Overseas Chinese Web Guide

Tag: windows vista

  • VMWare Fusion, Windows Vista and the Black Screen of Death

    fusion-vista

    I’ve been using VMWare Fusion and Windows Vista for quite some time now. Usually, I’ll quit Fusion after I have completed my task to free up all the memory it has tied up. However, this past weekend, I had to use Vista for quite a few hours. When I opened my MacBook Pro this morning, I saw the charming black screen above with the frozen green indicator on the progress bar.

    So, I clicked the Suspend button and Fusion saved the state of the virtual machine. Unfortunately, Resume lead me back to the frozen black screen.

    I think my only option is to Restart Guest. I end up at a Windows Error Recovery page and was too slow to select an option, so the computer started Windows Normally by default. After an inordinate time fixed on a black screen, the familiar Windows Vista login screen appears.

    After the usual start-up procedure, Vista proceeds to reinstall certain components and gives me this error message: “Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown.”

    Problem caused by USB driver

    You received this message because your universal serial bus (USB) driver has caused a blue screen error. This type of error means the computer has shut down abruptly to protect itself from potential data corruption or loss.

    Ah, the blue screen, which was really a blacks screen. Next time, I think I’ll have to suspend or quit VMWare Fusion whenever I’m done. If I’m plugging or unplugging USB devices on the Mac side, I really don’t want to be worried that this will kill Vista if it happens to be shutting down in the background at the time.

  • Windows Mojave Sucks. Internet Explorer Help Menu Found

    Lately, I’ve seen more than my share of commercials telling me that Windows Mojave (a/k/a Vista) doesn’t suck. But it does. At least the version of Internet Explorer that comes bundled with Windows Vista. My #1 gripe with Internet Explorer 7 is that it breaks all the rules, and not in a good way. For decades now, we have all grown accustomed to using the drop-down menus that appear at the top of the application window. On Firefox, you will find the File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tools and Help menus located in the upper left-hand corner of the application window. The menus are in that same location on Notepad and Minesweeper. But, that is not the case with Internet Explorer.

    So, what lead me down this path? Well, I was searching for the Help menu on Internet Explorer yesterday and I couldn’t find it. No drop-down menus at the top of the application window. Instead, the menus have been dumped into the toolbar. So, I studied each of the icons and couldn’t find the one labeled Help. Next, I did what everyone else usually would do when confronted with a problem. I turned to Google. For all I know, maybe Microsoft dropped the Help menu because they thought the application was so straightforward that no one needed help. Well, one of the Google search results lead to a Microsoft page that confirmed that Internet Explorer had a Help menu. But, where was it?

    After another round of clicking on just about everything on the toolbar, I finally found it. To the right of the Tools menu, there is a >> link. Clicking on it displays Help as a submenu item. Goodness. Should it take 15 minutes to find a Help menu?