When listening to audio video clips on my Dell, the sound is too fast. It used to play just fine, but after loading some upgrades to play my daughter’s Barbie Horse Adventure Game, my player is too quick. Everyone sounds like The Chipmunks.
A. Barbie – or maybe it was Ken, since guys seem more prone to messing up computers than do gals – seems to have changed some settings in your Windows Media Player. Specifically, changes were made to a feature called “hardware acceleration” that is supposed to synchronize audio with video, among other performance settings.
Click on Start and Control Panels and select the panel with the speaker icons called Sounds and Audio Devices. Open the tab for Volume and then, under Speaker Settings, select the Advanced button. In the display this summons, opens the Hardware tab. There you will find a slider bar to adjust how fast the sound card operates, and by changing this a bit, you will be able to slow things down faster than Alvin can squeak out “Me, I want a Hula Hoop.”
Q. I have partitioned my 80-gigabyte hard drive the way I want it. Also, I have filed documents, graphics, music, etc., where I – rather than Microsoft – want them. I use Windows XP Professional, and Microsoft insists that I file them in what I think is a monster: My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, whatever. I cannot shake this thing.
When I create a shortcut to WordDocs, I want the shortcut link to take me there, not a general My Documents folder. I have right-clicked on My Documents, Properties: I can move the folder or rename it, but there’s no option to remove it! I consider it a leech! I know this is a problem with other PC users.
A. I am delighted to show the way toward this rather draconian tweaking of Windows XP’s main Desktop display. But first, a word from my dear old Irish mother: “Jimmy,” she would say, “Let sleeping dogs lie.” That said, click on Start and then look for the My Documents line.
Give it a right-click, and you will find a toggle to display the My Documents folder on the desktop or remove it. That actually answers your question about how to stop the desktop display of this folder that many find annoying there. But forgive me as I add a warning to folks considering this kind of tweaking.
The reason that one should be wary of this is because there still will be applications on your computer that automatically save their files to the My Documents file or its subfolders for My Pictures/
Music/Video no matter how you try to change things. Thus the My Documents icon when one is logged on as the Administrator points to a different place when other users are logged on.
