Plastic Nev

Hi, it looks like you may have lost the sound driver in trying other things to get the disk drive to work. Go back to the device manager, either click the arrow or double click on "sound, video and game controllers", then double click on the next thing to open, you should see a properties box open, under general it should tell you what the sound system is by make and type, next click the drivers tab. Hopefully there will be a tick box saying "Enable" for the driver. If not that it may need a simple reinstall of the driver, however for that we need to know what the sound system is in order to find where to download it from. Is the sound system the Realtek AC 97, or is it different to that? Let us know what you can about it please. Now to the disk drive itself, from the checks and everything you have tried, plus the fact there is no failed (Red or yellow) marks, it may be a pure mechanical failure of the read head in the drive, and I am afraid the only cure is a new disk drive. The only way to check for sure with a possible mechanical failure, is to try the drive in another computer, and or install a known to be working disk drive in its place. If a known to be good disk drive works OK, the original must be duff, and so on. Nev.

Hi, have you looked in device manager? to open device manager click "Start" then "Run", type or copy and paste devmgmt.msc Then click "OK" Any red or yellow marks showing? Click the arrow to the left of DVD/CD-ROM drives to expand and check, Also do the same for "Sound, video and game controllers" Again any red or yellow marks? Nev.

Hi, although I am no graphics expert and there may be someone knows better, however I think perhaps the problem is due to the fact the two monitors are requiring two different resolutions due to them being different sizes. Having looked at the specification here- http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-620/specifications Although it does say "Multi monitor" there is nothing about different resolutions available, it may well provide for two monitors that are the same size, but being asked to provide one with one resolution setting, it cannot provide the other with a different setting. However, if the settings were to be turned down to below what the smaller monitor requires, I would expect to see a small view on the larger monitor, have you tried that? Nev.

Hi, in Kens absence, I think perhaps this question he asked in his first reply is going to be the next move. To physically remove the hard drive, connect it to an adapter (To USB) or fit to a caddy is very simple to do as most laptop hard drives are easy to remove, usually just one or two small screws to undo, then slide it out. Connecting to an adapter or fitting to a caddy is also quite easy, however you will need either one or the other, though adapters are fairly cheap as a full caddy is a little more expensive. You will need to know the type of hard drive which will be either SATA, (for more modern machines, and being Windows 7, most likely) Or it may just be an older IDE type drive. The drive type will dictate what type of adapter or caddy you need, and whichever it is, being a laptop it is most likely to be a 2.5 inch drive. Once connected to an adapter or caddy, it can then be connected to your computer, various checks and tests can then be carried out, as well as rescuing valuable data such as photo's or music. It will also of course prove one way or the other if the hard drive itself has failed, or just the operating system on it is corrupted. If you wish to go down this way, we can help stage by stage as needed. Nev. Edit to add, Seedy posted while I was writing, please take note and answer his question also, thanks.

Anyone with that sense of humour is welcome here, so welcome from me too. Nev.

Hi, the website seems to work for me, any other text that may have shown below this, may well have been removed by the owner. Here is a screen shot of what I see- http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y282/plasticpig/Nowlosswebpage_zpsb72230fa.jpg A click on any of the "Go Here" links and the page slides over to the right to the relevant page for the link. I actually see no purpose to any text on the main page as all you need is on the linked to pages, maybe the owner also thought this and removed it. However if he hasn't deliberately removed said text, then he still has a problem. Nev.

Hi Geoff and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help. I am afraid you are another victim of the manufacturers being slow to catch up. There is a tremendous amount of software that is still not able to run on Windows 8 so you are not alone. I can only suggest waiting a short while till the makers of ION do have drivers available, that is if they intend doing so. If not, try to get your money back as you were sold something not fit for purpose. As far as other software that can do the job, can you tell us what the original video format is and is it digital or older analogue? If analogue, you may first need software to turn it to digital, though not sure about that. With Windows 8 still being new, add to that I don't yet have it and still running Windows 7, I am also at some disadvantage as far as knowing enough about what can and can't be done yet in Windows 8. Nev.

Hi Mike and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help. The dimensions of 2.5 or 3.5 for hard drives are actually the size of the disk inside them, and not to be confused with the external dimensions of the casing. However, by your description you need a 3.5 inch caddy, if all you wish to do is access the data on the hard drive a USB connection is sufficient, so an IDE to USB caddy is all you need. However if you wish to set the laptops BIOS so you can boot the laptop from the drive in the caddy, unless you can set the BIOS to boot from USB, you may need one that is IDE internally with SATA out, or at the very least an adapter lead that is IDE to SATA. Bearing in mind that if any version of Windows is installed, it will see a new environment and refuse to boot anyway, only free operating systems such as Linux based can boot into a different environment. Hope that helps, Nev.

Hi, please be patient over the weekend as Starbuck is sometimes away till Sunday evenings. Thank you for waiting. Nev.

Hi, not knowing this monitor, I can only guess that you may well be right that most of it will be a snap fit, however do take a look under any labels, self adhesive labels are quite often used to hide the heads of screws, so do have a look under them before trying to prize the edges apart. Nev.

Hi, if you right click on any item in your play list, you should see "Remove from list", does this not work? Nev.

Hi, there are a couple of problems here with that drive having an operating system on it, especially XP that was obviously configured for a different system than the yours. I think what may be happening is that the BIOS at start up is looking for a bootable volume and is finding the XP (When the drive is plugged in) and then trying to boot from it. That operating system will see a new environment and will refuse to boot up, hence everything coming to a stop with the ntrldr missing message. What you need to do if the eventual idea is to delete and reformat that XP drive, is to boot up without it installed, but before Windows 7 starts access the BIOS, using whichever key, quite often F2 or F10, then make sure the BIOS is set to boot from the existing drive first, it will find W7 and boot OK then, and ignore the XP. Nev.

Hi, do you know what time is set before the screen saver comes on? To find out, right click an empty part of the screen, choose "Personalise", then on the page that opens, on the bottom right is "Screen saver" click on that and the settings box should open. You can change the time it takes before going to screen saver here, as an example mine is set for ten minutes. You may find yours is now at 1 or may even be lower, though my system won't go lower than one minute. Check that first and let us know what you find. Nev.

Hi glad that sorted it, a strange thing where sometimes an application can still work but have a glitch or small amount of corruption that messes with something else. Quite often caused by installing something not even connected to it, but with badly written code, which can alter some other code already on the system. Nev.

Just to add, nip back to your Java thread, Starbuck has some important news for you, your Java is not up to date after all :confused: Nev.

Hi just the Adobe Flash player, it should be version 11,5,502,146 , if not a removal and re-install will give you that version any way. Once you have removed it, here is the address to download the new version= http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ I just hope it is just a corrupted version you have that is causing your problem as I am running out of idea's. :D Nev.

Travellama is now working too. Present IP is 184.168.221.40 which also shows as GoDaddy, so it is still on that server/host. ping checks also work as usual 4 sent 4 received on the other two which both show up as that 97.74.215.98 IP address. If you are still having problems accessing those sites, please let us know. Nev.

That doesn't look too bad for memory use so I doubt that is the issue now. There are so many different things worth looking into now, it could be malware of some sort so a scan with anti-virus and Malwarebytes would be a good idea. next is the possibility of a fault with the Youtube player which uses Adobe Flash player, find it in Programs and uninstall, then download and install a fresh version from Adobe. A paging file or lack of enough paging file space may be involved as well. Need any help in the above let us know. Nev.

Hi and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help nosmo. the laptop is actually only a connector to the wi-fi hotspot and not a rebroadcaster so as far as I am aware the answer is no it will not act as a router. However, I am no expert, others may know a way round for you. Nev.

Woops a few days late, hope it was a good one though and a very much belated happy birthday Randy, hope there are many more as we all know that birthdays are good for you, the more you have, the longer you live. Nev.

Hi, just for information, my ISP is Supanet, I tried the three links, the one you are moving is the one that failed, so assume it is because you are moving it, the other two, JohnKleis opened to a car Audio site bearing the JohnKleis name. The other site "This-could-be-your-site, opened to Towercom home, is that correct? So I can access at least those two from my ISP, Ken is from memory I think on a Tiscali ISP, but not sure. Nev.

Very nice and ideal for the lecture room or school classroom, but 42 inch is twice the size of the standard monitor that I already have, and my 21 incher is massive. Guess I will have to keep looking for something more suitable to a desktop. Nev.

Further to KenB's advice, looking at the spec 1GB RAM is only just enough, as you said Vista is hungry and will run much better with more, I would look to fitting at least another 1GB to bring it to 2GB, though being a 32 bit system you can't fit more than 4GB in total, so the maximum extra you could fit would be 3GB. Depends though on the slots available, being a laptop it is usually only one. Have a look at the Crucial website and use their scanner on it, you will find out then what RAM you can fit and in what sizes. http://www.crucial.com/ Nev.

I am still trying to find a good but not too expensive touch screen myself, I refuse to try W8 without one. I assume that is what your son is dealing with so any info will be appreciated. Nev.

Hum, the CPU is 2.3Ghz, plus the 8GB RAM, kind of blows a big hole in my first assumption, the computer should handle any video including Youtube without any problem. Have you had a look at the performance in Task manager yet? If it does show high usage of processor or RAM, we will need to look elsewhere for something hogging resources, While you have the task manager window open click the processes tab, look down the list, any large numbers above say 500,000 there under memory, while running a youtube video? (If using Firefox, I expect to see around 200,000 for that if the computer has been on for a while) Let us know what you find please and we can take it from there. Nev.