Those who are on-line usually come to dread the foreboding "yellow shield of update" that tends to appear in the system tray on random Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Usually, however, the updates are small and relatively benign.
In my case, I've learned to dread updates to my display driver. I have an NVidia GeForce 8400 GS, which does well on my machine. Vista, on my machine, doesn't like QuickTime, and won't play those nice high-quality movies that my digital camera shoots. An I.T. friend was kind enough to provide a program called "QuickTime Alternative" which works okay.
But yesterday's update did the one thing which drives me up a wall: it eliminated the resolution setting which I use on my wide-screen monitor. It gave me a couple of new, higher-resolution settings which might be appropriate for a screen half again as large as mine. Not much help there.
Then this morning's boot-up brought another surprise: the monitor retained the resolution choice I made, but dropped the color to an 8-bit display that looks like something a cat would barf up.
I wasn't able to read my e-mail because the display was nearly illegible, so I went to work & checked those pithy comments that all bloggers wait for ...
I had forgotten about NVidia's control panel, though, as was able to reinstall the resolution I wanted, as well as reset the display to 32-bit color. All's well again in my little corner of Das Unterwebz, at least until the next update comes tumbling over the DSL.
Ain't life in the digital age exciting?
URGENT CALL TO REPENTANCE: All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord. And all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. For the Kingdom is the Lord’s and He rules among the nations. (Psalm 22:27-28)
2 comments:
I detest the "updates", makes my computer wig out and its an hour to reset everything to a functional level.
You might check and see if Nvidia has an updated driver that works better now. Unfortunately that is an annoyance one must periodically undertake with a temperamental video card.
As for playback - there is an open source player called VLC that works well with all video formats. I've even got a copy on my Mac. Might be worth a try.
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