grandadfatboy

Thank you for that Ken.

Thank you again Ken. I'll do some more research. May I ask what free internet security is available, and is it as good as a paid for package?

Thank you for the reply Ken, and thank you for the advice. Glad to know the spec I found wasn't too far off. Having watched a few youtube videos, and having discovered building my own wasn't so daunting after all, I'm now torn between buying a custom components pc, buying the components and installing them into my current case (maybe recouping a few £s by selling on my current MB/CPU/Ram), or building one from scratch. Are MB/CPU/Ram bundles a good starting point when considering an upgrade/new build, and then adding the remaining components to complete the build based on that bundle, compared with selecting and buying each component independently?

Hi everyone, I hope you are all stay safe and well. My apologies for the long post, but I felt that the more information I can give, and what I'm trying to achieve, the easier it would be for you to advise me on upgrading/replacing my ageing pc. The new pc will mainly be used for editing video, photos and music. With this in mind, I'm considering the latest versions of Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements. My logic is (rightly or wrongly), that the UI for both would be similar in their layout, and somewhat familiar, as I used Photoshop Elements 5 many years ago. Not having done any editing for some considerable time, I'm expecting quite a steep learning curve, not that that will be an issue, as I have now retired and have more time on my hands. As far as video and photo editing are concerned, I'm not looking to be performing “professional level” editing. With video editing I'd be looking to trim videos, add transitions/captions/titles, add music track(s) etc. With regards to photo editing, I'm looking to remove red eye, remove skin blemishes, add/remove backgrounds, remove unwanted objects, adjust colours, contrast etc. That said, I'm sure I will look for greater improvements as I become more familiar with each programme and what can be achieved with it. I've been doing a little research and found the system below as being a “budget” spec system for video editing, to which I added a 2nd Seagate 1TB HDD. My budget is £500 - £700 Processor: Intel i5-9400F MB: MSI B460M-A PRO Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 GPU: 2GB Nvidia Geforce GT 1030 Storage Drive 1: 256GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD Storage Drives 2: 1TB Seagate Barracuda SATA3 Storage Drives 3: 1TB Seagate Barracuda SATA3 PSU: Corsair 550W O/S: I intend to install Win 10 Pro 64bit Questions: Do I need the level of spec in the system above, considering what my photo and video editing requirement are? Storage Drive 1: Do I go for a 2.5” standard drive bay SSD model, or do I go with M.2? What are the advantages/disadvantages? Storage Drives 2&3: Is it possible for each drive to be mirror copies of one another, so in the event of a HDD failure my data would be safe on the mirrored drive, and how would I go about setting that up? Given what I'm trying to achieve, should I be looking at other photo and video editing software? Thank you for reading, and hopefully understanding what I am trying to achieve with my new pc, and I look forward to hearing your advice and recommendations. TIA

Hi Ken, Thank you for the reply. I decided to go with the range extender in the end. Easy peasy to set up and works a treat. Thank you again.

Afternoon everyone, It's been a while since I've been here and I would very much appreciate your help and advice once again please. Currently my broadband cabling enters the house into the lounge on the ground floor and it used to connect laptop, mobiles and tablets to the network wirelessly. We are on the finishing straight of converting our loft space into a dedicated pc/hobby space to be shared by wife and I. We have a Netgear (Virgin branded vmdg 490) router and a Sky SR101 router sitting here gathering dust. Would it possible to connect either router to the EE wi-fi and then connect pc's to either router using ethernet cables to obtain internet access for a pair of desktops? Failing that would a cable connection between either routers and the EE router be a solution, bearing in mind the cable would need to be run up the outside of the house and into the loft space? Thank you in advance for your replies.

Hi Ken and thank you for the reply. The desktop was specifically intended for editing photographs, video and music and to that end it has been ideal. I just haven't had the time and the dedicated workspace for my desktop became our daughters bedroom when she moved back home. She has since moved out and my wife and are selling up and down sizing, which effectively allows me to retire and spend more time on my hobbies, hence the possibility to upgrade. In answer to your questions; 1. The drive seems absolutely fine, although I have not run a diagnostics on it, but will do so this afternoon, seeing as it's still accessible, much to my wife's annoyance. 2. To be honest the desktop does take a little time to fire up compared to my wife's Windows 10 laptop. 3. It's great news that any upgrade is plug and play. A diagnostic check of the hard drive will indicate if I need to upgrade or not. If an upgrade is required, then I will probably go for SSD. 4. I will run a diagnostic on my data drive to give that a health check too. Again the drive is not showing any signs of issues. I just wanted to check that if I do upgrade I was going in the right direction and not going backwards. Thank you Ken. ATB Ian

May I start by apologising for my absence from the forum. This has been due to some health, family and work issues, which has allowed me very little personal time. Due to a knee injury I'm now on very restricted work hours, which I'm pleased to report has given me more spare time than I have been used to in a long while.:D With this new freedom, I've started to use, explore and enjoy my digital camera. I has discovered that my camera can record full HD video, which gives very good results, more so when I remember to use my tripod. As a consequence I now have quite a few photo and video files that need editing. I currently run a dual boot setup (full system specs below) running Windows XP and Windows 7, both of which will no longer be required on this machine. Windows XP and Windows 7 share equal partitions on a 500gb Sata HDD and I also have a 2TB Sata HDD which I use for data storeage, photographs, video, music, etc. I am looking to upgrade to the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements, Pinnacle Studio and Windows 10. So to my questions. 1. Do I format the hard drive which at the moment is home to Windows XP & Windows 7 and install Windows 10 there? 2. Do I consider a SSD on which to install Windows 10? 3. Do I need to upgrade the hardware currently installed on my pc, should I decide to install a SSD? ie, cpu. m/b, ram, graphics card, etc? 4. Should I be considering upgrading my data drive to SSHD and again what extra hardware would be required to do so? Thank you for reading and your advice and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. ATB Ian My present system is: Operating System Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1 CPU AMD FX-6300 9 °C Vishera 32nm Technology RAM 8.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 803MHz (9-9-9-24) Motherboard Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. GA-78LMT-S2P (Socket M2) 28 °C Graphics Standard Monitor (1280x1024@75Hz) 2048MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 6670 (XFX Pine Group) 33 °C Storage 465GB Hitachi HDT725050VLA360 ATA Device (SATA) 34 °C 1863GB MD20000-ALDW-RO ATA Device (SATA) 25 °C Optical Drives TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-224DB ATA Device Audio Realtek High Definition Audio

Thank you for the replies, it is greatly appreciated. I have another question after reading the links you kindly supplied. I intend to remove the hard drive from my wife's old laptop (Windows 7) and copy her data her desktop pc. Once I have done this I was thinking of purchasing a caddy so she could use the drive to backup all her data in future. Once I have copied all the data from the old drive, can I connect it to her Windows 8 laptop and use windows 8 to completely format the drive from her old laptop? Following on from that, would it be a better idea to backup her Windows 8 laptop to the drive from her old laptop (once it is formatted) instead of backing it up to a flash drive? Sorry for the complexity of my questions and I hope I explained myself properly. All the best. Ian

Hi guys and gals. I hope you are all well. My apologies for not having been around for a while, but the last 12 months have been the worst of my/our lives. Thankfully all is looking a great deal rosier now.:D:D Onto my query. My wife's laptop finally gave up the ghost a week or so ago, so being the generous, loving husband that I am, I popped her in the car and 1 hour later we are walking out of PC World with a new HP laptop under arm, running Windows 8.1 64 bit. It took us a little while to get to grips with it when we got it home, but my wife seems to be enjoying using it now. XP is still my favourite.:o The PC World salesman explaining all about Window 8.1, told us the first job we needed to do was to copy windows 8 to a 32gb memory stick. There is no Windows authenticity COA sticker anywhere on the laptop and no Window disc.:confused: My questions are: 1. Is it possible to copy just the operating system along with it's authenticity code, directly from the laptop itself? 2. If so is there a link showing how to complete this task please? 3. There are 2 identical partitions (both marked as 'D') on the HDD designated "Recovery". Can I, or do I, just back up one of these partitions or both? Each partition is showing as being 18.71GB. I'm suspecting they are mirror images of one another, but knowing me, I could very well be wrong.:p 4. Can I download and burn a copy of Windows 8.1 from this forum or elsewhere on the interwebthingymebob?:D 5. Is it necessary to run a programme like Belarc to discover the licence code for the copy of Windows on this machine? My instinctive distrust of PC's makes me a little anal about backing up all my work, normally to another partition I have created, and so far that has served me well, but no OS disc and no authenticity code is a new one on me. Please don't tell me I'm a dinosaur and I need to move forward a millennia or three.;) Have things moved on so much in such a short space of time? I look forward to your replies, both constructive and comical.;) All the best. GF

Sorry for the delay in replying gents, but I was waiting for my ISP to get back to me. In the end I had to contact them again and the long and short of it was that they believed it was an activeshooter.co.uk problem. I informed them that I had performed the tracert and at what point the test started timing out. Oh, oh was the reply. Give us 24 hours and we will check it out. That was Tuesday evening this week. Lo and behold I fire up the laptop on Wednesday morning, tried to open activeshooter.co.uk, as I have done everyday since the problem started, and bang, instant access. Just goes to show that without the tests you guys had me perform, I'd be no nearer a solution. Have had no report as to what the "issue" was, but I'm a happy man now. I would like to thank you all again for help and patience. I would ask that you mark this post as solved please. Many thanks guys. ATB Ian

Hi guys, I've tried changing the settings you suggested and no joy. No reply from either Sky or activeshooter.co.uk so I will be contacting them both again tomorrow. As for the data connection on my mobile I've used half my monthly allowance, so will have to keep an eye on what I'm using. Thanks again guys and I will update you as I have news. ATB Ian

Update. Well I've ruled out the laptop as being the problem. I turned off my laptop's Wi-Fi and connected it to my mobile and used its data connection and activeshooter.co.uk came up instantly and I remained on the site reading and contributing to threads for just over 2 1/2 hours, without any problems.:D:D:D Well that's not strictly true, as posting threads was a little slower than normal, but given my mobile has a dreadful signal indoors, I was overjoyed at the result. Disconnected laptop from my phone, reconnected to my home broadband and goodbye activeshooter.co.uk. Hope Sky get back to me real soon with their findings and maybe I'll be nearer to a solution. ATB Ian

Glad to hear the security check showed no conflicts. I have tried turning off my Firewall and Essentials and to no avail I'm afraid. I can take my laptop to my daughters the next time I go and see if the problem is machine based. Emailed all the results I have posted here to activeshooter.co.uk to see if they are able to make any progress with the problem. thanks for help gents. ATB Ian

Hi Ken, I have tried all you have suggested Ken, without any luck. I have been able to login to activeshooter.co.uk on my daughters pc (she is virgin customer and I am with Sky). Whilst I was waiting for my wife at the doctors today, I successfully logged into activeshooter.co.uk using my mobile phones data connection.:o:o (not been able to do so since last Wednesday either) Providing I switch off the Wi-Fi on my phone and use my data connection, I'm able to log into activeshooter.co.uk, although this is dependant of mobile reception, which at my home is the pits.:mad: I will contact one of the mods on the forum the very next time I am able to log in and ask them to check it out for me. This is so frustrating.:confused: Thanks Ken. ATB Ian