Vista Tutorial - Magnifier - Turn On or Off

When I try to play the tutorial, I"m told my Flas player needs upgrading. That's just fine. Why not give me a link or tell me how to do that? This is a new laptop; why is the flash player so old, it cannot play a tutorial....

Betty

Maybe the version installed on your laptop is a bit too old even if your laptop is new
Anyway ----> Adobe

I didn't want to remove the magnifier permanently, however it has started up by itself twice today and I've had to turn the computer off in order to kill it. It never malfunctioned before (not that I've ever used it intentionally anyway) so I don't know why it started acting up.
"Turn magnifier on" is not ticked in Ease of Access Center, but I wonder if I go to C:\Windows\System32\Magnify.exe and change the extension if that will stop it from running altogether? Then if I ever want it to run I could change it back to .exe.?

Hi Larry, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Since you do not have Turn Magnifier On checked in the Ease of Access Center, you might check in Option Two in this tutorial to see if by chance you have the Magnify.exe file listed in the startup programs list. If so, you can just disable or remove it.

Startup Programs - Enable or Disable

Hope this helps,
Shawn

This may prove interesting. To me it's beyond weird. I don't have anything in the start programs or services (I checked both Windows Defender start programs and msconfig settings.) related to the magnifier option.

Yesterday I found the setting C:\Windows\System32\Magnify.exe and changed the extension. To prove it works, today I've navigated to programs/accessories/ease of access/magnifier and clicked on "magnifier". I got "unable to locate C:\Windows\System32\Magnify.exe as a response. Sounds good so far?

Then about 10 minutes ago the magnifier started itself again while I was switching among running programs with alt/tab and again I could not kill the application without turning the computer off. You got it right. I can't start the application on purpose, but it still starts up on its own, even though C:\Windows\System32\Magnify.exe isn't there anymore. I'd appreciate some advice on what to try next. Thanks.

BTW, I've also looked at add/remove Windows features under "start/settings/control panel/programs and features/turn windows features on or off" and there's nothing there related to the "ease of access" functions.

Interesting Larry,

When it is running like that again, open Task Manager and look in the Applications and Processes tabs to see if another program or EXE file may be responsible for it running.

You might also run a sfc /scannow command to see if it can find and fix any bad system files.

System Files - SFC Command

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks, Shawn. When the magnifier started again, I was able to check running processes and "magnify.exe" was on the list. I stopped it and the magnification went away.

Then I ran sfc and it said it found and replaced some corrupt system files. (Getting to it in Vista was quite a bit different from the tutorial. I had to go to "start/programs/accessories/" then right click on "command prompt", chose "run as adminstrator", then type "sfc /scannow")

Now that I know something had become corrupted and has been fixed I hope that issue is resolved. Thanks again for the help.

Your welcome Larry. I hope it resolved your problem to.

Shawn

Well, I quickly found out that it didn't solve the problem.

Oddly enough, this time when it self-started and I brought up the task manager, I tried to kill "magnify.exe" by right clicking on it in processes and clicking "end process", but instead of stopping it from running it created more instances of it all over my screen. But by navigating to the "end process" at the bottom of the processes window it did stop when I clicked on that.

So since I've fixed any system errors with sfc, I decided to try one more tip I read as a possible fix, I've used system restore and set my computer back one full week (to Aug. 5). This took overnight to complete, but this morning the restore had finished. Of course, now I have to reinstall a dozen or more Windows updates.

I know of at least one previous time when installing automatic updates caused my computer to fail to start at all, so I'm always leery of installing a bunch of them at the same time. I wonder if the corruption might even come from some of those updates since this problem with "magnify.exe" acts a bit like a virus in my system. I don't have a lot of confidence that they guys (and gals) who write those updates always know what they are doing....