regret it
  3. No PCs show on the network
  4. Your identity has been stolen!
  5. Your Net connection is dead
  6. You're being sued by the RIAA/MPAA
  7. Your device just got doused with water--or worse
  8. You're inundated with pop-ups when you boot your PC (adware/spyware infestation)
  9. You deleted a critical file--and have no backup
  10. Your hard drive has crashed
  11. You forgot your Windows password
  12. Your presentation just croaked
These are some of the most frequent problems that an IT technician will be asked to deal with, but if you don't happen to have an IT person to beg and offer your life-savings, PC World has put together articles for each issue that may arise to help you out of your predicament.

You may want to bookmark these articles, or print them out and store them in a firesafe, just so when your PC takes a nose-dive, you'll have something to fall back on. There are a few gems that are not so common knowledge for your triumph over the untimely death of man's "new best friend" (that's the computer if you haven't had enough coffee yet today). Good luck, you're going to need it.

Firefox 2.0 alpha 2 released

Mozilla has released a 2nd alpha version of Firefox 2.0. As usual, this release is not recommended for any kind of serious use, but if you're salivating at some of the new version's features, check out what has been incorporated in this 2nd development milestone:
  • Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows
  • Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behavior is slightly different
  • Inline spell checking in text boxes (Works well, though apparently not on all sites yet)
  • Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
  • Search suggestions now appear in the search box auto-complete for Google and Yahoo!
  • New search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
  • Improved support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
  • New microsummaries feature for bookmarks (Really interesting new feature)
  • New Add-Ons manager improves the user interface for managing extensions and themes
  • Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
  • New search service that supports Sherlock and OpenSearch engines
  • Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
A mouthful, I know. I typed this post using this development version (Bon Echo, as they call it) on Mac OS X and I have to say, it's nice so far. Of course, none of my extensions were compatible, and I highly recommend backing up your Firefox app support folder before testing this, no matter what OS you're using. When I tried the last Bon Echo development version, it rendered my support folder incompatible with the latest stable release of Firefox. Just another one of those hazards of playing with dev editions.

If you want more details of this release, check out its download page and Mozilla's release notes.

[via diggdot.us]

Recover Word docs after a crash

recover word docYes, there is a recovery feature in Office. No, it doesn't always work. Does anything? Luckily, Annoyances Central has a fix for recovering a Word doc after a crash. In particular this answers the question: what if my file is wonked? A bad enough crash can make reopening the doc crash Word over and over. So the idea is to fix the file, and reopen it. They have several ways to find the remnants of your Great American Novel. Ultimately, you may need to just drop into Notepad, opener of all that is unopenable. Yes, you lose all the formatting, but did you really need bold and italics to tell your tale? I didn't think so.

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