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Stefan Helander

Windows Vista hangs on Welcome screen

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I had a HP desktop PC running Windows Vista that sometimes hanged on the Welcome screen (displayed after entering the password to login). The problem occured randomly but started to occur more and more often causing trouble for the user. Just waiting for the Welcome screen to dissappear (for hours) didn’t help.

I applied different solutions found on the Internet including registry changes, uninstalling HP credential manager and others. One solution suggested on the Internet forums was to reformat the machine and factory install it. Not a preferred solution but ultimately the only thing left to try. 

The machine ended up in my workshop but before formatting it I opened it while running on my workbench. I noticed this machine had a built in flash drive used for Windows Readyboost (in order to make the machine boot faster and load programs faster). I was a bit curious since I hadn’t seen this solution before. The flash memory was connected to the motherboard through a cable. I accidently touched the cable gently and immediately the flash drive dissappeared and reappered in Windows opening the screen asking me what I wanted to do with the newly inserted flash drive. 

This made me suspect that the cause of the problems has been the readyboost located on a flash drive with a poor connection. I disconnected the flash drive completely and the machine have never again had the "hang on welcome screen" problem. Although it doesn’t load programs as fast as before it is way better for the user to have a machine that doesn’t hang on the welcome screen.

Stefan Helander

Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III AF-2840 in Windows Vista

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So, did you also try to get this negitive/slide scanner to work in Windows Vista?  No success? Thought so. Unfortunately I have found that Minolta scanners seems to have kind of a short life cycle in the eyes of the manufacturer. Like many other computer accessories that are not professional grade, drivers are availible for the current operating systems but when new arrives there just isn’t being any drivers developed. For this scanner I believe it was Windows 2000 and possibly Windows XP it had drivers for. But the arrival of Windows Vista was the death for this otherwise perfectly good scanner.

Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III AF-2840Like cameras, a good scanner do have a longer life cycle than normal computer accessories, which means that updated drivers are needed. Hopefully manufacturers will pick that up. Even though this scanner is not a professional grade scanner it has good performance and when sold it was not cheap, more in the price class of a good camera. I think as a consumer you should expect a bit longer life than that. Enough complaining.

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Stefan Helander

PeToUSB can’t find USB stick in Vista

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When running PeToUSB under Microsoft Vista it might not be able to detect your USB memory stick. It displays “No USB Disks Found!”.

The solution is to right click PeToUSB.exe and select “Run as administrator”. If that don’t help, try rebooting your system making sure the USB memory stick is inserted while Microsoft Vista boots up.

Stefan Helander

Windows Vista cannot obtain IP-address from my Internet Service Provider

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Under certain conditions a PC running Windows Vista is unable to obtain an IP-address via DHCP from the Internet Service Provider (ISP). The problem occurs if the ISP is running a non-Microsoft DHCP server. Among ISPs it is common to work with, for example, ISC DHCP-server which is the most common DHCP-server in the world.

The problem and a possible solution is described in the following Microsoft article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B928233&x=13&y=10

If you don’t want to edit your registry another simple solution is to buy a simple broadband router (internet sharing device) that does Network Address Translation (NAT). By doing this, the broadband router is obtaining the IP-address from the ISP, not the Windows Vista PC. In addition, you will be able to connect more than one PC to your Internet connection and those PCs will be protected by the firewall that most broadband routers have builtin.