Plastic Nev

Hi and welcome to Free Pc Help. Does anything happen at all, any sound of fans running etc? I take it that nothing comes up on the monitor, so there are several options to try, first is to check the monitor itself by trying it on another computer if that is possible. If not one of your own, perhaps a friend might help out? The next steps do include accessing the internals of the machine so if happy to remove the lid, and I am assuming you may have built this machine from that motherboard? Power supply is the thing to be checked, again best done by trying on another computer, though if you have a multimeter you can check the voltages. If power supply and monitor are OK by those checks, then something may be wrong with the motherboard itself. Check visually for capacitors leaking, bulging or split. This member had a capacitor blow on his graphics card, see his picture, do any of them look like that? http://extremetechsupport.com/threads/12510-Graphics-Card-Power-Cap Let us know what you find, Nev.

Hi, not too sure if this applies to Vista, , as I am running W7 and sidestepped vista from XP. But we can but try. Go to control panel and select User accounts and family safety. click directly on user accounts, that may be needed to be done twice, then select "Change your account type" You should be already administrator, but see if you can change your account to administrator there. If not, I have to ask, is this your own computer or one from a company? Nev.

Hi and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help. A lot of the Adobe products have recently been updated, if your hasn't that may be the reason, go to this site and download the latest version. http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ It will install over the original. Let us know if that sorts it or not. Nev.

Hi Neil, sorry for not getting back to you earlier, but been busy trying to get my car through the MOT test, lots of welding work and a broken spring. Anyway, I know Toshiba and their BIOS, just a series of icons on the display for selecting the boot device, not a lot of use and neither is some software either. (I have an older A60) However, I am still concerned that the controller chip is the problem, the fans should not be on full right from the start and stay that way. Unfortunately, being a motherboard mounted chip it will require a replacement motherboard. Considering it has recently been in for repair, have you tried contacting them, as apart from the original fault I assume the fans ran at sensible speeds. It may be something they have inadvertently done to cause it. Nev.

Thanks for letting us know Matt and great that all is OK now and JB saved you a reformat. Nev.

The simple answer is a full reformat. That will remove everything so if there is anything on the drive you wish to keep, copy it over to an external drive or other storage medium. To save me a lot of writing, Microsoft have kindly done it for me, have a look here and choose the 6th item down, "Using the custom installation option and formatting the hard drive" Click on that item and follow all the instructions, here= http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Installing-and-reinstalling-Windows-7#section_7 Best of luck with it, a full reformat will get rid of the odd "E" drive for you as well I hope. Nev.

If I can just pop in here for a quick comment, Reading through, am I correct in thinking that the only way the computer will work at all is only when the operating system disk is in the drive? If so, this is making me a little suspicious of the internal hard drive itself as it would appear that the computer is booting off the disk in the CD drive and definitely not from the hard drive. Either the original operating system installation is is on a bad sector, or worse the drive is showing signs of failure. A complete re format, and then a fresh install may work as Windows will look for good sectors, but if the drive is failing anyway it just may fail to install again. I may be wrong and miss reading things here but just my thoughts. Nev.

Funny, but also phishing attempts are also getting more common by ordinary mail or snail mail as some call it. Being the aware sort of guy I am, I got one from my ISP offering some better deal. I was immediately suspicious because of what they were asking for, and got in touch directly with them by phone using the number I have, only to find out it was actually for real. It also wasn't that good a deal so I turned it down any way. However, better safe than sorry. I did explain that they should actually take note of the way the scammers are now operating and to be a little more aware that their own mail or E Mail could be taken as a scam. Therefore be a little better at wording their communications if they want folk to take them a little more seriously. The guy at the other end agreed with me and thanked me for my time. Nev.

I was a little short of time the other day, but have now looked into this a little more. Ableton Live is as you will know a full sequencing program, capable of quite a high level amount of music making. The system requirements,taken from their website= Quote= Windows: 2 GHz Pentium® 4 or Celeron® compatible CPU or faster (multicore CPU recommended), 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended on Windows Vista and Windows 7), Windows XP (home or Pro), Windows Vista or Windows 7, sound card (ASIO driver support recommended), DVD-ROM drive, QuickTime recommended The installation size of the Essential Instrument Collection 2 is 15 GB. They say a minimum spec processor of 2GHz I would be happier with higher and up to 3GHz. They also recommend multi core, I would be happy with at least a quad core. Minimum of 2GB RAM, recommending 4GB, again, if the motherboard will take it and the CPU and OS is 64bit, then 6GB is where I would be looking. I also would definitely be looking to install a PCIE sound card especially if using any sort of MIDI keyboard, otherwise latency will be a real problem. In actual fact, the speed of the hard drive should not be a part of the equation at all, unless because of a low figure in RAM, the operating system is being forced to utilise too much page file, or virtual memory. Not a good thing when you don't want any latency, even a very fast drive such as a solid state one, will not make up for not having enough RAM. It is within the memory or RAM, that Windows will be working with the program, not off the disk. Nev.

Hi, Thanks so far for info regarding the hard drive, could you give us some more information about the rest of your computer, specifically is it a 32bit or 64bit system, how much RAM you have installed, and also the CPU itself and how many cores it has. I also wonder if you have a PCI or PCIE sound card installed. I am a little worried that your real reason for problems may be not enough RAM installed rather than hard drive speeds. Ableton though I have heard of it, have not yet used it, but as is the case with some of these applications, to run well they need a decent amount of RAM. Nev.

And a thanks for stepping in Ken, never having needed that or worked with it, I have learned something too. Now to re-read it again.

Hi, hearing from others in Australia, seasonal temperatures are already very high, that means the fans are drawing in air already fairly hot unless in an air conditioned room. If you removed the fan, you just may have disturbed the seating of the heat sink (Finned aluminium or copper block) which sits on top of the CPU chip. Carefully remove the fan, then the heatsink, be very careful not to remove the CPU chip from its socket. Underneath the heatsink you should see the possible remains of a paste. Carefully clean that off, then re-apply a small amount of some new paste and refit everything, the heatsink should be a good tight fit to the top of the CPU chip to make sure it collects the heat from the chip. the thermal paste is usually available from most computer parts or spares shops or stores. Being in the UK, I know nothing of what stores are available in Oz, or on line ordering. Try to obtain Arctic cooler, and the best they do is Arctic silver, costs a little more but worth it. Let us know how you get on and if that helps. If still problems you may have to look at the possibilities of fitting an extra case fan to help keep the temperature down. Nev.

Hi, try all that KenB recommends first, but if no malware reported or anything using very much RAM (other than Firefox if using it) I would suspect the fan controller chip on the motherboard. The sensor seen in the BIOS is the same one used by the controller so if it shows a low reading in BIOS, it must be further down the line. Nev.

A bit late, but hope you had a good one old friend.

Hi and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help. I have seen this once before and it was a malfunctioning webcam, which I suspect is the case with yours. Considering you have only just got it, it should be covered by the warranty so I recommend you take or send it back. We are reluctant to ask a user to delve too far when we suspect a hardware fault on something still covered by the warranty. Any work done could revoke that warranty, leaving you in the lurch. Nev.

Hi Porge, There is a free program that I have used successfully called DVD Smith, this will allow you to copy any DVD to your hard drive and is available to download from here= http://www.dvdsmith.com/ Hope that is of help for you. Nev.

Hi, and for others benefit, Superantispyware is great for finding and getting rid of those tracking cookies, as SAS (for short) is actually a program specially set up for removing spywares, tracking cookies are regarded as spyware, therefore it removes 'em. Nev.

Hi Jim, if you are getting the connection and disconnection signal it is a sure sign someone has latched onto your wireless. It is complicated when first looked at to stop that happening, but if taken one stage at a time it isn't that bad. I suggest printing off any instructions so you can read them through while doing it. However, KenB is probably the best at describing what to do to secure your wireless network, so I will ask him to look in. Nev.

Hi, any hack, which this is, written to prevent product activation is against copyright at the very least and as such is illegal. If that is the way you are wanting to go, I am afraid we cannot help with any illegal code writing. Nev.

Must have been a hot day. http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y282/plasticpig/Melted.jpg

Hi, just realised this is a laptop, am I correct? Have you tried, disconnecting all power and removing the battery, a total power out can sometimes reset things. If that doesn't work, please go as far as you can with Jelly Beans advice, bearing in mind being a laptop, ignore instructions for looking inside, they only apply to desktop machines, laptops are too fidly unless mechanically inclined. Let us know if you can still get no further than the error screen as I feel JB is right there is some BIOS fault. Nev.

Hi tunneey, I think this may be the procedure Ken mentioned, to save me writing it we have it as a sticky note here= http://extremetechsupport.com/threads/4325-CD-DVD-drives-not-recognised If you have any problems or dislike of entering the registry, try the link and archive file Goku posted further down the thread. You may find only one filter, usually the upper filter, though we are now seeing no filters at all in some more recent builds. if there is only the one filter just delete that one, if no filters let us know so Ken can go on from there when he returns tomorrow. Nev.

For Firefox, I have the AddBlockPlus installed, that seems to get rid of both sides of junk on the Google search page. All nice and peaceful when I use Google. AdBlockPlus is available as an add on from the usual sources via the Mozilla site. Nev.

Hi and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help Cherie. I am tempted to think you may have inadvertently messed up the boot sequence by changing drive letters, however if "C" drive is definitely the one with the OS on it, restart and start tapping on the F12 key, or whichever will get you to the BIOS page. Make sure the drive that "C" is on, is the first boot device, (up and down keys to select, enter key to confirm it) try that first for a start till someone with a better idea comes along. Nev.

Also, please check all other devices in device manager, are there any red or yellow marks next to anything else, just in case it isn't the disk drive. Nev.