TP, SC. Thank you both!

I have just done a re-load and I have lost my pound and 'at' sign. How do i get my keyboard back to what it was? I have xp home edition.
Thanks, in anticipation.

Help wanted for a friend of mine in oz , she's blond.

That adobe sight you sent me I did access that.before but try to download it, and it says' This url already exists' but try finding it!!! impossible .In the programes , I have adobe acrobat reader 4.0 when I try to get into it cannot. If I try to download the newer version ,cannot ,and if I try to uninstall it , it wont let, me saying parts of this program do not exist so cannot install. feel like I am going crazy.

Wondering if anyone can give me some advice. Had my laptop for about a year, seems to be getting abit slow, is there any bits of software(pitstop is one I looked at) thats good at cleaning all the crap out or do I need to take it to have it done professionally?

Poldark:

In control panel, click on: "Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options"

then "Regional and language options", and select "English (United Kingdom)" and click "OK"

That should give you back your missing symbols.

We're intending to take the printers off the individual PC's and put them straight onto the network via an ethernet switch.

We've got all the bits and bobs that are needed and will look to sort it out over the next couple of days, but is it as simple as it sounds or is it likely to be fraught with problems? Will the printers be automatically detected and assigned IP addresses or will they need to be manually assigned? Presumably printer drivers will need to be installed on each PC?

Seymoor Clearly have you not tried AVG, I use it and many others I know, free and reliable, been using it for two years now.

Bones - "Basically, I need a mickey mouse guide to encrypting my network where I don't end up locking myself out of it from any computer I use!"

1. Put a Unique SSID (I.e. the name of your Wireless Network should not be WLAN or any other default setting).).

2. Switch On the MAC Filter and enter the MACs of your laptop and PC. This will only allow your laptop/PC to connect to the system.

That's probably enough to keep out all but a determined hacker.

Bones in addition to bb excelent suggestions, I would also:

Change the router default password.
Use WPA-PSK encryption instead of WEP if available.
Stop the router broadcasting the SSID

Unfortunately the way you do this depends on the router/AP you have.

It should work easily Hilary, the print server ('the internet switch') will ask whatever is allocating addresses on your network (probably your router) for IP addresses. On each PC you will need to install each network printer (install printer will show an option to look on the network) and if any drivers are needed they will be loaded automatically.

Seymore. thanks for the help with keyboard, much apreciated.
Great thtread this.
poldark

Poldark,

Do you live in Cornwall or are you a dark haired man from Poland, LOL

Thanks, K. We're just waiting for a new printer table to arrive and then we're going to give it a go.

"...new printer table"

Oooooh!

:-)

Brianboru, Spaceman

Many thanks for the suggestions of what I should do to encrypt the network. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I have grasped the "how to" as opposed to the "what to" do :)

My router is a Netgear DG834GT.

Ta.

Bones:

Can you login to your router?

Browse to http://192.168.0.1

Default username/password is admin/admin

If you get past that, the rest is pretty straightforward, just browse the items on the left window of the screen. Help appears for each in the right window.

It is advisable to restrict wireless access to your router by both hardware address of your wirless laptop (MAC address) and encryption (using a secret key to encrypt data transmitted wirelessly).

Netgear routers make the hardware address restriction easy, by showing you which devices are connected and then allowing you to switch on restriction for those devices only.

Wondered if anyone can help,which key do you press when restarting PC to go into safe mode. Need to do some housekeeping.

F8

Thanks MM. That makes sorting out the other suggestions a lot easier. The one thing I'm unsure of now is how to find out the MAC addresses of my machines. No doubt there's a simple way but please enlighten me. Searches in Windows throw up horrible things like DOS commands which I won't touch :)

The network devices usually have the MAC addresses on a sticker at the back or underneath, otherwise you usually have to run a DOS command Windows key+R then 'cmd' to open a DOS window.