kayak, thanks for responding. I have xp and the virtual mamory says that paging file size for all drives 295mb. As I have no programs except mam terminal running on this computer, I would have thought it was adequate. I am more suspicious of this computer as it has had the hard drive replaced twice in its 18 months and I am not sure that the repairs are... er..what the company who has the contract with comet...done. Just an instinct (but if it is like my trading probably wrong:-)

Jules, click on Change just next to the bit you saw and set the initial size to 300Mb. I think it may be set very low and Windows is having to raise it to 295Mb, hence the message.

I suspect it's more a consequence of the disk drive having been changed but it really doesn't indicate anything wrong with the drive.

I would still add more memory, it's very cheap. A symptom of too little memory is a chattering noise from the disk drive when you do anything in internet explorer. That is because it is using the swap file to supplement the low memory.

Kayak,thanks, you're a darling. I owe you a drink when we meet:-)

Jules, defrag and scandisk the harddrives as well, plus have at least 10% of the c:\ drive, left free for the swap file that windows use to access programs

I've lost my sound on my pc, done all the usually stuff, installed latest drivers and reinstalled windows 98, and windows 98se got the latest directx as well ;-) still nothing works

The sound is on the motherboard AC97' thing

nothing works, H E L P ;-)

Richgit, check that the onboard sound is enabled in the BIOS (normally press DEL on boot). I assume you've installed the motherboard drivers including the sound driver.

Kayak, done that as well, it sometimes works with win98se but win98se does not like my pc anymore and crashes/locks up or just sits there ;-(((

.

RG69, uninstall the drivers, restart the PC let it detect the AC97 and then reinstall the drivers make sure you have the correct ones. Check to make sure the device is working correctly and make sure your speakers are connected and switched on ;-) make sure the right device is selecetd in control panel.

Richgit, might be teaching you to suck eggs here but the motherboard drivers are often in two or more bundles, the basic chipset drivers and the ones for sound, check you have both.

A friend of mine has installed multiple MS fixes to his computers and now can't get his Win 2K machines to connect to the Oracle database via ODBC. He assumes that it is a client side problem as an XP machine works OK.

Has anybody any experience with this sort of system?

O, I might have been able to help sort this a few years ago, but no more, too long since I did any DB/ODBC stuff ;-),

Is the DB local? or is it remote? a lot of the MS fixes are security related (as you know) and it could be a port being closed or something like that.

Sorry i canty help. good luck.

Thanks Spaceman

The DB is on a local server. I agree that it will be something as simple as that but the problem is what :-(

I think that some of the ODBC stuff is not updated via Windows Update, so it might be worth searching for downloads on the Microsoft site if he's not already done this.

Embarrasing question from a computer idiot: how do I check that my machine has a network card? I'm about to register for SDSL wireless broadband (no broadband land link available here) and the providers say it will connect to any computer with a network card and that no router or modem is required.

TOK, have a look at the back and see if you can see a ocket that looks a bit like a telephone connector, its about 1 CM wide. Here is a picture of what they look like (The one on the left) :-

What sort of PC and what operating system do you have?

Hi Spaceman

Can't see anything like your picture at the back of my ageing (but working well) machine.

TOK, as you have belarc have a look at the Communications section, that will tell yo if yo have a network card.

Its is likely that you do not as the is a P3 PC and they were not as common in home pc's then. If this PC is a Desktop it is easy to add a ethernet card if you have a spare slot in the PC, they cost about 10-20 pounds max. But if its a laptop (and it might be) its not so cheap and might not be practical.

As I am sure you know this is a very low spec PC in todays terms and its not worth spending much money on it.

Hi again Spaceman

It's a desktop and from the Belarc survey it doesn't appear that there is a network card.

Time for a new machine, methinks.

TOK, not sure what that eicon device is but it looks like a mixed analogue modem and ISDN adapter. Its vaugly possible that it includes Ethernet but I dont think it does. So it looks as though you need to buy an ethernet card, as above you should be able to get one for about 10-20 or less.

But as you say its probaly worth thinking of a newer PC soonish... ;-)

Good luck.