Fighting Unknown Hardware Errors

Hardware problems are quite difficult to tackle, worse if under Windows. There was once when installing a software, I accidentally inserted the Audio hardware diskette. Thinking it was harmless, I went on, thinking I can always "undo" everything again. How wrong was I. The next moment I restarted Windows, I got the blue screen of death. Yeah, Windows is very nasty when it comes to hardware.

Find The Culprit

Always calm down. Try to solve the problem yourself before resolving to formatting or sending to your computer dealer. First, know what's happening and the cause of it. In my case, the installation must have overwrite my old setting and replaced the wrong file. There must be a reason why Windows is acting improperly.

Logging Back On

First, try to log back on. If you can't log into Windows, don't panic. Restart the computer. When the text "Starting Windows 98..." appears, press F8. A menu will appear. Choose "Safe Mode" to continue. Safe mode will take some time to load. When you are in Windows, go to Control Panel, System. Click on the Device Manager tab. Find the faulty hardware driver and delete it. Open autoexec.bat and config.sys (both are hidden files in your root directory) with notepad. If the hardware is a CD-ROM or sound card, it will probably write add some lines. Check whether there are backup file (autoexec.bak, autoexec.b~k e.g.) since most installation will back up the 2 important files. If there is, simply replace them with the backup files. If there isn't, put "REM " in front of every line that loads the hardware.

Repairing

When you restart, your computer is probably ok, since you have deleted all instances of the hardware drivers. But the hardware isn't functioning. re-install the hardware drivers, restart and you're done! If the problem persists, your probably have a system conflict go to the next page for more.




Overcoming Printer Buffer Overflow
Yes, the printer isn't perfect. When you give the printer more load than it can "remember" from it's memory buffer, it will either hang, stop, pause or abort the print and give you an error message. Here are a few ways to fight the problems.

Compress

From experience, I found out that a printer seldom or never encounter any buffer overflow from printing text. Rather, it is graphic files (up to 5 MB at a time) that crashes the printer. If you are printing multipage when you get errors, print one at a time. It may be painstaking but it sure beats having an error message. Now if a huge graphic file still makes your printer's buffer overflow, try to compress the current format you are using. If you are using Photoshop, save it as a normal or "flatten" (without layers) to lower the file size. You might want to try using GIF or JPEG. JPEG is a high-color compression method that can reduce up to 90% less. But saving in this format can be "lossy" (image looks a bit different than the original). I prefer GIF. Although the file size may be bigger in high-colors, but it looks better.

Go For The Upgrade

Most printers allow you to upgrade the memory. The more memory, the less buffer overflow. This is the best solution. Go to your nearest computer dealer to ask for a memory upgrade. Make sure they can get the exact company and model. It might cost a bit but hey, that's what upgrades are for!