S A CHO

I picked up this laptop today for dirt cheap its a older model Toshiba Satellite...First thing I did was give it a fresh copy of Windows XP and install Firefox. Now Im surfing the net and when I scroll up and down on any web page (in IE or Firefox) its choppy, meaning that if I scroll down, it wont scroll smoothly with the scroll bar on the side, If Im scrolling down, it will jump roughly 10 lines at a time, instead of going down smoothly...Also when I play movies the movies are choppy, for some reason refresh rate comes to mind, but dont want to go fiddling with stuff I dont know about...

Any ideas here?

(PS. Smooth scrolling is enabled in Firefox and IE)

nandowong

you are missing the video card drivers. when you reintalled xp you erased them. Its probably running some generic stuff with out acceleration. just go hunting for the new drivers and install.

also, if you look in system/device manager you will probably see a yellow exclamation mark by your video card

S A CHO

Awesome, Thanks for the help, and I got a yellow question mark for VGA Controller...

925tsx

not only that but it also depending on the cpu and amount of memory on that machine
u want at least 512mb of ram with xp pro, and 1ghz or higher.

Whiskers

Fix the driver issue - also go into the performance area (Properties of My Computer) and change it for fastest performace (your desktop will look like Windows 2000, but it will run better).

S A CHO

AHA! All Fixed, Thanks alot nandowong, And thanks for the tip Whiskers...

EDIT: Holy crap Whiskers, Its like a whole different computer now...In a good way :thumb:

nandowong

S A CHO, have you ever wanted to try linux? since you just got your old computer up and running you really have nothing to loose. Linux is free, 99% of all software is free and it can run great on older computers. My favorite distribution if Fedora 4 ..

here is a shot of my screen http://plaza.ufl.edu/efwong/Screenshot3.png

If you dont want to try it, its ok. i just like to share my exitement with other people.

Btw: NiteQuill switched over to linux a couple of months ago and loves it

S A CHO

Why not? Ive got some applications on this PC already though (Linewire, Office XP, McAfee anti virus) would those work with Linux? (I'm Linux n00b, obviously)

Whiskers

Linux is fun to play around with, but at the end of the day you will want to stick with Windows for support, compatibility and software......

nandowong

you should look through this list http://chlug.org/oss_equiv.php

that justs gives you an idea of the depth of software out there.

limewire linux has it

office xp-----openoffice.org (by sun microsystemsk, free and can open save and work on word, excell et

anti virus--------- you dont need it, nor spyware scanners.

you can grab fedora from here:

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...re/4/i386/iso/

download the FC4-i386-disc1.iso disc 2,3

you usually only need the first two, but you migth need the third depending on what you install.

also, the installer is sooo easy, you could almost sleep through it.

a great forum is www.fedoraforum.org

let me know if you decide to give it a shot or aim me if you need help.

aim: umm poyo

nandowong

forgot to say,

i can run

~90 % of windows programs with out any microsoft code. it basically replaces all the dll and api calls the .exe makes.

I'll agree with whiskers, linux is not for every body, but unless you give it a fair chance you dont know what you are missing.





You can also dual-boot your pc. so you can choose xp or linux on boot time. I did this for 4 months until i decided to fully switch over.

S A CHO

Sweet, maybe this weekend I will try it out...

nandowong

might be wise to dual boot until you get the hang of it. Just install Xp first, but dont give it all of the hard drive. maybe leave 6-8 Gb to play around until you get conforable.