Thread: Question winSPMBT in Windows8
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Old April 20th, 2014, 07:11 PM
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Default Re: winSPMBT in Windows8

Here is another Windows 8 tip or two, and it may be related to those video cards that mess up the full-screen mode 256 colour palette (as mine does).

I had noticed that the Firefox browser sometimes went "wonky" and pages were only rendered in black, with the occasional picture flashing on and off. Shutting the browser and restarting was the only cure.

However - a google on the problem brought up a cure - find the Firefox options for "use hardware acceleration if available" and turn that off.

Since I have done that the browser has been rendering pages just fine, and it has made no difference to watching catch-up TV (BBC iPlayer) in HD.

So - as with XP before it - it seems that it will take a year or 2 before everyone has produced video drivers (in both hardware and software) that will be fully compatible with Windows 8.

Probably related:
Also the only apparently useful Metro "App" of the cruft that was supplied, at least to me - was the weather one. However that also behaves rather like the Firefox pages - random icons appear on a blank screen, more if you "mouse over" where they should be. Again - likely to be video driver problems, even with the metro junk apps supplied by Microsoft. These (cr)apps seem to actually be a few lines to drive a browser page, they are not real programs, so that one is probably firing up Microsoft's explorer and its having the same rendering problems as firefox. probably if I bothered to fire up the Microsoft browser and turn hardware acceleration off as well, the app may work. But I only use IE for the updates page (which is tied to it) so I am not bothering to figure out its options.

So I've left the weather App installed on the Metro start screen as a test application for whenever I get some updated video drivers. If it starts behaving properly, then maybe SP will also work in full-screen mode!. It will then be deleted - as I refuse to use stuff that puts up *&!"$ advertising. (It was serving up a flashing Renault advert).

(cr)Apps use your bandwidth
Oh - also check the page on the task manager re Apps usage. The little darlings use up your bandwidth for the live tiles nonsense etc, as well as any served up adverts of course. This is even if you don't use them at all, but just visit the metro start screen. You can turn that off by right-clicking the beasties on the start page, and turning live tiles to off, or you can de-install them completely as an option from the same right-click. Some folks still pay for bandwith - especially on mobile devices. Such peeps should immediately strangle these "live tile" Metro apps ASAP, other than any that are actually useful.

cheers
Andy
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