HELP is at hand for General PC queries, not Foxestalk ones

[davieG]

It won't. Laptop RAM is different to PC RAM in terms of size.

Computer:

Laptop:

For once that is something I already knew - the toshiba & philips mentioned are both laptops - but does that guarantee compatibility? I've got one 1mb and two 2mbs of ram that were in the philips at some point

[DB11]

For once that is something I already knew - the toshiba & philips mentioned are both laptops - but does that guarantee compatibility? I've got one 1mb and two 2mbs of ram that were in the philips at some point

MB would be useless; I trust you mean gigabytes

As long as they are both the same DDR value eg. DDR1 or DDR2, then it'll be fine

[coale39]

I got one from DA Computers pretty much to the spec you suggested, oh and free Dell monitor from my daughter.

If I merge it into one will that 1.5 GB's worth needed for recovery survive?

How is the new pc? Faster?

Im guessing that the dvd recovery disk should be enough. Its how things were done before they started partitioning disks!

[DB11]

How can the group policy editor be used to alter the permissions on user accounts on the computer eg. just limited accounts. Or can I make groups and add users to that group?

Many thanks if you can help!

Edited 11 July 2009 by DB11

[Gaffer]

Any reason why a CD/DVD drive would stop recognising disks? (its on a laptop)

Will open, and will display in my computer but when I put in a disk no auto-run or any detection, when I click on the drive it says "please place a disk in drive F"

I've;

Enable/disabled the drive,

uninstalled then reinstalled then updated drivers,

re-installed windows to factory settings.

Nothing works. Any thoughts? Sony Vaio are going to charge me £150+ for a repair so i'm more than likely going to pick up an external drive for £60 and be done with it.

[DB11]

Any reason why a CD/DVD drive would stop recognising disks? (its on a laptop)

Will open, and will display in my computer but when I put in a disk no auto-run or any detection, when I click on the drive it says "please place a disk in drive F"

I've;

Enable/disabled the drive,

uninstalled then reinstalled then updated drivers,

re-installed windows to factory settings.

Nothing works. Any thoughts? Sony Vaio are going to charge me £150+ for a repair so i'm more than likely going to pick up an external drive for £60 and be done with it.

Have you tried lots of different discs? What about both blank discs and ones with, say, music on?

[davieG]

How is the new pc? Faster?

Im guessing that the dvd recovery disk should be enough. Its how things were done before they started partitioning disks!

I've only used it for getting on the web at the moment and that to say the least is a bit hit & miss thanks to Sky. The PC does seem a little quicker for some actions although others seem to take as long.

I'll try altering the partition and make a 10/70 split.

[Gaffer]

Have you tried lots of different discs? What about both blank discs and ones with, say, music on?

All types, blank CD's, Blank DVD's, Commercial DVD's/CD's, DVD's it wrote files to a few months back.. Nothing.

[coale39]

I've only used it for getting on the web at the moment and that to say the least is a bit hit & miss thanks to Sky. The PC does seem a little quicker for some actions although others seem to take as long.

I'll try altering the partition and make a 10/70 split.

Ok.

Dont take this as patronising but have ya downloaded all the windows vista updates? They help with optimising ya PC. What anti virus you using? Not norton I hope. I think AVG's the best free one. Also check programs that start up and see if their nessesary.

[davieG]

Ok.

Dont take this as patronising but have ya downloaded all the windows vista updates? They help with optimising ya PC. What anti virus you using? Not norton I hope. I think AVG's the best free one. Also check programs that start up and see if their nessesary.

When it comes to PCs I never take anyone as patronising, all advice is warmly welcomed.

Vista Updates - I have them all I believe - will check again.

AVG - I hate Norton

I've still to check the start -up programmes

It took about 6 hours to up load the updates on my recovered laptap and I'm still unsure as to whether I have SP2.

[coale39]

When it comes to PCs I never take anyone as patronising, all advice is warmly welcomed.

Vista Updates - I have them all I believe - will check again.

AVG - I hate Norton

I've still to check the start -up programmes

It took about 6 hours to up load the updates on my recovered laptap and I'm still unsure as to whether I have SP2.

CCleaners a useful programme. General clean up as well as stopping start up programs and registry. To get what service pack your using, go on control panel, system and maintenance then System.

[DB11]

How can the group policy editor be used to alter the permissions on user accounts on the computer eg. just limited accounts. Or can I make groups and add users to that group?

Many thanks if you can help!

Anyone please?

It's a standalone computer. I want to create other accounts for people, such as my brother etc. and I shall make these accounts "Limited". The default permissions that this has is, for me, still too much. I can go into the registry and alter the accounts permissions by creating and editing keys, such as DisableTaskMgr, in the the policies subkey menu however this is time consuming to do it for every account. Is there any way whereby I can go into the registry and change it for the group that is "Limited" therefore every account that is limited has these permissions, and any further created accounts will have too.

The group policy editor may or may not work on a standalone PC, but it is designed for a network of computers on a domain. Even so, I do not know how to do this; when I tried making changes it made the changes to the whole computer and I therefore, inadvertently, locked myself out. I had to system restore to resurrect the problem.

I hope you do now understand where I am coming from and would help me, if you could.

[Hitesh]

Anyone please?

It's a standalone computer. I want to create other accounts for people, such as my brother etc. and I shall make these accounts "Limited". The default permissions that this has is, for me, still too much. I can go into the registry and alter the accounts permissions by creating and editing keys, such as DisableTaskMgr, in the the policies subkey menu however this is time consuming to do it for every account. Is there any way whereby I can go into the registry and change it for the group that is "Limited" therefore every account that is limited has these permissions, and any further created accounts will have too.

The group policy editor may or may not work on a standalone PC, but it is designed for a network of computers on a domain. Even so, I do not know how to do this; when I tried making changes it made the changes to the whole computer and I therefore, inadvertently, locked myself out. I had to system restore to resurrect the problem.

I hope you do now understand where I am coming from and would help me, if you could.

I totally understand where you are coming from and what you are trying to do. I have had problems like this in the past and have never really solved them to be honest. Mainly because I didn't have the time to write the scripts and test etc and also because it wasn't worth it in the end. Windows, and XP in particular, is very poor in "Limiting" the accounts.

But thinking about it a bit more and probably because something I'd just like to find the answer to, I wouldnt mind looking into it. I'll try and have a look over the next few days to see if there are any login scripts/easier solutions that can be assigned to a user type. I'll be honest though, User accounts and networking etc aren't my strong point so it may take a while to figure out but there must be a way because at school, although it was on a network, there was a way on XP you could restrain a user from carrying out some tasks. This must have been a setting assigned to a "user type". It will just be a case of writing a script/changing reg settings etc but maybe a little work will be needed. I have used programs like Win Utilities but this again changes things on my account too and its hassle doing it for every account. There is a choice of writing a macro/script to do these changes but this could be time consuming and depends how much you really want it I guess.

I don't mind trying to help you out on this over the next few days if you want DB11 (PM your MSN if its easier..?)

[Hitesh]

All types, blank CD's, Blank DVD's, Commercial DVD's/CD's, DVD's it wrote files to a few months back.. Nothing.

Can you see the drive in My Computer? If not, then it sounds like BIOS/Driver issues in that your system doesn't know if there is a drive actually there. Can you provide more details of your laptop and CD drive?

EDIT: Sorry, only just ready your previous post. Sounds like a tricky one to solve - the best suggestion I have would be to run a program called SiSoft Sandra which will actually detect if your CD drive is there or not. Download from here and run the application to give a report. From there you will be able to find out the information of your CD drive.

The other option is to search online on Sony Vaio forums to see if anyone has had any similar issues. Further to this, actually post on them to see what people suggest as they might have more knowledge on the issue and provide a solution for you.

Edited 12 July 2009 by Hitesh

[Gaffer]

Can you see the drive in My Computer? If not, then it sounds like BIOS/Driver issues in that your system doesn't know if there is a drive actually there. Can you provide more details of your laptop and CD drive?

EDIT: Sorry, only just ready your previous post. Sounds like a tricky one to solve - the best suggestion I have would be to run a program called SiSoft Sandra which will actually detect if your CD drive is there or not. Download from here and run the application to give a report. From there you will be able to find out the information of your CD drive.

The other option is to search online on Sony Vaio forums to see if anyone has had any similar issues. Further to this, actually post on them to see what people suggest as they might have more knowledge on the issue and provide a solution for you.

SiSoftware Sandra

SCSI General Properties

Controller : 1

Bus : 1

Target ID : 0

Logical Unit No. : 0

General Capabilities

Channel : Master

Type : ATAPI

Interface : ATA

Removable : Yes

Present : No

Model : PIONEER DVD-RW DVRKD08

Revision : 1.00

Serial Number

ATA/ATAPI Approved Version : 7.33

Cache Size : 64kB

Partitions Information

Partition 0 : MBR FAT32 2GB

Logical Drives

Logical Drive : F:

CD Reader Capabilities

CD-ROM : Yes

CD-R : Yes

CD-RW : Yes

Multi-Session : Yes

Audio Play : Yes

CD Writer Capabilities

CD-R : Yes

CD-RW : Yes

Blu-ray, (HD)DVD Reader Capabilities

DVD-ROM : Yes

DVD-R : Yes

DVD+R : Yes

DVD+RW : Yes

DVD+R DL : Yes

Blu-ray, (HD)DVD Writer Capabilities

DVD-R : Yes

DVD-RW : Yes

Properties

CMD Request Type : Accelerated DRQ

CMD Packet Size : 12

IORDY Support : Yes

IORDY Disableable : Yes

DMA Support : Yes

LBA Support : Yes

Features

S.M.A.R.T Support : Yes

Security Support : No

Power Management Support : No

ACPI Power Management Support : No

Power-up in Standby : No

Packet Command Interface : No

Removable Media : No

Look-Ahead Buffer : No

Write-Back Cache : Yes

Host Protect Area : No

Microcode Update : No

Acoustic Management : No

48-bit LBA : No

Device Config Overlay : No

Active Features

S.M.A.R.T Enabled : No

Write-Back Cache Enabled : No

Transfer Modes Support

Maximum PIO Mode : PIO-4

Maximum DMA MW Mode : MWDMA-2

Maximum UDMA Mode : UltraDMA-2 / ATA33

Transfer Modes Active

Current Active Mode : UltraDMA-2 / ATA33

Performance Tips

Warning 3100 : S.M.A.R.T not enabled; consider enabling for safety.

Warning 3102 : Read/Write cache not enabled. Performance may be low.

Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

not sure what it all means but yeah...

[davieG]

Intermittent Internet connection

I've got Sky broadband and my connection regularly gets disconnected.

I've checked the PCI maintenance facility and un-clicked the power saving option (disconnect from internet when not in use).

Is there anything else that could be set up that's causing this. MrsG using an older slower pc with XP rarely has this problem.

Sometimes it disconnects whilst I'm replying to a post -it's sooooooooooooo annoying.

When I try to reconnect even though it's listed it wont do so and I have to restart my PC and even this doesn't always resolve it. It used to happen quite a bit on my laptop but now I've cleared that down it rarely happens - this mostly a problem, certainly a bigger problem on my new super dooper desktop PC.

[hairy]

Intermittent Internet connection

I've got Sky broadband and my connection regularly gets disconnected.

I've checked the PCI maintenance facility and un-clicked the power saving option (disconnect from internet when not in use).

Is there anything else that could be set up that's causing this. MrsG using an older slower pc with XP rarely has this problem.

Sometimes it disconnects whilst I'm replying to a post -it's sooooooooooooo annoying.

When I try to reconnect even though it's listed it wont do so and I have to restart my PC and even this doesn't always resolve it. It used to happen quite a bit on my laptop but now I've cleared that down it rarely happens - this mostly a problem, certainly a bigger problem on my new super dooper desktop PC.

Get XP

[coale39]

Intermittent Internet connection

I've got Sky broadband and my connection regularly gets disconnected.

I've checked the PCI maintenance facility and un-clicked the power saving option (disconnect from internet when not in use).

Is there anything else that could be set up that's causing this. MrsG using an older slower pc with XP rarely has this problem.

Sometimes it disconnects whilst I'm replying to a post -it's sooooooooooooo annoying.

When I try to reconnect even though it's listed it wont do so and I have to restart my PC and even this doesn't always resolve it. It used to happen quite a bit on my laptop but now I've cleared that down it rarely happens - this mostly a problem, certainly a bigger problem on my new super dooper desktop PC.

Have you tried turning your router off and on? Normally works for me if I have internet trouble. Make sure all your internet setting are set too default etc

[davieG]

Have you tried turning your router off and on? Normally works for me if I have internet trouble. Make sure all your internet setting are set too default etc

Yes, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

The annoying thing is it can happen 3/4 times in a 30 minute spell at the same time MrsG's having no problems at all. It just seems to point to my PC although why I don't know. AsI said it use to happen a lot on my laptop but that's much better now I've stripped it down to the basic system.

[coale39]

Yes, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

The annoying thing is it can happen 3/4 times in a 30 minute spell at the same time MrsG's having no problems at all. It just seems to point to my PC although why I don't know. AsI said it use to happen a lot on my laptop but that's much better now I've stripped it down to the basic system.

Yeah, could be a few things. Might be best to post on like a sky broadband forum or technical vista internet forum.

[davieG]

Yeah, could be a few things. Might be best to post on like a sky broadband forum or technical vista internet forum.

Ok - thanks for the advice.

[DB11]

Intermittent Internet connection

I've got Sky broadband and my connection regularly gets disconnected.

I've checked the PCI maintenance facility and un-clicked the power saving option (disconnect from internet when not in use).

Is there anything else that could be set up that's causing this. MrsG using an older slower pc with XP rarely has this problem.

Sometimes it disconnects whilst I'm replying to a post -it's sooooooooooooo annoying.

When I try to reconnect even though it's listed it wont do so and I have to restart my PC and even this doesn't always resolve it. It used to happen quite a bit on my laptop but now I've cleared that down it rarely happens - this mostly a problem, certainly a bigger problem on my new super dooper desktop PC.

Could be the anti virus you have and you not allowing certain things to have connection to the internet.

[davieG]

Could be the anti virus you have and you not allowing certain things to have connection to the internet.

Could be but I doubt it as it's before it even connects as well.

I can boot up and see it trying to connect but failing. I then click on the connect icon and it says there are connections available - when I check those available mines there, sometimes it's the only one. I then click connect, it tries and fails, diagnosing for errors produces nothing. All this time MrsG is connected.

I then try rebooting both the PC and the connection but it's pot luck as to whether it connects. Then when I do manage it it will disconnect on a regular basis and I start the whole process again.

I have good days - today's relatively good it took me 3 attempts to connect but it's been ok since.

[OriginalRobboFOX]

My 'Word' is jibbing out. If I highlight some text to write over it writes the new text and pushes right in behind the old text and doesn't delete the old text. Have I pressed something by accident???

[DB11]

My 'Word' is jibbing out. If I highlight some text to write over it writes the new text and pushes right in behind the old text and doesn't delete the old text. Have I pressed something by accident???

In Word, is 'ovr' highlighted? If not, either double click it or press 'Insert'.

Also, why don't you just highlight it, then delete it, then type?!