*grmpf*

I hadn't tested the DVD drive on the laptop yet (only using a CD on it), and I was well inspired to do it before I left.

First because the software wasn't installed (the DVD was in the package, but since there were a bunch of useless softwares installed already - Norton, AOL... I say it's useless because I'll be damned before I use AOL, and that computer will not be logged on Internet anyway, so duh, no need for Norton...).

And second, because upon trying to play "Farewell my concubine" on it, I wonder if it's actually supposed to be able to play anything, or if the DVD coding has "improved" somehow during the last years... Because basically, it takes a full minute to read 5 seconds of video.

And I'm not making that up. It's a "frame by frame slow motion", and it's not even showing all the frames o_O

There doesn't seem to be a feature to decrease the window resolution on WinDVD (yes, WinDVD sucks, but I didn't really have the time to go fetch something that would work on Win 2000 and be compatible with whatever DVD player is in the Fujitsu Siemens).
I tried to decrease the screen resolution (well, the color rather... because the screen has such a weird width / height scale that there's only one resolution that works. 1280x600...), but it doesn't seem to make it better to the least.

Any advice on what else I could do (apart from removing all the crap softwares that are launched at start, and I don't even know how to do that on Win 2000, so I'm starting by removing all AOL)?

VICTORY!

So it took me to uninstall all of the AOL crap on that computer (2 versions of AOL plus 3 or 4 separate "tools"), and go into the services control panel to desactivate all the crap I saw now use for, but the DVD drive does play at a reasonably good rate... and even with sound, this time around.
*roll eyes*

Man, how do people do when they are totally clueless in computers? Not that I'm even decently good with them, I had to look up how to get into the services control panel again... But at least I know it exists and I know I can get rid of some services!

?

It seems that almost all of my email addresses have not been working for a few hours. Which is double strange since they're not all from the same providers.
I wonder if that has anything to do with the unidentified window asking "Allow / Desactivate / Block / (etc)" this after (I think it was launched by Firefox, that persists in annoying me with its random shortcut keys...), where I clicked "block" because it gave no indication on *what* I was supposed to allow or block... But there doesn't seem to be any parameter in the email software that's incorrect. And it cheks Hotmail accounts all right.

Crap.