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I have a client with a Dell Vitro 220 which includes an Intel G45/G43 Express chipset video controller and Intel ICH10R ATA AHCI harddrive controller. His video playbacks from MOV files stored on the harddrive started stuttering recently. The sound was fine, but there was jitter or jerky movements on the video being played back through Quicktime. The Quicktime version was 7.6, so I updated it to the most recent, version 7.7 but the stuttering continued.

I noted as I was making adjustments to the preferences in Quicktime that whenever I saved the changes I made, the stuttering stopped during the save, while the cursor hourglass was spinning and then it'd start again after the preferences were saved. I read on this site: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1041735?start=15&tstart=0 that there were known problems with Nvidia video controller cards and SATA harddrives. This PC didn't have an Nvidia card. However, the last entry where the individual played his MOV files from an attached ide harddrive did not stutter. So I copied the files to my USB thumb drive. The video didn't stutter during playing back.

It seems there are issues with timing. I am yet to find the solution, but at least the problem does seem to be with the harddrive controllers or perhaps the harddrive itself. I will post more as I find it.

The client's PC is running Windows XP, SP3. This particular PCs harddrive has been giving us problems. The PC freezes frequently when Microsoft Outlook 2007 does archive operations and has trouble maintaining an index order. Every other Vostro has worked exceptionally well. Occasionally you get a lemon from Dell and I thought this might be one, but this client maintains huge and numerous Outlook archive files which he searches frequently. Having 20 3 and 4 gig sized files that you are searching could have a greater impact on HD performance, so I didn't research the issue, but it appears that it might be a problem.

I've always ordered my upgrades via the internet. AVG has installed a system whereby an emailed quote from a sales person will block ordering the product upgrades on the internet. The message I get is "Upgrade not possible It is not possible to upgrade this license number. For further assistance, please contact AVG Customer Services." Of course, following that link doesn't help. You get the contact information for tech support who cannot help you. Instead, I got an argument on the logic that if I called them, then I might as well make a second call to the AVG sales team. The argument made no sense at all, since I didn't want to call anyone, I was forced to make a call, even though the first call was useless.

I am now on my 5th call to AVG in an effort to get back my ability to order from the internet. Every support rep has either hung up on me or passed me to a number that disconnected me. I really upset the last guy. When I asked for the ability to order from the internet, I could hear him banging around the phone headset before he managed to hit the cradle. From that reaction, I'd say there are a lot of irritated customers that don't want to talk to a sales person to order their product. It seems counter productive to offer a product over the internet and then force your customers to call to place the order. When I finally started writing down names, meaning I had to ask them specifically what their name was, did people start responding without being rude. Yes. I'm an irate customer. Yes. I'm upset that my normal convenient process was upset without me knowing how I might fix it. Yes. It bothers me that the link to AVG Customer Services misleads and misdirects.

My order process is: look online for the amount that it will cost me to upgrade. Compare that to what a sales person is offering me. In the 6 years I've been using AVG, the sales teams have never offered a better price. Make my decision and get approval to order and then make the purchase through the most convenient and/or cost effective means. Getting over this most aggravating bump in the road has been extremely frustrating.

One reason I don't like sales people to handle the orders is their constant spam. Especially if you decide not to go with a particular product, the spam from them is never ending. I deleted the original quote not knowing that I was blocking my ability to order from the internet. I ended up talking to the person who sent me the quote. He said he could unblock the web order issue, but at the same time offered an additional 10% off. So for the first time, the sales team is making an offer that beats what I can get off the web site. The sales rep says that the extra 10% off will save me $100.00. That would be an awesome savings. But it was hell to get there.

I don't understand why a company would block people from using a common avenue to order their products and insist that you talk to a person and do the purchase over the phone. Admittedly, I have registered on the web and was unable to login to renew because AVG changed their processor or change the web and didn't bring over customer records. Also, there is a time and a place for everything. When I needed to change the number of users on my account, I had to talk to a sales rep who easily fixed it for me. That is not something I have to do year. What I don't want to deal with is the upsales. I don't want to have to deal with a slick sales person who will try to get me to buy something I don't want and don't need. One of the reasons I have gone with AVG is that they sell antivirus software; just antivirus software. I don't have to get all the extra bells and whistles. I like the windows firewall. I don't need to buy that from anyone. I like other software to handle spam, I don't want that in my antivirus software. I don't care if the firewall or the anti-spam software is 50% off this month only. I'd still be spending more money to get the 50% off. So it's just easier to go to the store and click to renew what I already have and leave it at that. 

This additional complication is making life more difficult for everyone, customers and sales teams. And it has caused at least one customer to completely abandon AVG and go with another antivirus provider.

Had a problem today with Quantum 2009 (we'll be upgrading in a couple of weeks).  All the other workstations were able to log into Peachtree without any problems. However, on the controller's PC, Peachtree would not even get to the login screen nor would it allow selecting a different company to open. The error message kept repeating, Cannot open F:peachwcompany.dat. This file doesn't exist in that directory. 

After clicking okay twice, Peachtree exits. I checked the network path. That was okay. I checked the datapath in the PTX160.ini file. That was okay, but I changed that path and added a new network drive that pointed to the same place, but the error kept coming up on the F drive even though the datapath was now different... Frustrating. Options in information files that doesn't work.

I looked around in the registry file to see if any path entries were present that might be over riding.

Basically, the registry is in peachtree/16/options. The last company file opened entries (there are 3, description, long and short) were all cleared out. We removed all History from Company0 to Company9 and changed the registry entry to open last opened company from 0 to 1. When we browsed for the company, it read the .ini file and opened the new drive I indicated in the ini file. According to support, that problem will never happen again as long as we don't select to automatically open last used company.

There is no delete function, but whether you are blocking out text or graphic, select Comment on the tool bar, (there is no menu option to get there) and select Drawing Markups. Select the square and highlight the region you want to block out. To change the color and opacity, right click the square and select properties or you can highlight the region and after selecting the region you want to blank out, right click and select properties from there.  We used white boarder and white background, then selected 100% opacity (which to me would be see-through), but it blanked out the area that we needed to have removed.

At the bottom of the comment area, every "Comment" you make will be listed and can be removed by right clicking and selecting delete.