Plastic Nev

Hi, What type of connection are you using? If say an ADSL, some ADLS modems have an icon on the bottom task bar that if double clicked will show a real time bar chart of what is happening and the speed it is going at. If a different type of connection, there are other ways of monitoring the in and out, but we need to know which to advise. Also some firewalls will indicate traffic, though not very well, I have Comodo for instance, which shows red arrows for incoming and green for outgoing.

Yes indeed, we all have to earn a crust, after all this is still a hobby, perhaps an important one to some, but even so, doing work is important too. Nev.

Are you connected to the net and online when this activity is going on, and can you see if there is any heavy traffic either coming in or going out at the time?

A pity you don't live a little closer, the computer and equipment dealer on our local market has lots of fancy gizmo's for decoration purposes, and fancy flashing strips of LED lights is something I remember seeing on his stall. As well as serious stuff like new hard drives, graphics cards, laptops and all the bits to do a self build, he also caters for the more frivolous with see through cases, and strip lights to go in them, silly coke bottles that bend and twist to music, fancy fans, toy cars that lift up on their back wheels all USB powered. he has a great sense of humour that guy. Nev.

Happy birthday Doug and may there be many more to come. Remember, Birthdays are good for you, the more you have, the longer you live!!!

I am afraid so, though if you wanted, you could make a strip of plastic or metal to fit, then fit some flashing lights to it. It would look good but be not a lot of use!!!! :D :D

I don't think there is a limit on hard drive size, though if there is I would be interested to know. It is memory in RAM that can be limited, both by the motherboards capabilities and also the limits of the operating system. Also size of CPU can be limited by the motherboard, depending on quite a few factors such as how old the board is and what it was originally built for.

Being an older CRT monitor I would look at the possibilities of borrowing a new or newer TFT or similar monitor first to see if the problem still happens with that. Lets try and isolate whether it is the monitor or the graphics control. Nev.

A lot depends on the slot and it's shape, however if it is the standard width for DVD/CD drives, then if you already have a DVD/CD drive, and also card readers, it just may be usefull to fit another DVD/CD r/w drive for copying from one drive to another, otherwise there isn't much else will go in there. Nev.

I would at least try another battery, it is not unknown for these batteries to be dead when supposed to be new. We don't know how long it has been on a shelf gathering dust somewhere. Everything at the moment points to the battery being the fault. So obtain another, and if possible, from a different supplier. Nev.

hi Bob, I will leave the rest to my friend Snow, however I would like to point out that these so called registry utilities are not able to repair a damaged registry where items have been wrongly removed in the first place, quite often by these registry tools. For that is all they ever do, remove entries. They cannot possibly put entries back as there is no program yet that can even tell what is missing in the first place, as all registries become vastly different from the original as programs are added or removed, the registry is changed. So therefore there can be no standard for any of these so called cleaners to work from. it is for these reasons that we do not like them, I call myself some sort of expert, and believe me I don't know enough about the registry to even begin to think I could use one of these tools correctly and not do damage. So what chance any one with only basic knowledge? I feel all registry tools are a mild form of scam, they take your money and then run. Regards Nev.

Hi reznor, if you unticked the "Automatically restart" it should stop at that error message so you can see what it is and let us know what it says. If it isn't a stop error though then it won't stay up, it will carry on booting up. Nev.

I would agree that for video work 2GB is better, I have only 1.25,GB after installing 1GB to upgrade from the original 250MB the machine first came with. If I try using one of the faster video editing programs, the quality of the finished video suffers, especially sound gets clipped. I assume this is because I could still do with more RAM. It takes its time, but I now use the program that came with the video camera, "Motion Studio", and get superb results. Tootech is correct about Windows not being able to use more than 3GB, and in some cases more memory than that actually can slow things down a little I believe.

Yep, so it is. Thank goodness, I can again search for some thing, then get a map to find out where it is. Problem solved.:cool: Nev.

Will it start up in safe mode? constantly tap F8 from start. If so try "Last known Good Configuration". Do you have any disks? Nev.

Welcome, and glad to know I am responsible for you joining us, but now wondering where from? Nev.

I wouldn't be happy with the GPU running that hot, I would be thinking along the lines of improving that with better fan, and if possible better heat sink. (the thing with fins sat on top of the chip) as to whether that temperature is responsible for the odd shutdowns, it may be the case, but I will leave that to those who know a bit more about GPU's. Nev.

Hi again, I would send a PM to Randy on the issue of forum and E Mail notification. As to the external E Mail I would follow Kens advice and let everyone know what has happened. The next is dependant on your E mail client. IE Hotmail for example you can change password there to prevent the scum using it in your name, the same should apply if using any server based system such as the one provided by your ISP. Nev.

Hi tismehi, The first thing is to go to all those websites and change those passwords, secondly have you used the laptop for any bank work? If so Ring your bank and inform them so that also new passwords can be arranged and also cards canceled. In other words do a complete restart with anything password connected. As far as other personal details are concerned if they are in the laptop, be careful about making sure you lock up when leaving home for a while. I assume you have informed the police about this loss? They can be helpful in giving advice about any other personal security issues. Nev.

Hi, that agent should just install and not give you that page, which version of Internet Explorer are you using or are you using a different browser such as Firefox or Opera? Nev.

Hi, I know those instructions look a bit hard, so understand why you would like to try the update agent, go to this page and click on the download link on it, the update agent should install it self from there. How to obtain the latest version of the Windows Update Agent to help manage updates on a computer

Yes have a look and try the suggested cures, it may still work for you. Nev.

Hi Bubble, Have you recently needed to have a Windows repair done, or a re-install of the operating system? The problem you have is common to that situation, so please have a look here-- Updates are not installed successfully from Windows Update, from Microsoft Update, or by using Automatic Updates after you perform a new Windows XP installation or you repair a Windows XP installation

Hey, I just looked through the Google contact us page and can't even find an address to send a complaint to!! You might have better luck, but it is well worth doing and if you find an address let us know, the more complaints about it the quicker they may be about doing something. Nev.

The only thing that comes to mind now is, just prior to finding your speed was back up, did you catch sight of any BT vans in the area? It looks like there must have been some sort of line fault that has been repaired elsewhere by BT. As far as Orange now sending a new box, you have a choice of either keeping it, and sending the old one back for investigation, or sending the new one back and telling them you don't need it. I would ask though if any charges are likely to be incurred by whatever you choose to do. Nev.