Plastic Nev

Thanks to all, I had a lazy day till my mate up the street asked me to help in wiring up the trailer socket on his car, now he has a towing bar fitted. At least he bought me a few beers that night so not too bad eh? Both of us were electricians so it had to happen, we got a wire wrong so the fog lamp doesn't work. Then we found the trailer board (that has the lights fitted) doesn't have a fog lamp fitted any way, oh hum. At least we didn't get red to black and blue to bits. :D

Hi, are you a signed up member of Youtube or are you viewing Youtube video as a guest? It may well be that for whatever reason it is not detecting your country of origin from your IP address if not a member. If possible I would be sending Youtube a mail about it. Nev.

Considering this subject has been brought up again I thought it perhaps a good idea to have a further in depth look at it. As per this thread and another in this section there have been, and no doubt may still be, issues concerning conflicts with other software. As said the issues with AVG has been resolved but this doesn't mean there are no others. However Trusteer Rapport do seem to do reasonably well at sorting things so long as the real nature of the conflict and the definite name of the software involved is passed on to them. Secondly, as reported, certain false E mails supposedly from NACHA did catch some people out and installed malware. This was definitely not the fault of either Trusteer Rapport or NACHA as these E Mails were designed by the criminal hackers to catch people out. Back to the warnings about checking carefully all E Mail before opening them. Now for what Trusteer Rapport isn't, and what it really is. It is not an anti-virus, neither is it an anti-spyware as such, it is if anything an extension to your firewall, though is not intended to be used instead of a firewall. What it does is to block all known phishing sites from accidentally being opened instead of the intended site. Once your browser is connected to a known and correct banking site, plus any other site you enter into its system, it then acts as a secure protection against any attempt to break into that connection. In a sense it is like an armoured tube surrounding that connection. Once the connection is broken and a normal other site is opened Trusteer Rapport is no longer in action. This means you are back to your normal security from then on. Should something get in such as a trojan or key logger however, Trusteer Rapport is supposed to be able to prevent that malware stealing data while it is active, but cannot do more. It is down to your anti-virus or anti-malware software to pick up and remove the malware during a normal scan. Nev.

Thanks for that it is the use of CCleaner I was worried about, if you let it run in the registry without having a very good knowledge of the registry and just let these things run their own course, sometimes they do more damage than good, even to the point of a non usable operating system. First choice here is a system restore hopefully back far enough to before you found problems. If that is not possible, you may have to use that recovery disk, as everything points to a registry item not there or corrupted. Nev.

I used to have an old penny. Looks like it has returned again. Hello you old curmudgeon how are you?

Hi Brandhern and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help. A few questions first as we need to know a bit more. Have you at any time used any sort or form of registry cleaner? Can you tell us the make and model of the computer please? If this is a desktop, have you had a look inside , if not do so and clean any dust or fluff out just in case it is a heat issue. When it freezes, does it just stop at whatever is on screen or do you get the blue screen? Do you have either recovery disks or a full copy of XP disk? If you can answer those questions we can go further with you. Nev.

Further to Randy's advice, and explain a little more, the advice to disable auto restart, use F8 at boot up , once the screen comes up use the up down keys to navigate to turn off the auto restart, and follow the instructions to set and it and start Windows normally. Next time it goes blue screen it should then give the fault codes which can help us find what may be causing your problem. Next is how long have you had this computer? If maybe a year or so it may be dust accumulated round or on the fans and heat sink for the main CPU or also the graphics CPU on the card, that will be making it overheat and does require cleaning off. Next is the power supply, can you see the label on it and how many watts it is rated at? It just may not be big enough and overheating. Nev.

Hi and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help, this does sound like a backlight problem and could be the inverter at fault. If you are able to replace it yourself it can be done and is not too difficult, but does involve some experience in disassembly. There is a very helpful laptop repair site, so rather than me try to explain, have a look at 101 Laptop repairs, here on this page= http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2007/01/31/replace-screen-inverter-fix-backlight/ If however you are not confident in doing the replacement yourself, then I am afraid it will have to go to a laptop repair specialist to be done. Nev.

From what you say, you did once have the Miro player and it worked, but then uninstalled it, but now installing it again it will not work. This sounds like the uninstall didn't remove everything and left a part of it behind which is now causing some conflict. I suggest following Randy's advice and use "System Restore" to send the computer back to a time either before you installed Miro the first time, or to the time when Miro was installed and working. That in itself will undo anything you did that prevented it from working now. If however there is not a restore point available that goes back far enough to those times, the next thing to try would be a full uninstall using Revo uninstaller, that should remove most traces that may be preventing a full working install now. Let us know how you get on with a System Restore first though. Nev.

Unlike some forums where a thread is closed we don't do so. That is just in case something should happen and you need to come back for further help. However, how did you solve the problem? was it through following Kens advice or something different? Nev.

Do you know how old this program is Jayden? it just might not be able to run on XP if fairly old, and originally made for say Windows 98 or older. Just a thought is all, as I once came across a music program for learning notation that had that problem. I had to give up with it in the end. Nev.

Ok, let us know how things go when you get back. Sorry about asking for OS type, just that sometimes folk put whatever they run as the main machine, but forget to tell us the problem is on another one. Nev.

OK you have plenty to do in checking and updating all drivers, but it may just be down to a glitch in the re-install of the OS, this can happen sometimes. Also you don't say which version of W7 you have, is it Home, Home Premium, Professional, or other? I am running Professional as I found the upgrade from Home Premium reasonably priced, and it does seem to handle most of my older 32 bit programs OK. Though the real reason for the upgrade was to be able to run the Virtual environment in order to run a couple of XP based things that just will not run otherwise. Nev.

A fake Windows update which attacks via Firefox has been discovered, more about it here= http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/06/09/fake-anti-virus-cloaks-itself-to-appear-to-be-microsoft-update/

Hi Simon, This is actually one area I am not very sure of, I think it is either done in the BIOS, or even device manager, but which way and in what order is where I am unsure about, as the last thing we need is to have no display. Hopefully Randy or Dalo might pick up on this and advise further as graphics cards are not my strong point. Using the on board graphics, have you seen any of the previous problems though? Nev.

No problem with you butting in JB, However I doubt a connection problem as not just the sound would freeze, remember also the sound stays off until the machine is rebooted. Once the sound has cut out, no sound from anything else either, not just the game. Doubt a memory or RAM issue, but it could be explored perhaps. I am only asking for a sound card install to bypass the mother boards Realtek chip, hence trying for something cheap just to prove or disprove the on board chip. Buying from E Bay could be risky as possibly no guarantee of it working, however, card 1 is supposedly new and with the buy it now at around £30, the other two are used, so you takes your chances with those. Nev.

Well a sound card should bypass what is looking like a faulty sound chip on the motherboard, so could be the answer to the problem. We won't know for sure though till one is tried. I always say, if possible, better to borrow one if you can before spending money when it is like this. Nev.

Hi, Looking at the spec for it, it has the Realtek sound system, if you look in control panel, sound, and look for a realtek manager, you may find the microphone controls there, check they aren't muted or volume sliders turned down. Nev.

Hi, you do still have one PCIe slot left it is the one between the graphics cards and the case wall, it is only a small slot as it is the PCIe x1 type, Yellow arrow is pointing at the socket, blue is pointing out the blanking plate which needs to be removed to fit a card. there just may be a sound card available to fit it. Nev. http://i28.servimg.com/u/f28/14/68/69/96/pcie_s10.jpg

Hi, looking through the results of the various tests you have done, I am getting more suspicious of the sound chip itself. Don't ask why, just one of those gut feelings. One thing we haven't cleared up is whether or not a sound card can be fitted, considering information about the Packard Bell/Acer motherboard is virtually impossible to find, do you have a camera and can you take a picture of your motherboard for us please, or at least as much of it that can be seen without taking it out of course, that will give myself and Frank an idea of if a sound card can be fitted or not. Nev.

Hi, sorry for no reply till now as I haven't had much time recently due to other things. I am like you now a little stuck, as the realtek sound system is as we know a chip on the motherboard, the heat from the graphics card shouldn't be influencing it unless it is extremely close and directly in the path of any hot air from the graphics card fan, is that the case perhaps? As far as the graphics card and its heat, well some do get pretty hot, others not so much, however Graphics is not in my area of great knowledge unfortunately, so can't say in any certainty that the temperature you are seeing is OK or not, though 60C does seem a little high. I will see if one of our other graphics guys can shed any light on this for you. Nev.

I nearly got caught myself with this, good job my security is up to date and working well. This is especially for those of us who do have a YouTube account, but also as general warning. If you receive an E Mail purporting to have come from YouTube with the subject matter being about an illegal video, do not click any links in that E Mail, the mail is not from YouTube and all links lead to a dangerous attack site, which will possibly infect your computer with some form of malware. If you do have a Youtube account, go directly to Youtube and check your messages there, like me, you will find there aren't any.

Hi Paul, I haven't used the file fixer myself, however, try a right click on the external hard drive icon, and then look to see if "Scan with" is there for the file fixer. Just a suggestion till Ken gets back to you. Nev.

I have recently been made aware of this excelent and free, downloadable guide to Windows 7. It is in PDF format and written by Mike Halsey. Starting at the basic level of how to get started in Windows 7, including installing it to a new empty computer, right through to near computer guru level, it is a must have even for a seasoned user like myself, there are quite a few odd bits I have learned from it. Download the PDF file from here (24.2MB) Windows 7 Power Users Guide

Hi, if no specific IT department at your work, who does look after the network there and its settings? Worth asking them first if there is anything has been set to block the connection before looking at your home set up. Nev.