new laptop question

[Rusty]

This is the third latop i have gotten from HP. One kept crashin and the second was not the config i ordered. Now i have a question. On the last 2 i could adjust the display Res through an icon inthe task bar. This one had np icon so i went into control panel (Vista) to my suprise there was no display icon just the one for the nvidia card. My question is this although i bought the laptop with an nvidia 8400 card shouldn't there be a generic display adaptor or driver. On my desktop i added a nvidia and when the nvidia went out i was ablt to just disable it and use the onboard display adaptor to get me by.Also when i went to uninstall the temporary software i found a live update from the Symantec Corp with an install date of 7/02/07 i wonder if they sent me a used laptop? All the other software was only installed about a month ago, also if the nvidai goes out shouldn't there be an onboard display adaptor i can use. The nvidia is the only display adaptor or driver listed in Hardware manager.Unless i am missing something due to unfamiliarity with Vista In case you cannot tell this is my first laptop and the first computer i have bought in about 10 years. The laptop seems to run fine except for dropping connection to the net. Due to an HP application tryin g to update. Also on start up iam using %35 of RAM is this normal. Okay my 1 question has turned into 3. Thanks for the help and Thanks Ray for having this forum you guys have been lots of help. Any help is appreciated since i only have a few more days to decide to keep this laptop.

[tangomouse]

%35 isnt much ,i think i answered this before ,ok so your missing the nvida icon on task tray ,thats because its Microsoft own driver ,u can however change it to nvidia driver here http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_175.19_whql.html ,and also if u just want to change the display setting just right click anywhere on the desktop "not on any icon" and select personalize then select display setting ,as for being sent a used laptop i think your just being paranoid

[Rusty]

Thanks tangomouse. You are probably right about the paranoia since the last two were not working well and they really weren't it was not me on those two. but i am having different issues and do not know whetther its vista,hp or IE, the comp keeps dropping IE. ITs running norton, IE7. Norton nor IE 7 were really my choices the pc updated and installed on auto. It may even be a browser help object issue.At first it was dropping Ie due to HP websmart prinitn trying to install. So i installed it and still having the issue vista is not helping it cannot diagnose the prob. When i view the recent problems in vista the list jsut says that IE crashed. Short of restoring back to factory condition i donot know what to do. I am open to suggestions

[Odie]

Rusty, in my opinion IE will always be IE with a lot of problems, you can try to upgrade to version 8.2 Beta (See the new releases section on this forum) or you can be smart and change to Firefox. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/. Oh and, if you can, get rid of Norton and rather go for Kaspersky.

[Rusty]

Thanks odie, That was my next step really i have tried not to change to much just yet on the LT. This si driving me nuts.m I qam not q techie but not an idiot either this could be any number of issues. I E norton vista, my router, or the network adaptor. Problem is if its an internal error in th Laptop thne it needs to go backand i have only a few days to return it. Last night i could not connect at all and i ran a diagnostic on vista and vista said that it may be a network adaptor issue then i got connection back.then sometimes wheni can gt online if i switch to desktop the desktop disappears. These were never issues with the other pc unless i was using some serious resources. Thanks for the advice i understand norton can be difficult to remove. I assume it leaves pieces behind. any idea what the processes are it leaves behind.Thanks again odie

[Odie]

I might be wrong but I don't think it is a hardware problem. The first thing I normally do, for various reasons, is to disable automatic updates on all applications. I would suggest that you try this and, seeing that you still might want to return the LT, don't un-install Norton but just disable it. Install Firefox and download the trial version of KIS at http://www.kaspersky.com/trials and see if it solves the problem.

[ozziemozzie]

Hi Rusty
I'm not at all up with tech things, but have had recent probs with a new Vista laptop my wife uses not connecting to our wireless net.
I tried everything, until my son suggested to check whether the "SSID" was set to "on."
It wasn't, I set it to on, and no probs since... :)

[blackrose]

You can disable a lot of things in windows Vista for example: disable or uninstall all the unwanted programs from HP. Your laptop is new as Symantec AV is preinstalled thus you can simply remove that and install new AV these days there are amny free version of popular AV.

Does your Vista is updated. Do you have Vista SP1 installed?

I suggest you to tweak Windows Vista as there are a lot problems with Vista. Use a good software to tweak. I use Tuneup Utlities 2008.