thanks guys - will try those

Yes -1.3C at the moment and dropping, Spaceman. Great day for wildlife today, saw two partridges and a fox too.

BTW have you seen that old woman on Robyns Way who keeps junk in her front garden!

Kayak, you mean my Mum ;-) yes there are 2 strange houses there is also one thats completely overgrown. I have never seen the old woman though. Of course living at the railway end I dont mix with the posh people down that end ;-)

Evening folks. My broadband has been off for the last couple of days - haven't been at home when Pipex telephone support has been available but hoping to do it tomorrow, but has anyone any bright ideas.

I've plugged the modem/router into the master socket with two different microfilters (different makes as well), only one phone connected, and been accessing it wired and wirelessly and i can't get it to connect at all. Also tried with laptop and desktop. Have also tried a friend's spare ADSL modem and that won't connect to broadband either so I have to assume there's a line fault. Can I bypass Pipex and go straight to BT or does it have to go through Pipex first? And any thoughts anyone or am I on the right lines and just have to continue in my quest?

It's like having your legs chopped off when broadband goes :-((

SC, what lights come on on the router? what model is it? it does sound like a faulty line but it could be that your entering the wrong account info or that their is a problem with your account.

Have downloaded new graphics card driver and reloaded - and everything is now fixed - thanks a lot for your help Spacey/Kayak - much appreciated

Spaceman, it's a 3com 3CRWE754G72-A OfficeConnect wireless modem router. The only lights at the moment are the Power and wlan lights, when I use a patch cable to connect a machine the LAN status light comes on, try to connect to the web and nothing happens. I've checked and double checked the account information, done a complete router reset and made sure the correct info is replaced, OK connecting to the Router and bringing up the user menus but the when I click on connect nothing happens! I'm pretty certain it is a line fault but I just wondered if there was something I hadn't done.

SC, when you plug the router/modem into the ADSL connection after a few seconds the sync light should lilght up indicating that the modem has synced the adsl signal on the line, a little while after that the online light should come up indicating that you are logged on to your ISP.

The lan status line you mention just means that an active device is plugged into that port, the WLAN one probably just means that you have configured the wireless.

So It sounds as though you have no ADSL on you line at all. Time to contact your ISP ......

PS when you tried your friends modem did you reconfigure it with your account? if not you would only get the ADSL (often called Line Sync or similar) but not an online (not all have this light) in other words if the account info is wrong it should sync but it wont connect.

OK, thanks Spaceman, I knew that was what the LAN and WLAN status lights meant, but wasn't sure about the other two apart from the fact that they were "something to do with" the ADSL signal. And, yes, I used my account info with my friend's modem. Many thanks (again!) for your trouble.

One of my kid's PC's has a noisy hard drive.

If we get another hard disk, is it possible (and easy) to copy all the files (including the operating system) onto the new drive and then boot the PC from the new drive? Or would the OS need to be clean installed onto the new drive? Would that be what they call "mirroring"? If so, is there fancy software needed to do it or is it drag and drop?

Hilary, you can do waht you say using programs like Ghost but they are not free. The other alternative is clean install.

Noisy hard drive may last a long while before it breaks but then again....

Thanks Spacey. As it happens, I've already got a copy of Ghost .......... I just didn't know what it was for. You live'n'learn.

:o)

Hilary,

Are you sure it's the drive and not the fan? They can sound similar.

Is it practicle to leave it switched on? Often booting up, when the drive is dying, is the time you hit problems. That will give you a chance to copy as much off the machine as is viable.

TP

TP,

It's definitely the drive and not the fan. It's not really causing a problem at the moment and is more an irritation than anything else. I do have access to plenty of hard drives so replacement won't be a problem.

I was really just wondering how easy the software side of things would be.

Hilary,

Firstly, you may want to use this as a chance to move to a more recent version of Windows, if you are not already using it.

Secondly, you will almost certainly need to re-load most software from the release disk, or download, as the actual 'installing' program needs to sort out its drivers, etc. Some of the older simpler progs can simply be copied from drive to drive, but anything newish will need 'installing' in the conventional Windows way.

What I do is to keep a folder called Sources of all the downloaded software I use. With that, as long as I've kept a record of all the relevant passwords, it does not take very long to re-install everything.

I put stuff into this whenever I take a prog from a web site and it is thus all in one place.

With software that needs a disk, such as Microsoft Office, the trick is not to lose the disk - and the box as it will have the serial number on it.

Data, such as .doc and .xls files can all be copied off to another drive and copied back.

Not easy or quick. But not difficult if you are reasobably organised.

And now is the time, whilst the drive is running, to make a list of all the installed progs other than the operating system.

TP


Ghost has a good reputation, but I've no experience of how it works so I can't help here.

That's exactly the route that we don't want to go down, TP, which is why I wondered if there was a way of just copying all the files. My kids run XP Pro anyway together with Office 2k3 and Adobe CS2. Re-installing all that isn't a 5 minute job unfortunately.

Ghost will copy the disk as a whole (an 'image') rather than as individual files, and so you won't need to reinstall etc.

That's brillo, Kayak, thanks. Exactly what I needed to know.

Is there any way I can check the status of my laptop's LAN socket without actually plugging anything into it?

Greystone, No !