Calling all geeks, help - again!

[fpb]

I recently bought (on instalments) a new laptop featuring the wondrous new Windows Vista. Apart from a number of other irritating features, I have found that its Windows Explorer program - the one that opens file folders in the machine - is infuriatingly apt to crash. I do not know why it does that - of course - except that it always does so when I open certain document files, and that those files are very large - containing such things as films and music. Can anyone help me or suggest a forum where I might find help? It is an infuriating flaw that is seriously interfering with my use of the machine, and, needless to say, the Microsoft website is no help.

Comments

[simoncion.livejournal.com]

Advice:
*Don't update your BIOS unless the mfg. notes that a newer revision corrects some problem that *you've* been experiencing.
*More information about the files that WMP refuses to play would be useful. Things like:
-Audio and Video codec of the file
-File size
*Try playing the videos through VLC or Mplayer:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html
*It's not likely that the P2P client you're using is causing your computer to crash. However, see if other people are experiencing issues like your own. Some clients that I've known to work well:
-aMule (an eDonkey client)
-Azureus (a BitTorrent client)
-LimeWire (a Gnutella client)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the helpful and constructive answer. I have taken my question here: http://community.livejournal.com/computerhelp/1162567.html, where, after enduring a certain amount of patronizing with very poor grace, I was finally asked constructive questions to which I replied with all the specifics I could dredge up. They are towards the bottom of the comments area. The consensus seems to be (as one would expect) that the crashes are the fault of Vista.

You may notice from the data over there that the machine is wireless enabled, and that nevertheless I cannot access the net with it. Behind that lies a minor blunder of mine. When I started using the wireless facility, I blundered on to someone's private wireless network and used it without paying. They seem to have excluded me now, and of course I don't blame them, but I don't seem able to access my ISP by wireless for some reason, and Internet Explorer is not connecting to it by wire either - I suspect because my ISP is in effect an enormous LAN, and there is something in the machines that just does not talk. I tried to use the codes originally provided by the ISP, but nothing seems to work.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I think size is an issue. Explorer crashes when trying to open large folders such as one with two or three dozen archive versions (.zip or .rar) of Bob Dylan albums, and Player when I put in things like .avi versions of movies. And the DVD recorder software just always crashes and never works at all. On the other hand, the machine reads DVDs quite well, and takes some video files, not necessarily always shorter ones.