Computer Problems and\or Advice 2008 to 2011

[Martin Baxendale]

My BT Yahoo broadband is still on the blink. Keep losing the connection, especially at busy times (e.g. wet weekends) for domestic web surfing (all the teenagers at home and on their 'puters). A nice gentleman in a call centre on the sub-continent tried to get me examining my phone sockets to see what they look like! And the other day I had an email from BT Yahoo saying they'd been working to IMPROVE the broadband signal in our area, and asking local customers to use their broadband as much as possible to to help settle the system in and improve your connection - how is that supposed to work?!! I wonder if the people at BT Yahoo just make it all up as they go along.

[David Nicholson]

They probably do! Was the guy called Reg or Dave and professed to know a lot about Coronation Street?

[Martin Baxendale]

And now that it's Saturday night, and lots of people will have gone out, surprise, surprise...the connection is much more reliable, as it was during the week. I'm wondering if the local telephone exchange just isn't coping with the growth in broadband useage.

[Tony Willis]

I was helping a friend with a problem when their BT broadband was not working. On the fourth call to the sub continent after being asked to perform the same checks again and again and being told it was our equipment I came up with the solution.

 You call the cancellation line and amazingly get through to a person in this country.  They then discovered that India had not refreshed its screens and actually the system was down!! It was repaired a couple of hours later.

They only work to a script and always assume it is the users fault.

 I left BT who I have to say I was happy with but got a better package from Virgin and I now phone the same person in India. Virgin are total crap at service,there just isn't any.

My Belkin router was a problem and they are the same.

[David Pilling]

I have demon broadband. Around Xmas it stated to play up, going off completely for a few hours in the evening, some days of the week.

I got through to technical support in a far off land, I was pretty fed up with their response "get a new modem because if we send an engineer it will cost you 130 quid if there's nothing wrong with the line". No explanation, no attempt to understand the problem.

But it worked. My modem had not been updated since 2002, I guess that it was not compatible with newer systems.

I'm not suggesting a new modem would help anyone else, there are loads of reasons why broadband speeds may be poor.

[Martin Baxendale]

Fixed the broadband problem. New modem sorted it. Only had trouble after BT Yahoo made changes to "improve" the local broadband provision, so they must have made changes that weren't compatible with my old modems (wired and wireless) but they said nothing in their email about the changes to suggest that people with older modems might have problems. But then saying that would, I guess, admit the problems were caused by their actions.

[Martin Baxendale]

HELP!!!!  Now my latest problem is that my main work laptop has crashed and I'm getting a black screen message that says Windows can't restart because a system file is missing or corrupted. It suggests using the Windows XP Home Edition installation CD to try to repair the file, by inserting the CD and clicking repair.

But all my computers had windows factory installed, so no installation CDs ! Is my simplest answer to buy the latest Windows XP Home Edition CD I can find on Amazon (i.e. with service pack 3) and use that to repair the system? And will that affect my files and settings? I have a lot of work stuff backed up to an external drive, but not all my latest stuff that I was working on when the laptop crashed.

[Tony Willis]

Martin when they are supplied without back up cd's they usually have a restore partition which can bring the system back up without losing data. I think pressing f8 as the pc starts will bring the option up if it exists

[newstart]

Computer active forums are great at giving advice. Free advice, the magazine itself which the forum is based on is the top selling computer magazine in the UK so they are very good with helping with computer problems. It may be worth stepping outside the SRG forum for this.

Hope that useful see link-http://forums.computeractive.co.uk/ The register link for the forum is underneath the log in box , its with in a short paragraph entitled 'welcome to the forums'. Before clicking register link there is another link in the same paragraph which tells you how to register correctly- The link says 'here' . If you do this as I say it makes it easier to register. They will take about 1 day to confirm your entry into the forum as they need to check you are legitimate.

Hope this is useful for someone even if not for the problems above.

David. 

[Maggi Young]

Reposting this from another thread: Re the viewing of oversized photos on the forum



   
   
Re: Podophyllum flowering
« Reply #39 on: Today at 02:59:18 PM »
   
Q Quote from: Maggi Young on June 03, 2010, 02:38:30 PM
Quote from: Lesley Cox on June 03, 2010, 04:25:37 AM
These are quite magnificent Philip but can you downsize them so that they can be viewed across the page without scrolling and only a bit visisible at a time?
We generally suggest a pic size of around 760 x 500 pixels to maximise viewing ease on the forum but if bigger photos are loaded there is a way to see the whole picture... albeit one which will reduce the text size to miniscule   Roll Eyes Lips sealed
If you have a scroll wheel on your mouse......
Hold down the Ctrl key/button (likely to be found bottom let of your keypad ) and scroll the wheel towards you... the picture will reduce. reverse the action to retrun to "normal" size.

If you do not have a scroll wheel on your mouse......
Hold down the Ctrl button and repeatedly press the minus key (it produces - and _  and is to the right of the 0 key)
and then Ctrl and the plus key (+=) to return.

Still a pfaff but easier than getting to the foot of the page and scrolling for these large pix.

I am reporting on some "interesting results" trying these computer screen size manipulations... different results for Internet Explorer 8.x and Firefox 3.x web browsers. These key-sequences are useful to know about, as a workaround to large photos on screen that require scrolling, but be aware of the caveats.  It is still best that forumists use the SRGC image sizing guidelines.

1.  When resizing using either method to see the entire overly large photo, your browser will keep this "zoom level" permanently, even if closing and then restarting the browser.  The text does indeed get very small; the smaller text-size captions under the photos become too small to read.  And in general, the reduced size text gets light and fuzzy looking. It will be necessary to use the reverse Ctrl button sequence, to get back to your original zoom level.  It is not immediately apparent what the "original" zoom level was if one doesn't pay attention to how many clicks were used to enlarge or zoom in the first place, particularly true if one uses the scroll wheel option where you really can't count clicks.  I don't know if there is a "home" of "back to original" zoom level, one just has to use the Ctrl key sequences to get back to "what looks right".

2.  Different browsers work differently.  In Firefox 3.x, resizing the screen zoom level for the SRGC Forum worked to just apply that change to the SRGC Forum destination.  If I click on the NARGS Forum, or any other destination, the zoom level is unaffected.  In Internet Explorer 8.x, resizing the screen zoom level for the SRGC Forum had the undesirable effect of resizing the zoom level on all "tabs" or destinations; not good.  There might be a setting for controlling how separate "tabs" in Internet Explorer behave, but this appears to be the "default" behavior.

So, if you use these Ctrl key sequences, be careful... count the number of clicks used to change the display size to be able to reverse the setting afterward, or make a mental note of how the SRCG Forum looks at its original size, so that you can get back to that size after viewing the large images.  If you use different web browsers, or even different versions of the two browsers I mention, who knows what the effects might be.

By the way Maggi, I had no idea about what "pfaff" meant.  It appears to be British slang, and an alternate spelling for "faff". Huh Roll Eyes

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pfaff
(British, slang) Alternative spelling of faff.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/faff

perhaps more universally used:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/kludge
« Last Edit: Today at 03:04:18 PM by TheOnionMan »

Hope this is useful to some re outsize pix but, the main instruction remains, please keep photos to a maximum of 760 pixels wide for the forum!!

[David Pilling]

In IE8 View->Zoom->100% to get back to normality.

The view menu can also be brought up with ALT+V

[David Nicholson]

Anyone have an HP printer that uses a Code 363 black ink cartridge? I've bought the wrong one for my printer (Mrs N is most displeased as I took it out of the packaging and PC World will not take it back   ) So, I have one available, it cost me £14.96 but if anyone can make use of it for a tenner I'll pay the  postage.

[David Nicholson]

Not a problem any longer. The said Mrs N took it back to PC World and refused to leave the shop until they replaced it with the correct cartridge. Formidable woman is Mrs N where money is concerned

[ranunculus]

Not a problem any longer. The said Mrs N took it back to PC World and refused to leave the shop until they replaced it with the correct cartridge. Formidable woman is Mrs N where money is concerned

So glad I don't owe her anything, David ... I have enough problems with my own little finance officer!!!   

[David Nicholson]

Not a problem any longer. The said Mrs N took it back to PC World and refused to leave the shop until they replaced it with the correct cartridge. Formidable woman is Mrs N where money is concerned

So glad I don't owe her anything, David ... I have enough problems with my own little finance officer!!!   

 

Cliff, aren't we lucky blokes