Archive for November, 2007

Vista ATI PCI Express driver problem

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

I just had a BSoD on my laptop running Vista. It rebooted, and when I selected the option for it to tell me why. It ‘fessed up to a BlueScreen crash. I took the recommended solution to install a service pack, selected all available updates and let it reboot - and now my display driver won’t load so I get 1024×768 instead of 1280×800!

Following a bit more exploration, it seems the ATI PCI Express (3GIO) Filter Driver grabbed some resources that the Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family Driver wanted. I rolled back the ATI driver, and now my display works again.

PS. The exercise did something nasty to the Aero Glass theme, but I’m not all that bothered about that.

PPS. I subsequently got a ‘Superfetch has stopped working’ error. Jeez, Vista is a pile of …

Be* static IP

Sunday, November 4th, 2007

I’ve suffered with DSL modem stability & routing failures for almost 2 months, but think I may have the problem resolved at last. After I was upgraded to a static IP (as result of Be* repositioning their product range) my connection is rock-solid again.

I can only see one logical reason for this: when I was on a dynamic IP profile, the DHCP servers on Be*’s network had a MAC address clash and ignored duplicate requests - causing the router not to have an IP on its external WAN interface.

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Google IMAP support

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

I’m very pleased to find Google have added IMAP support to Gmail and their hosted email services. At long last I can process my email whilst offline, and keep Gmail in sync manually. And it’s all still free!

Read Google’s FAQ on IMAP.