Most WinXP problems have general fixes. It seems to be hit-or-miss if you're an XP user, with most problems being caused by small driver issues. Regardless of the application/program that's giving you fits, try the following:
-update the drivers for your video card
-replace new drivers with older drivers that are known to be stable (Nvidia owners are familiar with this)
-under Display Properties select the Appearance tab. Change the Windows And Buttons drop down menu to Windows Classic Style. Select the Effects button and turn all the effects off. This tip fixes many stability issues with Trillian, mIRC, and many PtP clients like Gnucleus.
-Right click on My Computer and select Properties, then select the Advanced tab. Select the Performance button, select the Visual Effects tab then select the Adjust For Best Performance radial button. If you select different radial buttons in this window it will overwrite/restore settings previously selected under Display Properties/Appearance so you may need to change those again.
-Back to Display Properties but this time select the Screen Saver tab. Change the Screen Saver drop down menu to (None). Next select the Power button. Change the System Standby drop down menu to Never. Select the Hibernate tab then de-select (turn off) Enable Hibernation. Under the Advanced tab I always disable the Sleep button (my daughter loves banging on my keyboard when I go afk and she would always hit the Sleep button which causes my system to lock up). You also may want to change the Turn Off Hard Disks time to something more reasonable like 2 hours (under the Power Schemes tab, same place you changed the System Standby to Never).
A friend of mine that does some psuedo-professional programming (VB and C++) has explained to me that WinXP's Luna style desktop has some niggling issues with drawing windows and buttons and such, dependent on hardware. Therefore most compatability problems cannot be replicated across different systems or driver versions. However most of these stability problems are solved by turning the new, nifty looking WinXP desktop off.
|