Plastic Nev

Madness indeed chaps, I also wouldn't get a Mac fixed, and I bet they would go overboard with me, as pipe smoke will no doubt be even more noxious to them. However, I can tell a story from the days when a main frame hard drive was around the size of an old LP record in diameter and about ten disks thick. The hard drive replaced all those wonderful spinning reels of magnetic tape, and stood in a quite large box as a separate item from the processing equipment. They were housed in a controlled environment room, and smoking in there was definitely banned. The reason given was that the smallest particle of dust, and that includes smoke particles, would do irreparable damage to the disks or read head. I doubt that such damage could occur to the hard drive of today, as they are enclosed in a sealed container.

Hello Lynda and welcome, good to have another experienced person on board.

DPC Latency Checker This is a tool for detecting DPC latency, this latency can be responsible for drop outs when streaming video or audio, the tool will show if there are any problems. A look at the site page will give you more information. Nev.

Funnily enough, I also checked my own system and found only the lower filters on my system too. I am now in the dark myself about that, however my drives are working OK, so I will wait till someone who knows a bit more about this filters issue has a look. Nev.

Hi Dave, thanks for the update, and I am glad it is all OK now. Also glad to have been of help. Nev.

Hi paparay, have you tried an update of the Adobe Flash Player (which you need to play the BBC video's) The latest version is 10.0.32.18 available from here- Adobe - Adobe Flash Player Nev.

And further good news is, we took the same piece of music to the St Helens contest today and won first prize there too. Myself and the rest of the band are well pleased with that. Nev.

Happy birthday my friend and hope you have a good one.

Hi and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help. I am afraid that USB ports and the USB system is unique, so there are no adapters to convert another port to USB as far as I know. Having looked at the spec for your Latitude there is only the one USB port, so if it is physically loose, that will mean the connections are broken and will require repair for the port to work again. If confident with the use of a soldering iron, it may not be too difficult to replace or re-fix the port providing the board itself is not broken. If not, a good repair technician shouldn't charge too much to repair it. Nev.

Quite right there Seth, whatever the latest scare story, someone is making money out of it one way or another. I will be as honest as possible, give me all you can afford, then I won't scare you! Well I have to try haven't I? :D :D Nev.

Hi, at this stage and considering you have had it in for repair and replacement of the M.B. I would say take it back and ask for it to be fixed, any repair shop should check everything functions before letting it back out, they obviously didn't. If they had, they would have spotted the drives weren't working, and informed you if it wasn't connected to the original repair. Stand up for your rights and if necessary, quote the sale of goods act, it does cover repairs as well. Let us know how you get on, but do try to avoid spending any more cash with them unless they can prove the drives weren't working before you took it in. Nev.

Hi, one thing that hasn't been mentioned, what security software do you have? I mean firewall, antivirus, and any other antispy or antimalware. Have you considered there may be some infection. virus, trojan etc? Let us know if you suspect that, or if there are other problems such as unwanted adverts popping up etc. Nev.

Hi two things are important with laptop chargers, the voltage and the power rating. As an example the one for my Toshiba is 19 volts, at 6.3 amps, which is approximately 120 watts. Some may have it in watts rather than amps but providing the voltage is the same a substitute power brick should also be the same amps or watts, but the substitute will still be ok if it says a higher amperage or wattage. If your present but suspect one is in amps, but the prospective substitute is rated in watts, then you need to convert one to see how it matches to the other. A simple calculation is volts times amps equals the watts. hence 19 X 6.3 = 119.7 (Approximately 120 watts) Conversely watts divided by volts will tell you the amps. Providing the plug is the same as well, then it is definitely OK to use any charger that has the same ratings, it doesn't have to be of the same make. Nev.

Hi and welcome. I am still stuck on XP here, but looking to upgrade to a new machine with W7 in the new year.

Hi and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help Lee, The IRQ less or equal message can be a faulty memory module. to Rule that out, the way forward is to remove all modules except one, then see if it will boot up OK, if not swap that one for one you took out and try again. If it does boot up OK, shut down again then fit one more and try again until the problem reappears, that will be the faulty module. If non of that does any good, let us know and other things can be tried. Nev.

Hi Sue, not familiar with the HP hard drives so can't help much with that, but I did have a problem with my HP printer and the drivers causing a problem with a different program. Rather than phone them, I E Mailed their tech help and got a tremendous amount of help from HP, they are good at that sort of thing, and all via E Mail, so no costly phone calls. Nev.

Hi, if I understand this correctly, you have two graphics cards in, one much higher performance than the other but still wish to switch from one to the other. I think it may actually be easiest to look for and uninstall any drivers for the lower spec card, then remove the card physically before drivers for the higher spec card can be installed. You should then be able to reinstall everything for the lower spec card after that I hope. If I am wrong, no doubt someone will correct me as graphics is not yet my strong point.

OK Mike, after such a long running thing I am glad you eventually got to the end by finding it was the Windows update. Thanks for coming back to let us know. Nev.

I was under the impression that Microsoft page actually did the fix, obviously not, however it does tell me it is definitely the upper and lower filters corrupted. OK we are going to have to do this the long way round as other methods don't seem like they want to work. Please take great care and follow these instructions carefully as I am asking you to go into and edit the registry. If not sure of any point please stop and ask before going further. Click Start, at the bottom left of screen, and then click Run. In the Open box, type, or copy and paste, regedit, and then click OK. Click the + next to each of the following: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > Current Control Set > Control > Class > {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} There may be a number of 08002BE10318 entries at this point. Click on each until DVD/CD shows in the right pane. please make sure that in the right pane it says specifically DVD/CD Drives .....probably at the top. In the right pane, click UpperFilters. It will be highlighted. Click on Edit in the toolbar. Click on Delete Click Yes to confirm. Do the same for the Lower Filters Once done and exited, shut down the computer and let it reboot, Windows should then recreate new filters. As I said, if not sure of anything let us know, and also let us know if you don't find anything resembling either upper or lower filters in there. Nev.

Hi Tom, sorry I have had to remove your link for the moment as it will be seen as advertising which we don't normally allow. However, not being London based myself, and therefore cannot give you any local places for acquiring the bits you need, I can only suggest a look round (with caution) E bay. Or the other well known retailer Amazon. A quick ask on Google gave me this page, with quite a few dealers posted as being in London, so hope that can be of help. Google Nev.

Hi, and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help by the way. You appear to have a custom built machine or similar, which has only got the operating system installed. You normally only get the Microsoft works, word, or other parts of Office bundled in when buying a manufactured PC such as a Dell, Toshiba, ETC. If you need those programs, and they definitely have to be the Microsoft versions you will have to buy and install them yourself. However there is an excellent free program that can handle just about every document created originally in those Microsofts Office derivatives. The program is called "Open Office" and is free to download and use for non commercial applications, here- OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite Have a good look round their site, the help and backup for this free product is amazing. Nev.

Hi Little Ted. As far as the extra RAM is concerned, have a look on Crucials site here- RAM Memory Upgrade: Dell, Mac, Apple, HP, Compaq. USB drives, flash cards, SSD at Crucial.com Use Internet Explorer rather than any other browser when going to the Crucial site, and use their scanner, it will then tell you how much memory you already have in and what type, then recommend the type to fit to expand on what you have. You will also be able to see their prices to get an idea of what it may cost for comparison with other manufacturers prices too. A look round the site will also give you instructions on how to fit new RAM too. Have a look here- Memory upgrades from Crucial.com - Desktop Memory Module Installation Guide This is a description of how to fit DIMM type memory to a desktop but the same methods apply to all types of memory module for desktops. For laptops or notebooks- Memory upgrades from Crucial.com - Notebook/Laptop Memory Module Installation Guide Although this is for access via the keyboard, other manufacturers have a removable cover underneath for access to the memory slot, which is much easier to deal with. Hope that is of help, Nev.

Hi sorry for a delay in replying, but however welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help. You have actually touched on what I was going to say when you mention upgrading the PSU. If you are intending adding a graphics card you should find what power it needs and add that to whatever the original PSU already provides, in this case 300Watts. Most manufactured computers were fitted with a PSU that is just big enough to do for what is already there, with little room for overhead. So if you choose a GPU card that requires say 200Watts, then a new PSU of 500Watts is the minimum you should look for to be safe. You are OK getting even bigger PSU's with rating up to even 1000Watts, though expensive of course, it is just a case of what will do a lot, will also do a little. As far as advice on the card itself, I will leave that to one of our team who is more up to date on graphics than myself. I am only a humble sound and power supply expert. Nev.

If it is a mechanical sound such as scraping, whirring rumbling or thumping, and is not coming from one of the fans, it has to be the hard drive unless a disk is in one of the disk drives. If it is the hard drive, don't use it to store any data, files or folders. It may well be about to go to hard drive heaven. The most you should hear is a gentle whirring note as the hard drive spins up, any more than that I would be thinking about replacement. if on the other hand it is one of the fans, shut down the machine and breath a sigh of relief, as fitting a new fan is a lot better and easier than having to mess about reloading the operating system on a new hard drive. Nev.

Hi, further to and explanation of, why we think the drive itself may need replacement, CD/DVD drives have different heads, one for the CD's and the other for DVD's. it is quite often the case that the read/write head for the CD side is OK but the DVD head has gone, or it can be the other way round of course, hence why in your case some disks can be read but not others. Nev.