Fundamentalist

It appears that the MS program has a choice of writing to a floppy of saving a CD image. Which are you trying to do?

Trying to save to cd at which point is says it is unable to write

You have to save the image to disk, which will be a file with a .ISO extension and then use a CDROM burning program such as Nero to burn the image to CD. If you have a floppy drive then it's easier to use that.

Thanks optimistic

will have to take another look at it in the morning

Anyone. I have Norton Anti-Virus ready to load onto my PC. I asked cmc whether it would affect their Marketmaker platform. Their reply was: 'No problem. Just disable it before you log onto Marketmaker!'

No I may have misheard. But that seems a strange reply. Has anyone else got this combination? Will it cause problems with cmc, E*Trade, or GNI?

I use NAV and have no problem with those packages. I think you would have to make some adjustments to Norton Internet security if you use it, as that incorporates a firewall.

Maggot, I think it's more likely to be a problem with Norton Internet Security than with NAV. Anyway, I eventually found you have to disable NIS then install (or run) MarketMaker, then whilst MM is running you re-enable NIS. Mine works fine now.

Thanks, both.

.solved

Limpy

The first thing to check are the internet explorer connection settings.

In IE click Tools-Internet Options then the Connections tab. Make sure the Never dial a connection option is selected. Next, click on the LAN Settings button and make sure that the Automatically detect settings box is checked and the Use a proxy server... is unchecked.

When I shut down cmc it usually (not always) closes down my computer. And I am beginning to suspect that when it is running it affects other sites - today it started going slow and both GNI and E*Trade were cut off, even though I have a router which leaves the broadband running non-stop (that's what I have been told). Money am was also affected - all around the time of the auction. Has anyone else noticed this? Or is it perhaps a problem with my BT line?

maggott, if its shutting down your PC that is certainly not normal and does imply a problem. Its difficult to be sure what the problem is but I would want to check the RAM and make sure there isnt a problem there. This is one that could be a bit difficult to pin down ! it could be hardware or software. As you were told the router should keep the broadband link up even when the PC (or PC's) are switched off.

Slowness is also one of those things thats hard to pin down, it could be caused by any number of things!

What PC operating system are you using and what sort of router? do you get any error messages?

Maggot,
I think you have 3 or 4 problems here.

1. when you shut down cmc it absolutely should not shut down your pc. This suggest big problems. Either your cmc software is corrupt or more likely your windows software is. First uninstall cmc through add/remove software in control panel then reistall it. If this doesn't work your choice is either to live with the problem or reinstall windows.

2. I notice you've been having problems with your broadband for days with it dropping the line and you have resolved by getting this router. I assume you have multiple pc's on your network. The fact that it failed at one of the busiest times of the day points to me to that this is when there was maximum load on your pc and your telephone line. Get your phone line checked. Just phone BT from the number in the phone directory and within half an hour they will tell you whether there is a fault on the line. It'a a free service. Get worried if they tell you there is a fault though. I had a fault on my isdn line which I reported in May and it got fixed yesterday.

3. I'm sure cmc can slow down your computer at critical times. At one point I was pretty sure that they did it deliberately when they saw a massive order flow and didn't know what to do. I don't mean here that they simply hold the tickets - your pc performance actually collapses. It also appears that when this happens things don't go back to normal unless you log out of cmc and then log back in again. I've seen this happen on a regular basis over the last 3 years and it's not a coincidence that it happens at busy times although your pc is obviously dealing with lots of streaming data at that point.

4. I wonder finally whether the slowness is linked to running too much applications and your pc can't cope and you are short of ram. If your CTRL-alt-del all at the same time and select task manager and the performance tab you can see your cpu and ram usage. If your cpu is running at 100% all the time you need to resolve this - if your ram is close to your limit this could be the problem.


I suspect you will find that your cpu and ram usage are running at acceptable values most of the day but when things start getting busy your pc can't cope. I suspect you are also going to say that you aren't running any applications now that you weren't running a year ago so why the problem? The answer to this is quite amazing and one that I have had catergorically denied to me by advfn but I've proved to myself they don't understand their own software.

2 years ago the adverts on bb sites were simple gif's or jpeg's which once you had downloaded them used a neglible amount of ram and cpu time. Now some of them are flash and are like small movies and coninually loop the movie. Some of thse use a disgusting amount of cpu and ram. The once for IG index on advfn L2 is the worst. If you get this one your cpu time goes ballistic.

A demonstration:
Get your task manager running on the performance tab as above with no applications or internet windows running (not even this one - print if off if you need to). On my pc with no windows open it shows 0% cpu and about 90000 ram. Then open one internet explorer window and got to www.advfn.com. YOu will see your cpu time start shooting up and down. This is all the adverts running these flash movies. As you can see they are running them on about a 5 second loop.
Imagine how much work your pc is having to do which it didn't do 2 years ago. If you get the IG index advert on advfn you can kiss goodbye to any sort of decent pc performance if your pc is near it's limit.

Solutions.
1. Buy a faster pc
2. Pay not to receive adverts from advfn
3. Right click of the offending advert and unclick the loop option if available.
4. Have a moan about Bullie about charging for removing adverts. This is becoming a problem here too.

Check out the problem the barclays advert is causing here as follows:
load stockwatch and watch the cpu time. When you are familiar with the cpu trace click refresh and you will get a different advert. Most of them don't appreciably use any cpu time. Keep going until you get to the barclays one. On running this my cpu is now at abut 15-20%. At least here the Barclays adverts only appears to loop once or twice so after that your pc goes back to normal. At Advfn they appear to loop all day as far as I can tell.

The problem is only going to get worse.

Maggot

When it closed your computer does it close down normally or blue screen/restart?

Assuming it is the latter, I think it more likely to be faulty hardware than you are overloading the computer. As Spaceman says, memory is the first suspect, download a decent memory checker and run that. The other thing to check is that all of the fans are working properly.

Spaceman/CC/Optimist. Thank you very much indeed for those comments. I will have a job assimilating them all, but I will print them out and my computer man John (I am a computer idiot) will come down whenever I wish, to go through them. He is a bit baffled, and has suggested, as CC said, that I contact BT. I did this once before and they said there was a problem and fixed it within two days, when everything was much better. John (who built the computer) also suggested that perhaps there was a problem with cmc's software. As you say, I have a second computer, now via the router, and have to load cmc onto it in the next few days, so that should show up whether it's a fault on my windows software or not, and whether I should re-load the software. Although to be honest I can live with it as it is. I should add that things have been much worse since cmc updated the Marketmaker platform with the new screens etc, and they sometimes load much more slowly than they used to - but not always. Occasionally it takes only seconds, other time it takes minutes.

Sometimes I get the blue screen when cmc closes the computer down, and I always get a 'serious error' message which has also baffled John, and in fact this has happened when he was here and he did all the checks he thought might find any problem, which showed that the voltage was a bit low (11.67 or so) and he has got a new bit for the computer. The fans and temperature are OK.

He pointed out that I am getting only 512 kbps on broadband instead of 1mb, and I contacted AOL who said my area is not enabled for 1mb. But that I might get it by June 28 this year... we shall see. John says that's a load of b*****s, as he has 1 mb , and will check with another computer in the same road as I live in to see what they get.

I don't understand much, but the main computer has 1024 mb RAM, which I think is quite good..

Before I had the router I was often cut off every few minutes via AOL, particularly around 3.45 pm and particularly on a Thursday. This leads me to that something outside might be influencing it. Yesterday (using the router) cmc kept clicking off (prices all go green), and E*Trade, GNI and even Money am went down, all except GNI reconnecting within 30 seconds without my doing anything. But there's no discernable pattern to this yet. And the previous day (my first using the router) it didn't happen at all.

I don't look at ADVFN normally, but will do a check with John as you suggested, CC, to see what happens. He will come down anytime I ask. He's a computer pro and I pay him pro money. The main computer and three screens and bits and pieces cost over 4,000. I know that means nothing, but he has set everything up, and done as many checks as he can, to ensure I need to do as little as possible. And I am quite happy to pay him - it's worth it to me. At 62 I am far too old to assimilate anything more than very basic info - trading is far easier.

Thanks again all for your help. I will let you know how I get on. And I will look at the Ctrl-alt-del, CC, to see what I am using. I think John has had a look and said it was OK.

Tim. I will ring about another Swaffham meet - or you might like to come over and see my set-up, but it's not as grand as Ruth's, and there are no dogs (except the wife).

edit. Have just done a broadband check-up from the Moneyam site and got the reply: 'Unfortunately, we have been unable to verify serviceability for the postcode and telephone number you provided. We would recommend contacting BT on 0800 800 151 and asking them to do a line check for you.'

bloody hell CC ,I tried your check on task manager-WOW,and that was just this
web-site, I hadn`t realised how much power they sap from us , the "free"
info.doesn`t come cheap then, to add an oxymoron.,


ps I pay for mine and don`t expect this to happen.

To be fair to moneyam sequestor they don't loop the adverts all day like advfn do.
They may take a chunk of processor power for a while but it is only 30 seconds or so and I think that's not unreasonable for free (except I pay of course - lol).
It's advfn that are the real offendors as they take the processing power forever until you close the internet explorer window. I can see the situation just getting worse and worse though.
I've had to pay now to not receive the advfn adverts.

Very interesting stuff, you guys.

Thankyou for enlightening us, CC

Can somebody tell me please how to get rid of Windows Messenger.

I run XP Pro and, every time that I start Outlook Express, Windows Messenger opens. I've removed it from the "Add/Remove Windows Components" and stopped it from starting using the "Tools" in Outlook Express but the blasted thing is still there.

Hilary,
If you go into Messenger tools, options, general and unckeck "Automatically run messenger" in the sign in section.

skg