hodgins. I don't know if this will help but..... my friend had an Outlook Express auto update the other day (Friday?) & it sent her PC into a bit of a tizzy. Desktop altered, email settings disappeared, address book gone etc. etc. Rectified itself after about an hour. Have you had an auto update lately?

Optimist

My hero and I have it on my PC.

Off to play thanks

M

OK, I think we need a company website setting up - used to have one but it fell by the wayside- not a lot of info needed on it - who is a cheap and reliable host? Anyone any experiences?

If you need to watch a film in bed to see it the right way up, it must have been taken in bed in the first place :-)

"who is a cheap and reliable host? Anyone any experiences? "

We use Easynet for my business. Never experienced any problems.

But don't most broadband suppliers chuck in a reasonable amout of web hosting as part of the deal.

Surely the real cost is (a) getting the site designed and (b) keeping it up to date.

I've started teaching myself to use Microsoft Frontpage, but my needs are modest as my private site is nothing more than a photo galllery.

By contrast my company site www.rhinegold.co.uk cost a mint to get created and the outgoings are non-stop as we keep it abreast of our new publications.

TP

SC - I use Webfusion, which is part of Pipex:

http://www.webfusion.co.uk/

Not the cheapest but hosted in the UK I've found them to be reliable. Watch for small print when choosing a host such as how much traffic they allow (Webfusion is 15Gb per month on the basic package which should be adequate for most SMEs looking for a basic web presence).

Thanks TP and Kyoto. Will have a look at those - our web presence is to be just that - nothing fancy, not much traffic expected and a few email addresses only.

One of my staff is a computer geek so he will probably set it all up using something like frontpage.

By contrast my company site www.rhinegold.co.uk cost a mint to get created and the outgoings are non-stop as we keep it abreast of our new publications.

TP - that's worrying. No company these days should have to tie themselves into constant outgoings to maintain a website. Sounds like you need a content management system so you can just maintain the site yourself. That way it's no harder than updating a blog once it's set up.

One of my staff is a computer geek so he will probably set it all up using something like frontpage.

SC - if it does end up getting done in Frontpage, make sure it works in Firefox and Opera - Frontpage used to be notorious for creating IE-specific code and I never considered using it. I haven't done much web-design in the last couple of years, so maybe it's better these days.

OK, will bear that in mind. Thnx

K,

"Sounds like you need a content management system so you can just maintain the site yourself. "

To agree we have. I am not saying that the updating costs a mint and a lot of the work we can do ourselves. But, if say we were to start a brand new magazine title, that would be beyond us and we'd need to get the IT people involved.

TP

"Frontpage used to be notorious for creating IE-specific code and I never considered using it. I haven't done much web-design in the last couple of years, so maybe it's better these days. "

I think it is. I use Opera and have never had problems with my FP pages. Firefox I admit I never use.

What the professionals say is that FP creates messy code. I am sure it does.

I found a free program called Nvu that is an FP lookalike and I have got a chum, who feels she cannot justify paying for FP, to maintain her site with Nvu.

TP

just to let you know my problems with bios and cmos having bad checksum and rebooting when it likes was down to the motherboard,
temp a bit high i think 39 C and 50 C under full load,run prime 95 for 20 hours,
it is overclocked to 2400 and is stable,i have a zalman cpu cooler.

steve

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 Laptop and yesterday whilst using it developed a fault.
Firstly the screen froze in the middle of typing an email.
Had to remove the power to close Laptop down.
Rebooted, but took long time to start up.

Left the laptop running, but when I returned - the "Windows XP start up " screen was shown and had frozen. (assume laptop had rebooted itself whatever the reason - Microsoft updates perhaps).

Tried rebooting (after removing power) but just got a blank screen.
Tried another reboot but failed to start.

Symptoms getting now: Switch on - the power LED and Hard Drive LED light up for about 8 seconds and then the Laptop dies.

(Have tried it without floppy disc drive and hard drive fitted, but same conditions on start up - ie tries to start but 8 seconds later packs up).

Any idea what might be causing the problem?

Hi Timeliner how are you?

It sounds to me like a memory or motherboard problem, although it could be the hard disk.

Try removing the power lead and the battery for a few minutes, it sometimes helps.

Can you get into the BIOS setup screen? If so try reloading the defaults, but make a note of your current settings first. Also, is the BIOS clock showing the right time? If not then it could be the BIOS battery.

The other thing to try is removing some of the RAM to see if that makes any difference, but first I would try booting from a CD, either the Win XP installation disk or better still a Live Linux disk. If it runs OK from the CD then it points to your hard disk.

Let me know how you get on.

I am fine (will email you later).

Have tried the powerlead/battery removal - no change.

The screen is blank. Also have tried booting from the Utilities CD which came with the laptop but once again no joy.

When I switch it on, the leds light up, the CD gives the impression of starting, and I can hear the harddrive start up - but the cooling fans at the rear of the case aren't rotating and within 8 seconds it dies.

Will try removing some of the ram later (have to go out shortly!).

Timeliner

Assuming that the cooling fans are not jammed with dust, it points towards a motherboard, graphics or memory fault that is stopping the initial boot routine. Try the memory, as it could be as simple as something not sitting in it's socket correctly. The problem is that if you try poking around inside a laptop, you can do more harm than good.

Removed the memory and swopped the modules over.
That sorted out the problem.

Thanks for your help.

(I have sent an email to you - assuming your email is the same as previous - if you don't receive it let me know on here).

I've added an external drive via a USB port (Seagate. Drive G:) and everything seems to work fine. However my PC won't boot up with it powered. I get an error message after the PC does its Scanning Devices routine "Error Loading OS". If I switch off the ext drive and boot up & then power up the drive everything is fine.