So this is probably too easy a target, but what the hell.
Someone came to me today asking for help getting something to work on
her 4 day old Vista laptop. One of those fun situations where the
Damned Thing doesn't work, and it's tricky to pin down whether it's
one vendor's hardware or software, or the other vendor's hardware or
software, but all you can do is make sure everything is up to date &
hope for the best. A tragic hope, to be sure.
Providing a fun distraction from all of this, the system
spontaneously went black, then came back up with the display
resolution dropped from something like 1280x800 to 800x600. "Why did
everything get so big?", she asked. Good question.
We have half a dozen windows open, so too tedious to right-click on
the desktop, better to just bring up the Control Panel. But wait,
where is it? Ah, I see, it's one of about a dozen items on the second
row of the Start menu, with the translucent background that makes it
disappear against the window behind it. Tricky.
Bring up Control Panel. We're looking at the new, streamlined, Vista
iteration of this interface, apparently. It would seem that in this
version they've done away with all the icons entirely, as we're
staring at a blank window, with some useless text on the sidebar &
some menu options up top.
One of the menu options offers "Classic view", which seems promising.
Click it. Icons appear!
Start scanning the list, none of them look promising. No "display",
no "monitor", no "resolution", etc. Hm. One of them mentions NVidia,
which is exactly where one would expect a computer-industry-naive
person like this to go looking for ideas. Click it.
A window comes up. It offers a way to change 3D settings. And that's
about it. Hm.
Start debating whether we can just reboot to make the problem go
away, or try the Gateway equivalent of zapping PRAM (hey why not).
Back to the Start menu, nothing labelled "shutdown", "reboot", etc.
Ah, but there on the bottom row, one of the buttons has the
universally used (but universally un-recognized) "power" logo -- the
one like a pointing-updards "C" with a line pointing up. Click it.
The screen immediately goes black and the fans fall silent.
Press the power button. The system immediately comes up to a login
screen. "Does it really boot this fast?" "No, you just logged me out.
Should I reboot?" "Please." She then takes an elaborate series of
steps that I'm too annoyed to pay much attention to.
A couple of minutes later, we've rebooted and the display problem
remains unresolved. (We haven't even had time to deal with the
original question that brought her over asking for help...). Right-
click on the desktop, the context menu again offers nothing for
"display" or "monitor" or anything obvious like that, but "NVidia"
shows up again. Click it.
A different window comes up, looking much more like the traditional
Windows display settings dialog. Fix the resolution. Sheep shaved,
problem solved.
We never did get around to figuring out the original problem though.
Now, to be fair, I am admittedly rusty and getting rustier with my
Windows skills, but come on, can it really be that hard to just label
things usefully? Why should someone have to know the manufacturer of
the video hardware in order to make changes to the display? Why does
every damned laptop have a completely different mechanism -- all with
entirely too many useless knobs & switches -- for attaching to an
open wireless network? What, in short, would be so bad about just
offering one, simple, consistent way to do common tasks like this,
rather than these further down the rabbit hole journeys into madness?
It's enough to make a grown man cry, I tells ya.
--
Chris Devers
