weird XP SP 1 bugs – please help

[The Sewer Rat]

i no longer have the option to ‘standby’ in XP.

It was there before! But, after doing a fresh install (this time with a XP SP1 slipstreamed disc), the option to ‘standby’ is mysteriously faded out in the shutdown menu.
Do I have to change something on my BIOS? Thanks for any help!

EDIT: I changed an unrelated video card setting in the BIOS… and now my second rig (also sp1) displays the standby option! Still no joy with my main rig though…any help?


- Also, every so often my desktop starts up in 8-bit for no apparent reason.

- AND, when clicking disconnect on my modem icon, it takes a whole minute to actually disconnect. (it’s a diamond 56i).

these moans apart, sp1 is quite stable.




Also, do mp3s sound better with better sound cards? I have a 64-bit on board SB chip, and mp3s sound quite good. Should I upgrade? Thanks again.

[MetalCartman]

Some cards like my Terratec SixPack or the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz have H/W acceleration for mp3s, so the workload on the cpu will be lowered.

However, I've seen (or should I say "heard"?) very good and horribly bad implementations of onboard soundchips. I would upgrade if it was just an AC97 codec-chip.

If the sound quality is sufficient for your needs, then I'd stick with the onboard sound.

It would be helpful, if you could post your system specs.

Cartman

[ayoub_ibrahim]

TSR, have you installed drivers for your videocard or are you using the ones from xp?

[DGhost]

It sounds like video card problems. On my systems i've seen the video drivers cause random issues like that...

[UtwigMU]

Is PM controlled by APM enabled in BIOS.

MP3s = lower quality so IMHO the audiocard is not the bottleneck here:

it's: speakers>source>soundcard