Ask the Editors Live forum: Dong Ngo, CNET Senior Associate Technology Editor live!

Dong Ngo,
My question is concerning an installation of Windows XP running in VMWare Fusion on a MacBook Pro. I installed a program for my wife to use (grade keeping software) and ever since I have experienced strange behavior with My Computer crashing. I can use Windows Explorer directly but when trying to use My Computer to access the drives mapped it crashes and gives me an error and closes leaving XP unresponsive. I cant uninstall the program because my wife cannot obtain another copy of the grading program for several weeks. Do you have any troubleshooting suggestions?

Thanks,
Chris

You might want to minimize the number of drives or change the driver for the network of the VM, that might help too.

Thanks for the tips...It is strange behavior and hopefully when I can uninstall the software it will clear it up. If not, can you suggest a good option to make a backup of my installed programs that I could use once I re-install Windows

how to clean up hidden files that have been unintentionally downloaded?
thanks
..and
love

I have an older computer with two hard drives, both of which have xp pr installed on them, so that when I boot I have to choose whether to boot from windows xp professional or windows xp professional. The boot menu doesn't give me drive names, so how can I figure out which drive I booted from?

Sorry about the title on the question, I started to ask something else but decided not to and forgot to change it.

... if you have other things to do with the computer at the time, it doesn't hurt to run it during idle time, which is the only time you should run that.

It does help but not much at all.

... the particular piece of hardware you use. Some of them comes with utility that monitors that for you.

They can handle a lot of heat up to around 100 degrees Celsious or 212 Fahrenheit... Not that you should try to push the envelope...

Sorry to say but it's the OS. Windows Vista has a lot of strange behavior.

However, it might also be because your account's settings have some conflicts. You can try making a new profile (account) to see if it does the same thing there.

If you can, really, go back to Windows XP.

.. That's what I mean. As you are running VM, the whole system is save some where on the OSX, you can just make copy of that folder/files that whole the VM before you install a new software on the vitural OS. If it crash, you can just replace the current folder/files with the copy you have made earlier.

The truth is the more software you install the worst the computer gets. So don't go buying software that claims to make your computer faster, none can do that, really.

Here's what you should do:

Run Windows Defender (if you use XP you need to download and install it first:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx)

User the Tools -> Software Explorer to disable as many startup software as you can (just choose to disable them), restart the machine it would run better.

About the internet, this also depends on what connection you have, you have, not always the computer.

FireFox is WAY better than IE.

...but what does your Job at CNET involve?

My company recently moved to Office 2007 under XP, and I've found that, being more resource intensive, my machine feels a little sluggish. I wanted to try and optimize by looking at what background processes are running, using it to jog my memory about programs that may no longer be in use (old versions, found something better, etc.) so I can uninstall them. But the list of processes in Task Manager contains such cryptic filenames. Any suggestions for finding out easily what everything is? And, what if I find that either the program doesn't have an uninstall option, or it doesn't remove the background task--what's the best way to keep the process from loading? Thanks!

hi I recently bought Beijing 2008 p.c game and installed it on my p.c. I have all the specs required to play this game, but when i open the icon too play its begins too load and then i get this message " Beijing 2008 has encountered a problem and has too close down, then i see a click here so when i press it it tell me its a signature error. 1) what is a signature error? 2 ) how do i resolve this problem? i would be grateful for input on this matter as i am about to throw the game in the bin. I have 3 hard drives and 4gb of ram, my g/c is good too I play spore so i know that Beijing should work on my system.I run firefon 3 and use windows xp 2003 with service pack 2