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I turn on the computer this morning and can hear everything loading but only see a Locked screen (Vista Home Premium SP2).

I thought that was odd and clicked Locked and saw my personally configured Desktop. Fine ... but for only a few seconds and the screen goes to Locked again. My Desktop is Locked and wants to stay that way.

Last night I had tried to install a screen saver from NPR.org figuring it would be safe to do so ... and I'm assuming that was the culprit as I received an error message and it forced another program to shut down.

Back to the problem ... after clicking a handful of times on Locked and being able to use the computer for a few seconds before it Locked again, I knew I had to reinstall an earlier version of the Registry.

I now reboot the computer, press F8 but am only given the option of the last good configuration and not the list that I believe was given in earlier versions of Windows. I give this a shot, same problem.

I wound up performing a System Restore to an earlier date and that solved this problem. I'm sure this is just one value in a line somewhere in the Registry that was changed but when you can only see your Desktop for a few seconds at a time it's hard to get any work done.

System Restore to the rescue ... and I can't remember the last time I used it and I would have solved the problem quicker if I had remembered its name. Just passing this on.

For the record, my computer is well protected and I didn't think I was infected but I have had other issues in the past with screen savers.

Well, I can't speak for everyone else here, but I for one will sleep soundly tonight!

James
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@James:

LOL

Me too. I use Macs.

This thread reminds me of Apple's funny Mac vs PC TV ads.

What's the percentage of Apple owner's ... less than ten percent?

Yea, that's a successful business model.

Apple's current market cap is 508 Billion. Larger than any other firm in the world. Far larger than Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and Sony combined. We could add in some other household names as well and have plenty of wiggle room.

I'm not an apple fan and own zero apple products because I really dislike their business model and products, but they are very successful.

And yet Apple is the world's most valuable company.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-your-money-17215326

James
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EDIT: gvfarns beat me to it...

Spot on. I don't care what is better.

Anybody claiming Microsoft ranks above Apple for business model/ethical grounds is on very shaky ground...

Microsoft is on its way down - they are doing a lot less business than they used to due to their inability to keep up with the phone and tablet market. It is conceivable that Microsoft could go bust in the next 5-10 years, such is the decline of their market share and the state of their product innovation. Now that's a poor business model.

Finally, market share and profitability are not the same thing and should not be equated. Apple is making as much money on its computer business as Microsoft these days - even with its 10% market share.

Yes, Microsoft has had some shady business practices. But, unlike Apple, at least they don't use slave labor to build their products. You cannot possibly view either of them as havens of virtue.
So you predict that their 90+% share of O/S sales will dwindle to nothing, and that someone else will take over?
Will Apple continue to dominate the tablet market?
Or the phone market?
Not likely. Apple does well when they invent a new market and own it completely. They're good at that.
But over the next several years other players will slice out a big share.
I don't know of MS will be a big player in that, or not. But Apple will need to find the next-big-thing in order to stay ahead.
Well, if they're making so much more, why is their EPS so low?
Microsoft's recent EPS was $2.76 on a $32 share (8.6%).
Apple's was $35.14 on a $540 share (only 6.5%).

So you don't buy Apple for income.
You buy it for growth.

In the tech sector, that's risky. The risk comes from the fact that Apple MUST keep inventing the next big thing in order to survive. Perhaps they will.

But big, bad Microsoft is not their only competitor. There's also the big, bad, hungry Google juggernaut, which is about to acquire a cell phone company. The next few years should be very interesting.

I don't like that Apple locks you into their stuff and charges so much for everything, but I don't think we can hold slave labor against them. Almost anything you can point your finger at or wear is made in a third world country, likely in circumstances similar to the Apple factories. Low skill manufacturing is virtually always farmed out to those who otherwise would face true destitution. I can think of a number of reasons to dislike Apple, but it makes not sense to single them out for doing what absolutely everyone else involved in manufacturing that type of item also does.

Microsoft is evil for completely different reasons. Mainly because their stuff never works well. I only have Windows on one of my computers...the one that is used exclusively for my software pianos. There just isn't enough good linux support in the music community. My only option would have been PianoTeq, and you know I'm not going there...

If Apple were a country, it would make North Korea look like a model of Democracy.
OTOH, it is the perfect business model.

That's correct, and I don't. Microsoft has an anti-competitive streak that can't be admired. They also charge very highly for each generation of their OS, branding them as new when they are just increasingly bloated versions of 20+ year old platforms. They are lazy to the core. The entire architecture of Windows needs to change but they have lost the ability to do it because they have clung to it for so long.

I don't admire either company on the decency front.



Well, not to nothing, that's not how businesses go bust in the tech sector. Microsoft have been too slow to get up to speed in the mobile platforms and therefore have all their eggs in the PC/laptop basket. Sales of PC's are falling dramatically, sales of laptops is also declining. So Microsoft is facing not so much a loss of market share, but a loss of market. Recent reports I've read suggest that people are increasingly preferring to access their online content on their mobile devices. PCs and laptops will always be needed for serious work, but they are becoming less important. As a result, the number of them in each home is dropping, the number of MS OS's is dropping, and those people may eventually try to drop their involvement with MS products as they become for adept and comfortable with the Android/mac OS products that they are using a lot more. I read a recent report that predicted that sales of MS operating systems is projected to drop by 60% in the next couple of years. That would put a massive gaping hole in their viability as a company. MS wouldn't go bust in the sense of zero revenue because they would be aquired by another company before that could happen - either that or Bill Gates would step in and take over and try to reinvent his baby. MS is still a powerful brand and it could be relaunched with a new image in the future with a revamped line of products. But I think their days of being the universal OS that everybody knows and buys is rapidly coming to an end.




Yes, they are good at that. People tend to wait to see what Apples next invention will be. They have been clever in that regard, to a fair extent, they direct where consumer electronics goes because if their past efforts. Many people now see them as leading the way - even when they aren't.



Will they? The mobile device market is totally cornered by Apple and Google. I think it's more likely that this will strengthen and lead them to develop larger OS for laptop/PC market (which Apple has already done). I haven't seen any viable newcomer to the OS market for a while. Even MS, who is trying to catch up now, with all its massive brand recognition is getting nowhere.



MS hasn't been in the product innovation game for at least 15 years.



I won't disagree with any of that as you are obviously more up to date with the latest numbers, but shareholder returns are not the same as company returns. Some companies reinvest more back into the company than others - which has an effect on the return to the shareholder. Apple is doing massive business so if they aren't performing a well on the stockmarket, I would surmise that they reinvest more into future products/marketing and don't turn over as much of their profits to shareholders.

They will have to invent something big again, for sure. But they have enough things on the boil at the moment that they can continue to refine and update them for a while longer. I'm sure they are looking at their next move well in advance. A bit like the DP market, they do slow down their innovations to try to saturate the market as much as they can before the next generation. When they notice that the market is getting disinterested, they release the next gadget.


Yes, Google is a far bigger threat to Apple than MS. It is an interesting battle. Apple is ahead by virtue of getting a head start and by owning both the software and the hardware aspects of their complete line of products. Google is just getting started on the hardware. But for sure, Google is such an enormous beast, it really could challenge Apple in a big way.

Buying into Apple seems like buying into a cult like religion. I just use computers to get things done in the the same way I practice on a grand piano action to get things done - they are tools, just tools.

Most if not all of problems encountered with a PC can be repaired by the owner if he's willing to get his hands dirty, so to speak, and look under the hood. Apple users have problems but because their market share is so small, the total number of problems seems small as well.

I really like the look of Apple products, I just think they are over priced.

OS share from Wiki ...

In August 2011, Gartner estimated Apple's PC market share in US as 10.7% for Q2 2011. Apple's worldwide market share is not listed, because not in top 5; inferred to be 5% or below. Gartner's numbers include netbooks, but not media tablets such as the iPad. Total units in Q2 2011 from all vendors, ~85 million.


Owners of Apple products are the converted ... but to their credit, they don't go door to door to preach their evangel.

Sorry Dave, but that's out-dated. Macs use the same hardware as PCs these days - they just use a more limited number of mainboards - and it's Intel only. It's all been the typical CoreDuo, CoreDuo2, QuadCore, i3, i5, i7 stuff. - It's been the case for about 5 years. Looking under the hood is the same for both platforms.



Hardware, yes. OS upgrades are much cheaper than Windows. If you keep your machine for 5 years, it's about even. There is a lot more 3rd party software for Windows, but Macs are more stable (they don't crash). You can generally keep a Mac running for longer too because the OS isn't as processor/memory hungry so you can run the latest OS without it slowing down the computer very much. I have an early Intel Macbook and it runs the latest MacOS without any problems, just as fast as the day I got it. Boots in 30 sec. Running W7 on a 7 year old computer is out of the question. I've had one mac in 6 years. With Windows I was upgrading every 3 years. I'm talking from the perspective of keeping up to date with operating systems because I use recording software a lot. If you are just a home user that doesn't need to be too up to date, you can run old operating systems. I still have one computer running Win XP and it's ok.



Things are changing. This picture will be very different in 5 years.




Not door to door, but I'd say the PC and Mac camps are as bad as each other in terms of their devotion and defensiveness about their gear. I have roughly equal knowledge about Mac and Windows and I have both machines, but I always find myself using the Mac. It's just faster and easier for me and never crashes or hangs. That's what I really like.

When I stated get his hands dirty, so to speak, and look under the hood, I really was referring to software solutions to problems, such as I problem I encountered from a poorly written program ... (though I am aware that if you have hardware problems with a Mac, it's back to Apple).

That's what you would do, because you have no knowledge of Apple software. There are plenty of forums around with solutions to Mac problems, just like there are for Windows problems. There are plenty of knowledgable people on forums.



Are you "aware" of that, or do you just believe that? Just to settle that question for you: it's the latter. You would go to Apple if you were under warranty or Applecare plan, but if you weren't you'd solve the problem the same way you would for a Windows PC/laptop. You can buy the parts online or on eBay. You are just trotting out the tired old misconceptions. Ever since Apple went Intel, there's not a lot of difference in solving hardware problems - even if the parts are a bit more expensive due to the lack of generic substitutes. If there was a problem that you couldn't diagnose yourself, in my experience Apple authorised service centers don't charge any more than their PC counterparts.

This is a non-issue. There's no reason to feel strongly for either side in this case. The fact that a longtime Windows user can't solve problems on a Mac is only a measure of his experience lies. It's not a reflection of the availability of solutions. Nor is it an argument for never learning to use software other than the platform you have always used (well it needn't be, for some people - especially older people, they are averse to starting again with different technology). After using WIndows computers for 20 years, I felt very comfortable with the general workings of the Mac OS within a very short period of time. There's certainly nothing about Windows that makes them more intuitive.

ando, This is a non-issue. There's no reason to feel strongly for either side in this case.

My initial post was to pass on a forgotten solution to many Window's computer problems, System Restore ... and it was the Apply guys who climbed on board, as they always do, to tout the superiority of their operating system.

That was the only reason for me to offer up the additional posts.

For what it's worth, I sleep well too.

You climbed on board just as much a anyone else, Dave. You gotta own that.

For the record, I couldn't care less what operating system people prefer. I do care when I see misinformation being pedalled because that directly affects less experienced people. I'm all for factual discussion.