RustyKnight

I'm a bit annoyed, I had the disc with Linux on ready to put on the laptop. But my partner decided to give the laptop to her daughter, no one asked me, and I paid for half of it! Any way, she did a factory restore using the discs we created when we got the laptop. It still seemed very slow. Apparently it wouldn't connect to the wifi, although it did find a BT FON connection, it wouldn't connect to the daughters wifi - she was told it was because the wifi adaptor (which was built in) was too old. I've never had any problems connecting anything to wifi no matter how old. They were buying a new USB wifi adaptor, but I haven't heard if it works or not! I'm guessing a quick check of the wifi router settings would have fixed the problem without spending any money!

I searched online and found a live DVD of Zorin which is supposed to have options to make it more "Windows-like", as one of the users of the laptop has only ever used Windows I thought I'd give it a go. I'll have a play at the weekend and see how I get on and then report back. Like you said if the worst happens I can get a cheap copy of Windows 7.

We have an Acer laptop which is a few years old and came with Vista (spit) pre-installed. The laptop is so slow its hardly worth bothering to use it. I was thinking of putting Linux, possibly Ubuntu, on it instead of doing the factory restore with Vista. Is Ubuntu likely to find and work with the wifi, and other hardware? If I download a Live CD will that show if everything works properly and allow me to install Ubuntu if it does?

It doesn't help that a 32Gb hard-drive isn't actually 32Gb! I have a 32Gb USB stick which is 31937773568 bytes, this converts to 29.7GB. Its about time the sizes of memory were standardized and manufacturers gave the true size instead of misleading people all the time like they are now. I bought a 64Gb microSD-card to put music on but it wouldn't fit because the card isn't 64Gb its a bit less.

Thanks for the replies, I'll have a look at the service manual and see if I can do it myself. The computer does run XP and is only used to stream catchup TV, although it hasn't been used much for the last year which is probably why the battery has died.

I have an Acer Veriton n260 net top PC attached to my TV (literally) but the CMOS battery is flat and every time it starts up the time is wrong. Is there a startup program that will set the time so that I don't have to manually enter it before I use the PC? Or does someone know what battery it is, where I can get one (preferably in the UK) and how to fit it?

Sorry, I was just pointing out that Fixit wasn't compatible with Windows 8 64-bit, my problem seems to have cured itself.

Sorry for interrupting, I had two TV catchup apps that stopped working after a couple of weeks, presumably because of Windows updates because I hadn't used the computer in between. I just tried the Fixit link to see if it would help with my problem but got a message saying "We're sorry, but your operating system is not supported by Microsoft Fix It at this time." My computer is running Windows 8.1 64-bit.

This one can be marked "Solved" now, yesterday morning (1st July) I bought a 3 month Xbox Live Gold card and it allowed me to enter it, it didn't work the day before though!

Sorry for taking so long to reply, yes this can be marked as solved.

I'll have another look, is there an option to add Microsoft to a white list, although that doesn't always help because there are so many variations of email address domains.

Seedy's suggestions seems to have worked. I managed to download some, I even downloaded Disney Infinity which is over 1Gb and took forever, then got deleted because I didn't like it! At the moment we have ADSL but hopefully next month we'll be changing to fibre optic which should be faster and hopefully more reliable.

Thanks, I've started doing that now, I guess it'll have to become part of my weekly ritual!

Thanks for the reply, I've saved it on my tablet as a text file for future reference :) I managed to get the apps to download fine yesterday morning but last night when I wanted to download a game I'd paid for I had problems again - I guess its the time of day, I get the same sort of problems with Xbox games, they take forever to download at certain times of day.

I keep missing emails from Microsoft because they always go to the junk folder, I use Windows Live Mail to send/receive emails and was expecting something to do with my Xbox account, when I checked the junk folder on the Outlook website it was full of email from Microsoft :confused:

Last week I got a Windows 8.1 convertible laptop, last night I was trying to install some apps, after over an hour they were still sitting there saying "Pending", the ones I downloaded earlier yesterday were fine. Is it a problem with the Store or could it by my computer?

I had a chat with someone via the Xbox Live support page and apparently its because I deleted my old card then added a new one because the numbers had changed. She said "ok I can help fix this" followed 10 mins later by "I'm sorry you'll have to wait until your subscription expires and then create a new one"! I'm waiting until the end of June now to find out if I can get it to work.

From what I could figure out you also need software that can actually "see" the controller. I bought a wired Xbox 360 controller to "try" to play Minecraft, I had to get a program that would translate the controller inputs to keys so that Minecraft would work. It does work but unfortunately the left joystick movement and trigger buttons are way to fast to be able to play Minecraft properly. I need to spend some time studying the settings to try and adjust the sensitivity.

Anyone else had problems renewing Xbox Live Gold? I got an email saying mine was about to end and "it's easy to renew", I went to the link, selected my payment option and got an error message. In the end I used the chat help thingy on the support page and was told "oh yes I can help sort your problem out", followed a few minutes later by "I'm sorry my bad, you can't renew your subscription you'll have to wait for it to expire and then buy a new one" Apparently, because I'd updated my credit card details the "auto-renewal" had switched off and there's no way to re-enable it with a new card. Its things like this that make me wonder if I'd be better off getting a Playstation 4 instead of an Xbox One!

Glad I ditched Avast when I did.

I haven't tried the registry hack, but today I got a popup for the first time in a week and it had a special offer - 3PCs for 1 year $9.95, instead of $39.95 for one PC for one year. I decided that was cheap enough for me to actually pay for internet security so I've bought it. Sorry to have been a pain, this thread is not solve but temporarily averted!

Thanks for the welcome and the replies. I've been using PCs since the days of Windows 3.1 and other systems since the old Research Machines in the 80's so I know a thing or two :rolleyes: I did send Zonealarm a message through their Facebook page and they told me it should come up all the time - it didn't today but next time it does I'll do try the registry edit.

Every time I start my PC I get a box pop up from Zonealarm asking me if I want to pay for the full version, is there a way to stop this?