Don Draper
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2008
- Messages
- 2,863
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This is how long it took me to "debug" our guest computer. It is only 2 years old but it has been acting SO badly lately that I decided to sit down and figure out what the heck was up. We run 2 Macs for ourselves and the business but for the guests we found a nice little Acer laptop at Staples 2 years ago for around $350. It runs Vista which is completely foreign to me so that was a challenge just to get it set up. It never really worked fantastically but it was good enough for someone to check email or print a boarding pass. It never wanted to stay connected to the WiFi, you had to keep clicking the connection button to force it to reconnect.
I ran a few different anti virus and anti spyware/malware programs and they all came up with 0 suspect files. So then I started surfing techie blogs and chat rooms and it was just so sad, there are threads running for over two years on this WiFi problem with Vista...MS admits it is a "known issue" and there are about 10 different home remedies you can try to fix it. I tried them all and nothing was working.
Finally I investigated in the Windows Update registry and came to find that none of the updates had been getting installed because the WiFi kept cutting out...this poor thing did not even have Service Pack 1 installed! So I held its hand for 4 hours, forcing the WiFi to reconnect and let Service Pack 1, Service Pack 2, and 10 other updates go through and now it is running like a champ! It's a nice little laptop and I am by no means a computer person so I'm glad I was able to figure it out...but MAN all that lost time! I do not miss Mr. Gates' products AT ALL!
I ran a few different anti virus and anti spyware/malware programs and they all came up with 0 suspect files. So then I started surfing techie blogs and chat rooms and it was just so sad, there are threads running for over two years on this WiFi problem with Vista...MS admits it is a "known issue" and there are about 10 different home remedies you can try to fix it. I tried them all and nothing was working.
Finally I investigated in the Windows Update registry and came to find that none of the updates had been getting installed because the WiFi kept cutting out...this poor thing did not even have Service Pack 1 installed! So I held its hand for 4 hours, forcing the WiFi to reconnect and let Service Pack 1, Service Pack 2, and 10 other updates go through and now it is running like a champ! It's a nice little laptop and I am by no means a computer person so I'm glad I was able to figure it out...but MAN all that lost time! I do not miss Mr. Gates' products AT ALL!