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HOW TO STOP THE OCCURRENCE OF PINK SCREEN
In
a previous
issue we discussed the problem of Pink Screen and
given solutions to minimizing the occurrence of the
strange phenomenon. In the meantime, we found out that
after applying said solutions, the problem persists
on our XP platform. Not only for the monitor screen,
which suddenly become blurred with a pink screen, but
also for the operating system itself, which also crash
from time to time. Very annoying when you are in the
middle of typing a report or conferencing over the net.
In previous delivery above mentioned, we wrote: "There
are people who took the matter seriously and made suggestions
[a
- b
- c
- d]
to solving it. However, these suggestions and tips might
not be the ones to help you get rid of the annoyance.
The problem remains a mystery for the moment.
Is it coming from the Monitor itself (loose Power cord)
or from the Graphics card? Or from a magnetic field
(Speakers) near the Monitor? The numerous links available
give no final indication to which device to blame."
And we
contributed to solving the annoyance - under Windows
98 - with a suggestion available here
However, we did continue making research and thought
about the problem of Disk Cache under Windows
operating systems - Win9x or XP.
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WHAT IS A DISK CACHE?
Disk Cache is is a part of the Random Access Memory
- RAM - A computer uses RAM to hold temporary
instructions and data needed to complete tasks. This
enables the computer's CPU (Central Processing
Unit), to access instructions and data stored in memory
very quickly. Disk Cache acts as an intermediate
buffer when data is read from and written to file systems
on secondary storage devices.
The Disk Cache's driver stores the most recently
accessed data in RAM. When a program needs to access
new data, the operating system first checks to see if
the data is in the cache before reading it from the
disk. Since computers can access data from RAM much
faster than from a storage device, disk caching can
significantly increase performance. A good example
of this is when the CPU loads an application program
- such as a word processing or page layout program -
into memory, thereby allowing the application program
to work as quickly and efficiently as possible. In practical
terms, having the program loaded into memory means that
you can get work done more quickly with less time spent
waiting for the computer to perform tasks To
understand more on RAM click here
Let us make a comparison with shopping to explain more
the problem of Disk Cache. Suppose you go to a computer
store to buy a particular computer card. If the store
has it in storage at the shop, you get it immediately
and pay for it. The store is playing the role of a buffer
between you and its supplier. If the store does not
have it right away and has to order it from the supplier,
you will have to wait for the delivery of the computer
card from the supplier to the computer shop. The computer
card you are searching for represents the Data on your
computer system. The computer shop stands as the Disk
Cache and the supplier is the Disk. The acquisition
of the computer card you "desperately" are
in need for may take much longer if the supplier had
to dispatch it to the computer shop. That is exactly
what happens if your RAM allocation is not adequate
to handle the loading of powerful applications and the
CPU is too much solicited. The computer either slows
down or crashes altogether.
So you can see with above example how Disk Cache is
important for the speediness and efficiency of your
computing experience.
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A DISK CACHE MANAGEMENT UTILITY IMPROVES YOUR COMPUTING
EXPERIENCE AND MAY DEFINITELY STOP THE OCCURRENCE OF
PINK SCREEN
Windows operating systems up to the latest one - XP
- do have inbuilt Disk Cache management system - Microsoft's
hard disk caching program vcache. However, apparently,
said inbuilt Disk Cache management system may overblow
the Cache size and therefore fail, from time to time,
to performing efficiently - depending on the software
load of your computer.
Under our Windows 98 system with 96 MB of RAM or Windows
XP with 512 MB of RAM, we noticed that the pink screen
occurs when we fire up a specific program and particularly
Microsoft Outlook. (It may be another program on
your system, which triggers the occurrence of the pink
screen). It seems that the program - as soon as fired
up - immediately solicits the Disk Cache - and therefore
the Random Access Memory device - to initiating the
occurrence of the pink screen.
We come to that conclusion as we noticed that our Windows
98 system - which has a Disk Cache optimization utility
installed - had less occurrence of the pink screen than
the Windows XP one, which does not have any. We therefore
installed Cacheman on the XP platform to see
the result. Our XP platform stabilized - no more sudden
crashes - and the pink screen disappeared. Cacheman
is bundled with: a) a disk defrragmenter, which
does the job when your system is idle; b) a RAM optimizer,
which frees or releases RAM jeopardized by programs
no more in use.[12,
23,
27,
39,
47]
The more software you install on your system the more
you are in need of utilities, which optimize the settings
and stabilize everything. In addition to Cacheman
we installed PC
Booster, an utility that makes a checkup of the
system to optimizing the settings. It performs a forensics
examination of different modules for System, Desktop,
Windows Start Menu, Internet, Hardware, CD-ROM, Memory,
Boot Up and Shut Down and optimizes all of them. At
the end of the checkup and optimization process it shows
a benchmark pane, which exposes the gain in speediness
to load programs, to surf on the net in addition to
other improvements achieved and asks for your approval.
You may run the checkup from time to time after the
installation of new software.
Visit Cacheman
website to download the utility, which stabilizes
your computer system.
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DETECT CENSORSHIP IN YOUR AREA OR COUNTRY
Is
Big Brother hovering over your head? Sniffing everything
your are visiting on the net or impeding you to reach
sites not politically correct? Here we are, in some
countries around the world at large, you cannot surf
as it pleases you. The Power of the day does not want
free and responsible citizens who can be creators instead
of zombies. They want followers, not thinkers. They
want slaves.
Now it is possible to find out if your rulers are dictators
posing as democrats. The University of Toronto's Internet
Censorship Explorer - ICE - gives you the privilege
to know. You just enter a target URL and a country into
a search field on the Internet Censorship Explorer's
website.
The software then scans the ports of available servers
in that country, looking for open ones. By using the
foreign computer as a proxy server, ICE then attempts
to visit the target URL from behind that country's firewall.
The result is either the visible website or a "page
blocked" message is then returned to the user.
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