Readers talk back to Windows Secrets

[Kathleen Atkins]

LETTERS Readers talk back to Windows Secrets As noted in this week's Introduction, Windows Secrets is launching a Letters column — reader e-mails that we think are especially interesting. Leading off this new column is a critical view of Microsoft's Office Ribbon interface, discussed in a Woody Leonhard article.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/letters/readers-talk-back-to-windows-secrets// (opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td] [/tr][/tbl]

[LilBambi]

I love the new section for Letters!

I found Robert Strand's letter additional thoughts on

Lincoln Spector’s great hard drive partitioning article, quite good.

[Tedpacheco]

Unfinished Business

The January 26, 2012 article "hard Drive partitioning gives better protection" written by Lincoln spector
is by all means very great and most appreciated. One thing though, it's like unfinished business to me when it comes
to the following 2 paragraphs:

<<<"Access the AppData folder by clicking Start, typing %homepath%appdata (including the percentage symbols),
and pressing Enter. You’ll see two or three folders here. One of them, Roaming, can be moved in the way I
described above — via the Properties dialog box’s Location tab. Move it that way.

Most of the contents in the other folders shouldn’t be moved. But if you’re using Windows Live Mail or a version of
Microsoft Office earlier than 2010, you’ve got important data in the AppDataLocal folder. You’ll have to enter these
applications and change their internal settings to move their data onto the D: partition>>>"

As Can be seen, there are no details or references per se as to how to tweak Windows Live Mail or Microsoft Office
(edition before 2010) for that matter. My question to Mr. Spector is "how does one change the internal settings of
the aforementioned applications in order to be able to move them to the D: partition?."

Your take or any references on the matter would be more than welcome.

[rdinning]

Re: The right size for a Windows partition

The things Robert Strand seems to be forgetting is that almost every program system you install installs endless stuff on C: no matter what drive you tell it to install on. MS Office is one of the worst offenders in this.

Worst, a surprising number of systems automatically install on C:, not even providing an option to install elsewhere. Some examples are Garmin's MapSource software as well as Adobe's Flash and Shockwave systems.

I'd suggest for Windows 7 you need more like 150 GB for the C: partition and that isn't counting the page file because I have that on another physical, much less used drive. Not that it's used that much since my system came with 8GB of memory. That's more than 2500 times the amount of hard drive the first IBM 370 had when I worked on it.

[rdinning]

Re: Mystery software causes 'Blue Screen of Death'

Two summers ago we bought two new matching HP computers. In setting up the first one I had BSoDs start occurring just as often as Jill Mitchell, if not more so. It began immediately after completing an operating system upgrade. After a month on the phone with HP the idiot concluded the machine was faulty and had me return it, despite me telling him I was sure it was the screen driver. Then I started setting up the second one. As soon as the operating update completed same thing.

When I reviewed the updates in Safe Mode, I saw that one of the things updated was the video driver, again. Since just before every BSoD the screen changed to a bizarre blaze of colour I strongly suspected the video driver. After spending over five hours on the phone to HP, I finally reached someone who could tell me where to download the original screen driver. Once I had done that and installed it no more problems.

A few months later, I downloaded the most up to date drivers for the video card from ATI and it has worked just fine to this day. That bad video driver shows up unchecked with every new set of upgrades from Microsoft. The diagnostics were saying it was the same module that Jill Mitchell identified causing the BSoDs.

[mima1941]

I see that there is a box for a discount code when ordering Freds new book on maintaining WXP when MS lets it loose.
Where can I find out more avout the discount?
Thanks,Mima