notebook errors

[John]

I have a laptop user who complains about "many errors". They don't seem to
be one common specific error, but more random. Its an XP pro machine, with
office 2007S/B. Many of his complaints seem to center around office errors,
but could be due to adobe acrobat 8 std. It seems Adobe is involved in the
errors. The user has an 80Gb hd and keeps around 30Gb of stuff in my docs.
Also he has a 8.5 Gb outlook pst file. I have run the pst scan on the pst a
couple times and it usually finds errors... This created backups of the pst
so space was becoming tight. He doesn't seem willing to cut back on any of
the 8.5Gb. But I have gotten the impression when they are that large they
can be a source of errors...

I intend to bump him to a little faster machine with a larger drive, so my
questions are:

1) Is the lartgest drive i can get the best or what?
2) would it help to partition this drive to separate these old docs?
3) Is the 8Gb pst a real problem, and if so, any suggestions to fix it?
4) any known issues with adobe that i should know about? If so what is the
better answer. He mainly creates everything in office and then converts to
pdf to send it out.....

Thanks fo any help

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

See below.

I have a laptop user who complains about "many errors". They don't seem to
be one common specific error, but more random. Its an XP pro machine, with
office 2007S/B. Many of his complaints seem to center around office
errors, but could be due to adobe acrobat 8 std. It seems Adobe is
involved in the errors. The user has an 80Gb hd and keeps around 30Gb of
stuff in my docs. Also he has a 8.5 Gb outlook pst file. I have run the
pst scan on the pst a couple times and it usually finds errors... This
created backups of the pst so space was becoming tight. He doesn't seem
willing to cut back on any of the 8.5Gb. But I have gotten the impression
when they are that large they can be a source of errors...

I intend to bump him to a little faster machine with a larger drive, so my
questions are:

1) Is the lartgest drive i can get the best or what?

*** Sorry, can't understand - please rephrase.

2) would it help to partition this drive to separate these old docs?

*** Excellent idea. Make the primary partition 20 GBytes and put
*** all his data on drive D:. When finished with the installation,
*** create an image of drive C: (e.g. with Acronis TrueImage) and
*** put it on drive D: too.

3) Is the 8Gb pst a real problem, and if so, any suggestions to fix it?

*** Best asked in an Outlook newsgroup.

4) any known issues with adobe that i should know about? If so what is
the better answer. He mainly creates everything in office and then
converts to pdf to send it out.....

*** Adobe is very unlikely to cause any problems. I suspect
*** other applications, malware or viruses.

 

[John]

1) Is the lartgest drive i can get the best or what?

*** Sorry, can't understand - please rephrase.

all i mean is, on the new laptop, do i just buy the bigest fastes hard
drive, to give him plenty of space. Or does performance go down with large
drives?

*** Excellent idea. Make the primary partition 20 GBytes and put
*** all his data on drive D:. When finished with the installation,
*** create an image of drive C: (e.g. with Acronis TrueImage) and
*** put it on drive D: too.

So, since this is an excellent idea, can you say why? Will it make
performance better having 2 partitions or not really any change that way?

 

[Big Al]

3) Is the 8Gb pst a real problem, and if so, any suggestions to fix it?

No. My office PC has my 15 years of email history. I do archive the
boxes once a year to clean house. The whole folder has something like
80 gigs of PST or backup files and some are 10's of Gigs.

 

[HeyBub]

all i mean is, on the new laptop, do i just buy the bigest fastes hard
drive, to give him plenty of space. Or does performance go down with
large drives?

You can expect improved performance with a larger drive.

1. It'll probably have a (much) faster access time.
2. It will fragment less often.
3. It will probably have a larger, faster cache than the original.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

all i mean is, on the new laptop, do i just buy the bigest fastes hard
drive, to give him plenty of space. Or does performance go down with
large drives?

Performance improves a little with larger disks. Due to the larger
capacity, information is packed more tightly, which reduces head
travel time.

So, since this is an excellent idea, can you say why? Will it make
performance better having 2 partitions or not really any change that way?

Splitting a disk has no effect on performance but it makes
data management much easier. It also allows you to create
images of your system partition and store them on your
data partition.

 

[George Yin]

Hello,

Thank you for your post and as well as to others for sharing these
information.

Pegasus is right, changing the old disk with a faster and newer disk can
usually improve the performance. Large drives usually don't lower the
performance.

Splitting the whole disk can usually improve the management. And by
defragmenting the frequent-writing drives, the performance can be improved.

Besides, here is an article which may help improve your PC a little:

5 ways to speed up your PC:
http://www.microsoft.com/AtWork/getstarted/speed.mspx

Regarding the .pst file and Adobe questions, I would like to suggest that
you post into our office newsgroup and contact Abode, see if they have any
better idea on this.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/desktoppt/office.mspx

Sincerely,
George Yin
Microsoft Online Support
Microsoft Global Technical Support Center

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
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[George Yin]

Hello,

How's everything going?

I'm wondering if the suggestion has helped or if you have any further
questions. Please feel free to respond to the newsgroups if I can assist
further.

Sincerely,
George Yin
Microsoft Online Support
Microsoft Global Technical Support Center

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
=====================================================
When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
=====================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.