TP,
thank you had brief look, will peruse it again tomorrow.

I am coming down on the side of datacard and hopefully buying local simms to go in it.

But isn't it b Stupid when the majority of Mobile internet companies are multinational and that when one travels 22 miles across a border you have to change systems and charges and billings and get robbed when you do it.

Funny old world.

The caravan is driven by a donkey so it would be good to have the company of a horse or two.

Fred

If it's any use to you, today I ran a monitor of around 80 stocks, 5 L2 tabs, a couple of charts, BB on a 5 min refresh and CMC Marketmaker. My data download was approx 15MB/Hr, less than that mid morning till 2, more in the afternoon.

I hope that helps you to estimate your usage.

Optimist, Thank you. I think it is time to get off my arse and do something positive.

Fred,

Keep us posted as to what you decide, please.

TP

brianboru/Optimist
Fixed!!!
No it would not boot from CD on either ide channel.
Went back into the reg (have to confess also went to the MSKB and found your suggestion there too) and deleted all instances of Upper and lower filters on the 3 duplications of the Class in other control sets as well.
Many thanks

rpaco

I'm glad that you have managed to fix it. However, if it will not boot from a CD, there must still be a problem with your hardware as registry changes will not effect boot behaviour.

Some of the characters on my keyboard have faded completely. Anybody know of a UK source that supplies keyboard stickers/overlays?

Thanks.

Got a big prob with my main laptop.... Lots of blue screens and now settled with KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR.

Can't get a disk scan to complete and a re-boot just ends in a system dump. A safe mode re-start won't complete either....

Any ideas or advice??

Greystone

It sounds like serious disk problems to me. You may be able to fix it by booting from the installation disk and selecting the repair console. This requires very expert knowledge to do very much with, but one command that you can easily use if chkdsk.

Use it with the /? switch initially to find out what options are availible. I seem to recall that it is slightly different from the version built into XP.

A better way would be to use an external USB disk housing or an adatpter to mount the disk on another XP machine. Then you could copy most or all of the disk before trying to fix it. I've used this method to completely recover my data and clone a new disk.

Whatever you do, you may as well order a new hard drive as you won't want to trust your current one again.

Best of luck.

Fred,

I had serious grief trying to get the Vodafone Datacard to work with the SFR La Carte prepaid SIM despite the box of the SIM saying that it was 2G and 3G compatible. I opted eventually for a local cyber cafe at 5/hour.

I also had a Netgear RangeMax Wireless PC card in the hope that one of my neighbours had an insecure network that I could hook onto. Unfortunately they didn't (although one of my neighbours at home has!). There was a WiFi hotspot at the local yacht club which charged 9 for 2 hours. I decided not to use it (car parking was a bit of a pain) in favour of the aforementioned cyber cafe, but the advantage would have been that I could have used the programs on my laptop.

I really am of the opinion that the WiFi hotspot would be the best option in future. Doc's link to WiFi hotspots in an earlier post unfortunately seems to be quite out of date.

Hilary:

Sorry about the link to the out of date WiFi website.

klal:

Replacing worn out keys on a keyboard is a job probably not worth even messing about these days:-

14.99 Wireless Keyboard - 3yr Warranty

4.99 Matching Optical Mouse - 3yr Warranty

Klal

If you go the wireless route and have a laptop, make sure that they have USB connectors. Some wireless keyboard/mouse kits have a base unit with two PS2 plugs. Most laptops have at most one PS2 socket, and although you can buy a 2 into one connector, these can be troublesome to use.

There's no need to apologise, Doc.

It might have been harsh of me to suggest that the JiWire link was out of date. More accurately, I had a problem with the way in which it searched for hotspots as there seems to be a problem with the indexing of their database. For example, when I entered the name of the town that I was staying, it returned only 1 result. I then entered the post code relating to that town and it returned 5 results, all of which had the same town name within their address. There's clearly a problem somewhere.

Photomad/The Publisher/et al

Regarding earlier references to overheating, I remove the fan cover and clear out the dust from the fan every weekend and find it has helped. I also created a platform to sit the laptop on to allow more air to circulate around it, which also seems to have made things more stable...

Thanks for all the advice I have received here. A great thread to visit in a crisis.

G.

DocProc / Optimist, thanks for the tips. Might be a good time to replace the keyboard - didn't like it too much anyway!

Greystone, my PC tends to overheat too (too many apps!). Dust does seem to be the problem and I find myself having to open up the covers and blow it all away.

Apart from that, I use a utility called CpuIdle that lowers the CPU temperature by disabling it when not needed. It does seem to work as I have seen the temperature come down to more acceptable levels.

CpuIdle
Motherboard Monitor

Re:My more acute disk problem - Windows XP know tells me that this file is either missing or currupt :- /system32/ntoskrnl.exe

(Should be backslashes but I can't find the key on this IBM thingy...)

Any ideas on how I can recover that file?

Klal

Is your computer a desktop? If it is the it may well be worth replacing the fan with a better one. There is a trade off between noise and cooling but many manufacturers put really cheap ones in that are not up to the job. Get one with a heavy heatsink and a reasonable size fan. The other thing worth fitting is an extra case fan these tend to be quieter and are very cheap (as are standard keyboards). Check out your local Maplins.

Greystone

I think that error message is a symptom of your corrupted disk. You could replace the file but then it would most likely have problems with another one.

You need to run Chkdsk on the entire disc. Assuming that you are using the NTFS file system, this has an excellent chance of fixing it for the time being or at least long enough for you to clone the disc. However, this process is not without risk, the safe thing to do is mount the disc as a secondary on another machine, copy your data and then try to sort the disc.

Email me if you need any detailed help.

Edit I would stop trying to boot from that disk as it could damage it further.

Greystone - if the previous help from optomist didn't work and assuming you're using xp try the following:

1/ Place your Windows XP CD into your CD-ROM and Reboot your PC

2/ XP's setup program will automatically start and files will be loaded to memory

3/When you reach the Welcome to Setup screen choose the Repair option by pressing R

4/ This will open the Recovery Console

4/ The list of Windows installations will appear

5/ If you only have one installation on your PC you need to press the number which is relevant to your installations location. This, obviously will typically be 1

6/ You now need to enter your Administrator password to gain access. If you are using Windows XP Home edition the administrator password is blank by default so simply press Enter

7/ At the command prompt change to the drive letter that contains your CD

8/ Next type: cd i386

9/ The directory should now change to the i386 directory

10/At the command prompt you now need to type: expand ntkrnlmp.ex_C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe

11/The relevant file should now be expanded and copies to the windows\system32 directory of your C:\ drive

12/ Finally, remove the Windows XP cd from your CD-ROM and, at the command prompt type: Exit


There's also a link here for another way. I've never got round to trying it yet but you may experiment for us all ;-)
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=313

G

But please run chkdsk first!

Brian

Thanks for the link.

Hi brianboru,

Many thanks for that. I've saved it for future reference...

My PC is a Toshiba Satellite and the only CDs I can find appropriate are two "recovery CDs". Unfortunately, the system doesn't seem to recognise them as bootable, so keeps trying from the hard disk.

Looks as though I'm stumped. I guess the PC was due for replacement soon anyway and I do have most of the files I need from the disk stored elsewhere.

Mrs.G. will be unhappy that I won't be able to recover the digital camera pics which I never got round to saving, so that will probably cost me dearer than the PC will....

Best regards,

G.

Edit: Optimist - A long way from getting far enough to run chkdsk sadly