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Thread ID: 109357 2010-05-04 11:53:00 Interesting problem fix linw (53) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
882368 2010-05-04 11:53:00 Had a Vista m/c here that had spasmodic problems connecting to the relatively new BB connection at the owner's place . I deleted the dial-up and one other spurious connection leaving just the Marvel one .

All worked fine on my network, so I then uninstalled all the ACER crapware (boy, that must load the m/c down), AVG free, plus several startup culprits but was hacked off to find Vista would periodically not get past the driver load phase . Damn!

Checked a few things to no avail then turned on Hidden Devices in Device Mgr . Wow, there were at least 20 phantom network devices! Many deletes later, it cleaned up and looked just like my own Vista setup .

To my relief, this seemed to fix the dvr load stall as well . It also reduced the dvr load time from 7 green bar traverses to 5 . Very happy with its performance after this .

So, maybe, Vista was trying to load dvrs for all the phantoms??

(Owner said the ISP helpdesk kept getting her to mess with the network device so that would be where all the phantoms came from) .

Something else to look for!
linw (53)
882369 2010-05-04 22:08:00 good thing to remember :thanks wainuitech (129)
882370 2010-05-04 22:26:00 I'd never noticed that little option. Blimey, it hides a lot! ubergeek85 (131)
882371 2010-05-04 23:53:00 Thats how trojans / rootkits install their drivers. Under hidden devices. Most people wouldn't know its there. You can tell which ones are screwed / not working. They'll have a X beside them Speedy Gonzales (78)
882372 2010-05-05 00:11:00 Excuse my ignorance Speedy, but in Geeksters thumbnails none of the entries are marked with an "X" .... how do you know which entries are legit / required. I can see that there are some duplicates, however, I'm not that computer savy to know which ones get rid of.

Can you enlighten me any further without excessive tech speak ?

TIA
SP8's (9836)
882373 2010-05-05 00:15:00 I didnt say the pic had X's in it. I'm just saying the ones that do have X's (under hidden devices) are probably stuffed or not working properly (or you've uninstalled a program, but the drivers for it are still there). Which may cause probs (you may see errors for the program in event viewer, when windows loads).

Do a search in google for whatever the name of the driver is. That'll tell you if its something nasty. The non plug and play entry hasnt been clicked on in that pic. Thats where the X's can appear. If the X appears under one of the other entries, there's a prob with whatever device (or it maybe disabled). And if there's a ? you haven't installed the drivers for whatever
Speedy Gonzales (78)
882374 2010-05-05 00:32:00 So, maybe, Vista was trying to load dvrs for all the phantoms??


its probably acer related . the other thing is if they are doing the old trick of loading the OS with every driver for multiable pc's . so OS has a lot of unneeded crap loaded that it doesn't use .
tweak'e (69)
882375 2010-05-05 04:22:00 its probably acer related. the other thing is if they are doing the old trick of loading the OS with every driver for multiable pc's. so OS has a lot of unneeded crap loaded that it doesn't use.

No, can't blame ACER for what I saw. There were at least 20 for the network device all labelled with #1, #2 etc.
linw (53)
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