Technical Corner........

gary-danneI need to get out more

Joined:: 28 Dec 2005
Posts:: 294
Location:: Leics

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You are right the best way to keep your drive safe is to pull the IDE or SATA lead. There are all sorts of ways to access files on other drives.......Also your favourites and any photos or vids are not safe.....Depends how determined she is

....Get them on a memory stick......export your favourites so you can restore them when she is gone....

Cheers Gary

gary-danneI need to get out more

Joined:: 28 Dec 2005
Posts:: 294
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Here's a tip for the more adventurous

....

Copy Error Messages To Clipboard

What’s the first thing you do when you see a baffling error message in Windows? If you are anything like me you’ll pick out the keywords and look it up on Google. That’s fine when it’s something simple but all too often error messages are long-winded and contain lots of gibberish, which are a pain to type into the search box The temptation, is to try and copy and paste the message, but you will find that this doesn’t work as you can’t highlight the words in an error box, but there is another way.

Here’s a nifty little tweak that I came across the other day on Asp.net. From Windows 2k onwards you have been able to copy the text in error messages to the Windows Clipboard by pressing Ctrl + C, but Microsoft forgot to tell anyone. So the next time you get an indecipherable error message, just press Ctrl + C then open Notepad, WordPad, Word etc and press Ctrl + V, then you can highlight the text, and use it to search for a solution.

Borrowed from another site obviously

Cheers Gary xx

Tan--KinkyGodlike

Joined:: 27 Nov 2007
Posts:: 5257
Location:: Tartlepool

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My dad has brought his lappy down for me to take to a shop to get fixed before i do that just wondered if it is summit silly, the dvd/disk drive opens insert disk but nothing happens go into my computer click on it and its empty so basically its not picking up any disks. Anything else i can try before paying pc repair prices?

gary-danneI need to get out more

Joined:: 28 Dec 2005
Posts:: 294
Location:: Leics

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TanKinky wrote:

My dad has brought his lappy down for me to take to a shop to get fixed before i do that just wondered if it is summit silly, the dvd/disk drive opens insert disk but nothing happens go into my computer click on it and its empty so basically its not picking up any disks. Anything else i can try before paying pc repair prices?

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Ok first thing I would do is put a cleanin cd thru it...just to rule out a dirty lens.....secondly does the drive show up in "my computer"?? and does it spin up when you put a disc in it??...new laptop drives are relatively cheap depending on the age and model of machine....they are only held in by one screw normally and that is under the keyboard....it could be that the drive has simply died....or that the lens is out of cal which normally means the same end result....fingers crossed its just a mucky lens....

Cheers Gary xxx

Tan--KinkyGodlike

Joined:: 27 Nov 2007
Posts:: 5257
Location:: Tartlepool

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gary-danne wrote:

There is no spinning of the disk when you insert it, tried a cleanng disk the drive shows up in my computer but when ya click on it its empty looks like a new drive then? will take it to the shop cheers

gary-danneI need to get out more

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Oh well worth a try.....hope it gets sorted.....

Gary xxx

Tan--KinkyGodlike

Joined:: 27 Nov 2007
Posts:: 5257
Location:: Tartlepool

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gary-danne wrote:

Oh well worth a try.....hope it gets sorted.....

Gary xxx

Done for £10 and fixed while i was there so not to bad!

gary-danneI need to get out more

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Great stuff what did they do???

Gary xx

Tan--KinkyGodlike

Joined:: 27 Nov 2007
Posts:: 5257
Location:: Tartlepool

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gary-danne wrote:

Great stuff what did they do???

Gary xx

put a new combi? drive in

gary-danneI need to get out more

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A happy ending

Gary xx

sexy_Toni62You looking at me?

Joined:: 10 Dec 2006
Posts:: 73
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Hi Gary and first of all thanks for offering yr services to us all on here..i for one appreciate what yr doing, regardless of whether you can help me or not!

My problem is a SH/Chatroom problem and am not sure if you can help me!

Its the same old problem - When i first enter the room, I say 1 or at the most 2 lines of chat and all fine then the chat freezes in the whole of the room (everyones chat that is) and then when I type nothing comes up (but i can see the chat in whispers but no one else can!!)

I have raised this on the forum b4 and i have downloaded adobe again and again and agian.....but the same old problem occurs!!

Can you help me

Many thanks

Toni xx

gary-danneI need to get out more

Joined:: 28 Dec 2005
Posts:: 294
Location:: Leics

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Ok first of all are you running firefox?? if not why not??

.....secondly try shutting down all non essential progs and uninstalling any you dont use any more....am guessing this is some kind of conflict....but I could be wrong I often am

....is it time to restore your pc to its original settings??.... a good cure but always a last resort....as all the backing up takes ages....still thinking as I write this

....to be continued lol ....wouldnt do any harm to ask the sh site experts as well

Cheers Gary xx

P.s ty for the kind words ....

Tan--KinkyGodlike

Joined:: 27 Nov 2007
Posts:: 5257
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gary-danne wrote:

A happy ending

Gary xx

Yup thanks

PeanutGodlike

Joined:: 3 Mar 2005
Posts:: 2891
Location:: The great state of
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sexy_Toni62 wrote:

Hi Gary and first of all thanks for offering yr services to us all on here..i for one appreciate what yr doing, regardless of whether you can help me or not!

My problem is a SH/Chatroom problem and am not sure if you can help me!

Its the same old problem - When i first enter the room, I say 1 or at the most 2 lines of chat and all fine then the chat freezes in the whole of the room (everyones chat that is) and then when I type nothing comes up (but i can see the chat in whispers but no one else can!!)

I have raised this on the forum b4 and i have downloaded adobe again and again and agian.....but the same old problem occurs!!

Can you help me

Many thanks

Toni xx

Some of these symptoms could possibly be the result of an older or less well specified PC struggling a bit. So out of interest do you know how much memory you have in your computer and what speed processor you have? presumably you're running Windows XP?

sexy_Toni62You looking at me?

Joined:: 10 Dec 2006
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i am using Firefox........

sexy_Toni62You looking at me?

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Peanut wrote:

Hi there thanks but my pc is 3 yrs old, only used about 1 quarter of the total memory and yes i am on windows xp!!

Toni

foxylady2209Godlike

Joined:: 6 Jan 2005
Posts:: 4069
Location:: Derby

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The c key on my laptop sticks - not every time, but often enough to annoy the hell out of me. I spilt coffee on the keyboard ages ago and it took ages for all the button to work, and the worst was the q,a,z, etc.

All seemed well until a few weeks ago and the c got lazy.

Is it ok to prise the button off? I've done it on normal keyboards but obviously laptop keyboards are integral so I'm not sure.

PeanutGodlike

Joined:: 3 Mar 2005
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sexy_Toni62 wrote:

Hi there thanks but my pc is 3 yrs old, only used about 1 quarter of the total memory and yes i am on windows xp!!

Toni

A quarter of how much? To run XP effectively you need at least 512Mb ideally 1Gb. If you only have 256Mb then it will most likely chug a bit, especially if you have a slow processor like a Celeron or a Sempron/Duron. Adobe Flash applications such as the chatroom can be more resource intensive than a lot of people imagine, especially when it's running inside the memory space of your web browser.

PeanutGodlike

Joined:: 3 Mar 2005
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foxylady2209 wrote:

The c key on my laptop sticks - not every time, but often enough to annoy the hell out of me. I spilt coffee on the keyboard ages ago and it took ages for all the button to work, and the worst was the q,a,z, etc.

All seemed well until a few weeks ago and the c got lazy.

Is it ok to prise the button off? I've done it on normal keyboards but obviously laptop keyboards are integral so I'm not sure.

It depends on the laptop. Some of them just flick out whole, whereas some have keyboards where you can prise out the individual keys.

If you're not sure use a damp q-tip to see if you can clean between the keys. A coffee spill (especially if you take sugar in your coffee) will definitely gum up the works!