I encountered a nagging problem with all the Windows PCs on my network. Sometimes, they’d run just fine. Other times, they’d slow to a crawl. What used to take only a few seconds for my computer to accomplish would now take several minutes. During my research, I found that several other people encountered similar problems.

Many people identified the problem as an issue with the Windows Update Agent (WUA). You can read about it and the fix for it on Microsoft’s support site at support.microsoft.com/kb/916089/en-us. In all likelihood, however, if you’ve been updating Windows regularly, you already have the required fix.

I was able to track down my problem to software related to my HP printer. For some strange reason, the software was engaging my computer in a constant search for the printer, which was really bogging down both computers on my home network.

If you have an HP printer that you share on your network via a router and you’re experiencing very poor performance, this post may help you identify and fix the problem.

Identifying the Culprit

To find out what’s causing the slowdown, press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to display the Windows Task Manager shown below and click the Processes tab. Examine the list of processes for any process except “System Idle Process” that’s consuming a huge percentage of CPU resources. On my networked PCs, the process that was hogging the CPU was svchost.exe.

Svchost is part of Windows. Other software can call it into action. Several instances of svchost.exe were running, but only one may be causing a problem. Your next step is to find out which program running the problem instance of svchost is causing the problem.

Download a utility called Process Explorer and run it on my computer as shown below. This nifty utility displays a list of all the processes currently running, just like the Windows Task Manager does, but allows you to view more information about each process.

Double-click the process that’s consuming so much CPU usage to display a window with more information about the process, as shown below. This example shows information for HP Network Devices Support.

Changing a Service from Automatic to Manual

In the many discussions I read about this problem on other Web sites, I knew that I needed to change the service from automatic to manual in order to fix the problem. However, nobody really explained how to do that. Here’s how:

1. Click Start and then Control Panel.
2. Click Switch to Classic View.
3. Double-click Administrator Tools as shown below.

 



4. Double-click Services, as shown below.

 



The Services window appears, as shown below. Note that it includes a couple HP services, including HP Network Devices Support.



5. Double-click HP Network Devices Support. Windows displays additional information about the service, as shown below, including the command used to run it.

 



6. Change the Startup Type from Automatic to Manual and then click the OK button.

 

Assigning Your Network Printer a Static IP Address

Unfortunately, now that you’ve essentially disabled the HP tool for locating the network printer on startup, Windows won’t be able to find your printer. To address this issue, assign your printer a static (fixed) IP address. The process for doing this differs depending on the router you’re using. I have a Netgear router, and the process goes something like this:

1. Open your Web browser, type the IP address of your router, and press Enter. The IP address usually looks something like 127.132.0.1. (I blurred mine in the image below for security purposes.) Check the documentation that came with your router for information on how to access its settings.

 



2. Login, if necessary, by entering your username and password. (Again, this should be included in your router’s documentation, unless you or someone else changed the router’s login settings.)
3. Click the LAN IP Setup link to display the LAN IP Setup settings, where can assign a specific IP address to any device on the network, as shown below.

 



4. Click Add to display a list of devices for which you can reserve a specific IP address.
5. Click the option button next to your printer and click Add, as shown below. This returns you to the LAN IP Setup page.

 



6. Click Apply, as shown below.

 

Assuming everything goes as planned, the next time you restart your computer, you shouldn’t have a problem with svchost consuming all your CPU usage, and you should have no trouble printing.

Now, perform the same steps on your other networked computers.

When I was writing Deconstructing Golden Tee LIVE, I interviewed several game designers who all told me the same thing – users go through a period during which they resist change before they embrace it. I’m wondering whether the same thing is occurring with Windows Vista.

Many die hard Windows XP users I’ve talked with insist that they’re going to stick with XP at least until Microsoft “works out all the bugs in Vista.” Many of these users haven’t even tried Vista. They simply have a knee-jerk reaction against it.

Apparently, Microsoft is well aware that this is going on. Relatively recently, the company did a little experiment called The Mojave Experiment. They wanted to know what people would think of Vista if they didn’t know it was Vista: Would they still hate it?

Overwhelmingly, the answer was No. People who used Windows Vista not knowing they were using Vista reported that they loved the operating system.

Admittedly, I was a little hesitant to use Vista at first, and I really didn’t like it. I didn’t like having to learn a new way of doing things. I knew where everything I needed was located in XP and didn’t want to have to go hunting for all that stuff again.

Over time, however, I’ve become a fan of Windows Vista. Here are some of the things I like about it:

• 3D desktop: When you have multiple application windows open in Vista, you can flip through the stack in 3D.
• Start menu search: All I have to do is click the Start button and start typing some text in the Search box to find what I’m looking for.
• Beefed up media features: I especially like the new Windows Movie Maker, which now allows me to burn my video to a recordable DVD to play on my TV’s DVD player.
• New sidebar and gadgets: The new sidebar in Windows Vista provides quick access to customizable mini-applications (called gadgets), which include weather updates, news headlines, late-breaking sports scores, your personal calendar, a calculator, and other often-used features and tools.
• New backup utility: Everyone tells you to back up the files on your computer, but Windows XP offers a shoddy backup utility. Vista improves the backup capabilities of Windows, enabling you to back up your files to recordable CDs or DVDs, external hard drives, and other backup media.
• Speech recognition: If you’d rather bark out commands than point and click with a mouse, Windows Vista can accommodate your preference. Equip your computer with a microphone, train Vista to tune its ear to your voice, and you’re ready to enter commands and type without touching your keyboard or mouse. The more you use the feature, the better it works!
• Windows SideShow: Designed for notebook computers, Windows SideShow enables you to display critical information on a secondary or auxiliary screen whether the notebook is on, off, or in sleep mode. In other words, you don’t have to power up your computer to view meeting schedules, phone numbers, addresses, and recent e-mail messages. This saves you gobs of time and conserves battery power at the same time. Of course, your notebook computer must be equipped with a secondary or auxiliary screen.

If you’ve tried Windows Vista, I’d like to know what you think of it. Do you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down? Why?

My daughter returned home from a Spanish class trip to Costa Rica with over 250 photos on our neighbor’s new digital camera – Olympus Stylus 790SW 7.1MP Waterproof Digital Camera with Dual Image Stabilized 3x Optical Zoom. We downloaded them to her computer and backed them up to a recordable CD and returned the camera. Now, we wanted to create a slide show with musical accompaniment that we could record on a DVD to play on our TV’s DVD player. Both of our computers are equipped with PowerPoint, but we decided to try a different approach – using Windows Movie Maker.

The actual process of making a slide show in Windows Movie Maker for Windows XP and Vista is nearly identical. However, as I discovered through this process, it’s easier in Vista. On my daughter’s PC running Windows Vista, we could edit the photos in Windows Photo Gallery, create the side show in Movie Maker, and then burn it to a DVD to play in a TV DVD player. On my PC running XP, I had to use a separate program to edit the photos (I used Paint Shop Pro), and Movie Maker did not provide me with an option to record the slide show to a TV DVD; I could only save it to a CD or DVD for playback on a PC.

First Things First

Even before you start thinking about creating your slide show, edit your photos:

• Rotate any photos 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise so they’re right-side-up.
• Correct any photos that are too dark, too light, have red-eye problems, or just don’t look right for whatever reason. (You can’t do too much to correct out-of-focus photos.) Most photo editing programs, including Windows Photo Gallery (included with Vista) feature tools for rotating images and an Auto Fix command for correcting problems.

In Windows Photo Gallery, you can click a photo and use the Rotate buttons to rotate it. To edit the photo, double-click it.

Tip: If you have Vista, you can start creating your Movie Maker slide show in Windows Photo Gallery. Click Start, All Programs, Windows Photo Gallery. After editing your photos, click File, Select All, and then click Make a Movie. Windows closes the Photo Gallery and runs Windows Movie Maker, which you can then use to make your slide show movie.

Make the Slide Show

To make the slide show, we took the following steps. (If you already selected the photos in Windows Photo Gallery and clicked Make a Movie, you can skip steps 1-3.)

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, and click Windows Movie Maker. (In Windows XP, you may need to select Start, All Programs, Accessories, Windows Movie Maker.)
2. Under Import or Capture Video, click the option for importing Pictures.
3. Change to the folder that contains the photos you want to include in your slide show, select all the photos you want to include in your slide show, and click Import. Windows Movie Maker imports the selected photos.
4. Take one of the following steps to add photos to your slide show:
   • To control the order of the photos, drag each photo to the desired location in the storyboard (the pane at the bottom of Movie Maker).
   • Select all of the photos you want to include in your slide show, and then drag one of the selected photos into the Storyboard (the pane at the bottom of Movie Maker) and release the mouse button.

Add Music

Adding music that plays in the background can really enhance your slide show, but first, you need to have some audio tracks:

• Use Windows Media Player to rip tracks from one or more CDs.
• Use audio tracks or clips you downloaded from the Internet. (Windows Movie Maker supports the following audio file formats: aif, .aifc, .aiff .asf, .au, .mp2, .mp3, .mpa, .snd, .wav, and .wma.)

Once you have some audio clips stored in one or more folders on your computer’s hard drive, you can import them into Movie Maker and add them to your slide show:

1. Under Import or Capture Video, click the option for importing Audio or Music.
2. Change to the folder that contains the audio tracks or clips you want to include in your slide show, select all the clips you want to include in your slide show, and click Import. Windows Movie Maker imports the selected clips.
3. Above the Storyboard (the pane at the bottom of Movie Maker), click Storyboard and then click Timeline or click Show Timeline to change to timeline view. (You have to be in timeline view to add music.)
4. Take one of the following steps to add audio tracks to your slide show:
   • To control the order of the audio clips, drag each clip to the desired location in the Audio section of the timeline. (Make sure the line that defines the beginning of the audio clip butts up against the beginning of the timeline or the end of the previous clip, or you’ll have dead air in your slide show.)
   • Select all of the audio clips you want to include in your slide show, and then drag one of the selected clips into the audio section of the timeline and release the mouse button.

Tip: You probably want to have the music run a little past the end of the slide show to be sure that music will play the entire time.

Tip: Instead of music, you may want to include your own narration of what’s shown in each slide. (You need to have a microphone installed on your computer in order to record narration.) To record narration, open the Tools menu, click Narrate Timeline, and use the onscreen controls (and your microphone).

Add a Title and Credits

To give your slide show a professional touch, add a title slide and credits. I won’t bore you with detailed step-by-step instructions. Use the options on the Tools menu and follow the onscreen instructions to add a title slide and credits.

Tip: You can also add transition effects between slides by using the Tools, Transitions or Video Transitions command, but I like the default slide transitions. If you do use transitions, use the same transition between all slides, so the different transitions won’t distract from your show.

Preview Your Slide Show

Before burning (recording) your slide show to a CD or DVD, preview it to make sure it contains all the photos and music you want it to include in the order in which you want them to play.

To preview your slide show, click the first slide in your show (probably the Title slide if you added a title to your slide show), and then click the Play button.

Save Your Project

To save your project so you can edit it later, click File, Save Project or press Ctrl+S and then save the file as you would save any file on your computer. This simply saves your project. It doesn’t allow you to play the slide show on another computer or on a TV DVD player. To do that, you need to “publish” your movie, as discussed in the next section.

Publish Your Slide Show

When your slide show is just as you want it, you can publish it to share with others. In Windows XP, you can save the movie (slide show) to your computer, to a CD, send it via e-mail, save it to a format that can play on the Web, or save it to a DV (Digital Video) recorder. In Windows Vista, you have all of those options, plus you can record to a DVD disc to play on other computers equipped with DVD players or on a TV DVD player.

Note: To publish your slide show to a DVD, your computer must be equipped with a recordable DVD player and you must use recordable DVDs.

To publish your movie (slide show), click Start, Publish Movie (Windows Vista) or Start, Save Movie File (Windows XP), and follow the onscreen cues to save/publish the file in the desired format.

Whenever I encounter a problem in Microsoft Windows, the first place I turn to is Microsoft’s Knowledge Base – an incredible resource for articles on troubleshooting and correcting problems in Microsoft Windows and other Microsoft programs.

To access the Knowledge Base, take the following steps:

1. Fire up Internet Explorer or whichever Web browser you use.
2. Go to www.microsoft.com.
3. Click the Support link.
4. Click Knowledge Base. The Advanced Search page appears.
5. Click the Show More Options button.
6. Open the On what product do you want to search? list and click the Microsoft product you think is causing the problem.
7. Click in the search box near the top of the page and type a description of the problem you’re having. (If you received an error message, type the message exactly as it appeared.
8. Click the Search button.

Personally, I prefer using the Microsoft Knowledge Base to troubleshoot problems, but the Support page contains additional tools, including Help & Support Home, Microsoft Update, Windows XP Solution Center, Windows Vista Solution Center, and 2007 Office suites Solution Center. All of these are worth checking out.

If you still use the Maximize and Restore buttons in the upper right corner of a program’s window, you probably waste a lot of time trying to get the mouse pointer positioned precisely over the desired button, especially if you’re using your notebook PC’s touchpad.

Did you know that you don’t have to use those buttons? Simply double-click anywhere inside the window’s title bar (except on the buttons of course). If the window is maximized, double-clicking the title bar restores it. If it is not maximized, double-clicking the title bar maximizes the window.

Try it.