Vista Snag

I hit a snag with Vista; it's nothing horrid, just really annoying. Photoshop CS2 starts up REALLY slow for me. Once it's done starting up, it runs just fine, but it takes over 5 minutes to get started. Anyone have any ideas on this? Everything else is running really smooth (with the exception of Miranda and Trillian; I gave up on them for the time being and switched to Pidgin which runs great). I don't think it's a memory issue; I have a Gig of RAM and 20 Gigs free on the hard drive...

Other than that, I couldn't be happier (well, unless I could run Aero, but that won't happen).

Apparently the Wow IS Now

Wow, getting that powered USB hub made all the difference in the world. I didn't realize how much of a strain Sophia was under! She's a lot quieter now; I hooked up the external hard drive, the Bluetooth dongle, and the fan pad to it. I figured those were most likely to eat power over the tablet and memory card reader. I'm going without a full keyboard for the time being; I realized it really just added to the clutter. I'll hook it up if I need a 10 key, but I didn't use the media keys as much as I thought I did. Besides, Winamp has global hotkeys, so I don't really need the media keys.

So Begins the Saga of Vista

So I got Vista yesterday; just Home Basic as Sophia won't support Aero. Come to find out AFTER formatting and installing that there are NO Vista drivers for this laptop; the screen was all wonky, no sound, etc. I searched and searched for solutions to no avail. Finally, I decided I would take a long shot and just tell it to search for drivers in the old HP directory. Now, mind you, these are OLD drivers from when this laptop was originally made 4 years ago. I figured if Windows Update and HP say there are no drivers, these most likely won't work. Well, they did. I have my full screen with 3D graphics and glorious sound! I have yet to run into any program compatibility issues. Granted, I had to clean install, so I'm having to reinstall everything, but so far so good. Sophia is faster now, and I love the interface. I'm just tickled that I beat both Microsoft and HP by using really old drivers. lol

Oh! And I figured out what my freezing issue is; it has nothing to do with the hard drive. It's a power issue. I found my old 120 GB USB hard drive and used that to back my music and pictures up. As soon as I plugged it in Sophia froze. Restart, freeze. Rinse, repeat. I can run it if I have NO other periphals connected pulling power; no WiFi card, no external keyboard or mouse, no Bluetooth, etc. I even have to pop the DVD-ROM out since if it spins, it pulls power. I'm going out and getting a powered USB hub this afternoon, so that should eliminate the issue.

Overheating?

So I THINK I have figured out one of my freeze up issues; ironically enough, I think it's a temperature issue. I could be wrong, but I notice that it is running really hot when it freezes; one contributing factor is probably my keyboard. I have a slim multimedia keyboard that I've been setting on top of the laptop keyboard so that I have multimedia controls and a 10 key available. It's slim enough that it barely protrudes above the bottom of the LCD. But it's also trapping heat. I've been using Sophia for about the past 3 hours with no issue having the keyboard off. I don't think this is the ONLY factor, as some programs freeze it up more than others (I had to kill Trillian after years of use due to this; it froze Sophia up about 75% of the time on it's start-up). I still think there are some bad sectors or scratches on the hard drive (my mom didn't take such good care of Sophia before I got her). Now, I know that it sounds stupid to claim that hardware and software can cause completely identical yet unrelated issues, but these are my observations. And yes, I do know that more intense programs (ie games, etc) can cause there to be more heat, but I seriously doubt that's what was going on with Trillian or any of the other few programs I had to kill (Trillian was really the only I used, and I'm using Miranda now, so it's all good). Anyway, anyone have some good ideas for keeping a laptop cool? Even with the keyboard off, it's still spewing some pretty hot exhaust (though not as scaldingly hot)... Do those laptop "cool pads" (USB powered pads with fans) make a big difference? Would over heating be causing my issues?