Being Microsoft it is probably "afflictions" :-)

Re disabling useless services, there was a thorough guide at Black Viper's site (which now seems to have disappeared), there's a copy of his site here:

WinXP services

shano1

Thanks for that and duly noted. :-)

Hi I was wondering if anybody new of some sort of program that would enable me to open multiple windows to view at the same time without having to pay huge amounts of money.

S A W,take a look at MAM Terminal it may be what you are looking for !!!

Mega...

Internet explorer 7 Open as many tabs as you want

I have recently changed my Laptop from a Dell Inspiron to a Sony Vaio A517M. Whilst away I use GPRS connectivity through a Sony Ericsson K750i. This worked fine with the Dell, but hangs with the Sony. It does connect, but then stops downloading data. I believe this may be a conflict issue between the internal Modem and the mobile Data Modem. problem is, is that the PC doesn't recognise the conflict. Bluetooth may also be interfering somewhere. I did find a 3G website where similar problems have been reported, where it is suggested to uninstall the modems and then re-detect, idea being that the mobile modem is detected first and the conflict problem doesn't arise. I have tried this approach, but the internal modem is always detected first. Have also tried manually assigning the COM ports, but again no joy.

Grateful for any suggestions. Sony were unable to help, what's that all about?!

Pth

USB external hard disc.
one has 300GB with 8MB buffer the other 320GB with 2MB buffer.
I intend to use for\back ups mainly, will I notice the diference in buffer size or unlikly.
Thanks in advance for replys.
Graeme.

ptholden I would try to disable the modem totally, in the firmware options perhaps? I don't know the laptop.

Graeme, if you're mainly doing backups (writing) I wouldn't have thought you would notice the difference in buffer size, using it as an active disk yes.

As it is a buffer and not a cache you may well notice the difference. If you are doing backups then it will probably be bulk writing. The buffer should keep it going faster.

I have often wondered about these external disks in terms of fragmentation. You may notice that the backups take longer as time goes on. It will be interesting to hear what your experience is.

If it does slow up then you could reformat the drive or defragment it.

Graeme, this is one of those areas where you have to look for the smallest pipe by which I mean what is the bottleneck. In your case you are using USB and that may well be slower than anything else, certainly if its USB1 it will be. My experience with USB hard drives (I have a 300MB and a 100MB one) drives is that they are fairly slow but very useful, if your concerned about performance I would suggest that you do a short test (say copy 100MB to each) and see how long it takes, it may not make much difference !

Re fragmentation if you fill the drives right up and then deleted files then fill them up again and do this sort of thing a lot then you may get a lot of fragmentation and this will slow the drives down a lot. However if the drives are not very full then this probably wont be a big problem.

External USB disk drives can reach speeds of around 40MBytes/s or 320Mbits/s for bulk transfer on USB 2.0 with nothing else is sharing the bus.

I have just found a 320GB with 8MB Toahiba for 109-99 at PC world.
This seems the best of both worlds so will go there tomorrow to check it out.
Thanks for the help. Graeme.

graeme,
have a look at www.overclockers.co.uk
i have ordered loads from here and found them very good and helpfull,

steve

I'm running WIN 98 and received an MS Critical Update message yesterday. After downloading the update, IE 6 started to malfunction in that emails could not be stored and the error message was something like "Store file is damaged, run Scandisk" Well I defragged, ran IE Repair Tool, File Checker and Scandisk. No problems were indicated but on restart my machine defaulted to Safe Mode and I can't seem to get out of Safe Mode. Any suggestions please?

Emails now working OK - downloading and saving - but I'm still stuck in wretched Safe Mode.

F8 brings up the choice menu, No 1 Normal Start Up is highlighted but it opens up in Safe Mode??????????

Still in Safe Mode. Just found this message on my Desktop. Has this anything to do with it?

An unexpected exception has been detected in native code outside the VM.
Unexpected Signal : EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) occurred at PC=0x6E3B524
Function=[Unknown.]
Library=(N/A)

NOTE: We are unable to locate the function name symbol for the error
just occurred. Please refer to release documentation for possible
reason and solutions.


Current Java thread:
at sun.java2d.loops.Blit.Blit(Native Method)
at sun.java2d.pipe.DrawImage.blitSurfaceData(Unknown Source)
at sun.java2d.pipe.DrawImage.renderSurfaceData(Unknown Source)
at sun.java2d.pipe.DrawImage.copyImage(Unknown Source)
at sun.java2d.pipe.DrawImage.copyImage(Unknown Source)
at sun.java2d.pipe.DrawImage.copyImage(Unknown Source)
at sun.java2d.SunGraphics2D.drawImage(Unknown Source)
at sun.awt.image.ImageRepresentation.drawToBufImage(Unknown Source)
at sun.java2d.pipe.DrawImage.copyImage(Unknown Source)
at sun.java2d.SunGraphics2D.drawImage(Unknown Source)
at sun.java2d.SunGraphics2D.drawImage(Unknown Source)
at com.deltastream.applet.stock.c.a(Unknown Source)
at a.a.a.a.z.a(Unknown Source)
at a.a.a.a.z.a(Unknown Source)
at a.a.a.a.z.paint(Unknown Source)
at sun.awt.RepaintArea.paint(Unknown Source)
at sun.awt.windows.WComponentPeer.handleEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForHierarchy(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(Unknown Source)

Dynamic libraries:
0x69000000 - 0x6900E000 C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MACROMED\COMMON\SWSUPPORT.DLL

Heap at VM Abort:
Heap
def new generation total 576K, used 95K [0x1a480000, 0x1a520000, 0x1abe0000)
eden space 512K, 18% used [0x1a480000, 0x1a497c40, 0x1a500000)
from space 64K, 0% used [0x1a500000, 0x1a500000, 0x1a510000)
to space 64K, 0% used [0x1a510000, 0x1a510000, 0x1a520000)
tenured generation total 1408K, used 1256K [0x1abe0000, 0x1ad40000, 0x20480000)
the space 1408K, 89% used [0x1abe0000, 0x1ad1a368, 0x1ad1a400, 0x1ad40000)
compacting perm gen total 4864K, used 4781K [0x20480000, 0x20940000, 0x24480000)
the space 4864K, 98% used [0x20480000, 0x2092b508, 0x2092b600, 0x20940000)

Local Time = Thu Apr 13 07:57:57 2006
Elapsed Time = 576
#
# The exception above was detected in native code outside the VM
#
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (1.4.2_06-b03 mixed mode)
#

Just ran Registry Mechanic. Showed one problem on a deep can but then the application froze so I couldn't do anything about it.

Still marooned in Safe Mode. Help!

TOK, this is a difficult one to work out remotely hower I think you should do a virus scan. I suggest that you do an online virus scan Panda Activescan is fairly good

Panda Activescan

Post back here when complete !

Hi Spaceman - Did an AVG virus scan yesterday and it found SQL SSRP Slammer which it dealt with (although I suspect it had already been dealt with and was languishing in the AVG virus vault).

Just noticed that although the screen is in Safe Mode the corner Safe Mode captions are not been displayed.