Almost complete hang after login, only on SP1

Hi BotenRedWolf,

Yeah, it's recommended that you disable Windows Sidebar altogether now:

Disable Windows Sidebar and Gadgets NOW on Vista and Windows 7. Microsoft warns of security risk | Naked Security

It will definitely decrease your boot time, but I'm not sure whether you would notice it. How many gadgets do you currently run? If it's a lot, then you might notice the difference, but if it's just your network gadget, then I doubt it would make much change. If you love your network gadget, there are other ways of getting gadgets on your Desktop. I use Rainmeter and love it:

Attachment 285243

Tom

1GB/s!? Wow! I get 100MB/s at uni and I thought that was fast!

Rainmeter is a tool to display custom skins on your desktop. The skins are developed by the community and hosted all across the net, but all you have to do is download it and load it in Rainmeter for it to be shown on your desktop, much like Windows Sidebar. Download it from here:

Rainmeter, desktop customization tool

You can pick up skins and layouts from loads of websites, take a look at these:

Rainmeter Skins - Customize.org
Browsing deviantART
Skins on #Rainmeter - deviantART
Rainmeter Skin Gallery. Rainmeter skin and theme Download. RMSkin file download.

You can mix and match them, and reposition them to suit your needs.

Let me know if you have any questions, or want a hand setting it up :)

Tom

BotenRedWolf said:

That's max throughput, in bits/megabits/gigabits. Realized download speeds are around 60MB/s for the gigabit pipe (it's a campus pipe), and about 1.5-3MB/s on my other one, which is actually tethered off my mobile.

60MB/s is still pretty speedy! I meant to say 100Mb/s in my last post and get somewhere in the region of 11.5MB/s on a good day. That's incredible for a tethered connection; is that 4G, per chance?

BotenRedWolf said:

Oh, and what's the best and most efficient way to remove/disable the sidebar/gadgets in Windows?

This FixIt is easiest: Microsoft Security Advisory: Vulnerabilities in Gadgets could allow remote code execution

BotenRedWolf said:

Yeah, that's a 4G 42Mbps off of a CDMA/LTE carrier out here. It's really impressive. It's also off of an "unlimited" plan that doesn't throttle. Ever. I've used >150GB this bill cycle. Still max speed.

4G hasn't really taken off yet this side of the pond. It's too expensive, and scarce, for it to be considered by most people

BotenRedWolf said:

Also, would you either teach me the trick of looking at the CBS.log files or volunteer looking at a few more? I just set up three computers today all on the same build/image of Win7.

Is there anything in particular you want to know about? The CBS log contains information on a lot of things and though I'd be more than happy to teach you, I'm not sure you fully understand how much there is to learn :)

Are these computers having problems that you want to troubleshoot, or do you simply want to know for the future?

Tom

I was afraid I'd hear that. I figured with logs measured in the tens of megabytes that there'd be a lot to go through. Basically, how to look for the problem we just went over. All the machines I'm currently setting up are all based off the same image. So once they go through all the updates and such I bet they'll all have that "break" in them. How do I spot if the machine has those corrupt files and how best do I search for what's up, and will the SFC fix those problems on it's own? I didn't grasp how any of this really worked. I'd love to know but I was so worked up about getting my personal machine up and running that I wasn't trying to pay any attention to how any of this works. Any basic crash course would be appreciated.

BTW: Data over here is typically quite expensive. Rather on the range of $5-10US per GB of mobile data. I just got lucky during a promotion and captured an unlimited plan for the same price their 10GB typically is.

New: Just tried out that Rainmeter software... that is epic, bro, thank you! Only had it a few minutes and already discovered how customizable it is right "out of the box" if you will.