Lately my laptop is freezing, ie while I working on it everything stop fuctioning. I have to switch it off at the mains and start again.

Islahi

From the little informatio that you have given, it could be almost anything, but the first and easiest things to check are :-

1. Is the fan(s) running and are the vents clear? Very often, the cooling vents get blocked and clearing them will restore normal operation.

2. You could have a hard disk fault or corruption. Open a command window and run "chkdsk" to check the disk. If it reports one or two errors then run "chkdsk /f" to correct them. If there are loads of errors then back up your data before fixing the errors.

Does the laptop freeze when you are in a particular program? Does it only freeze after significant use? How much free memory have you got? Do the mouse and the caps lock light also stop? If you leave it long enough will it recover?

could somebody please tell me what you can safely use to clean tft flat screens

MD, I breathe heavily onto them, then wipe very gently with a soft paper tissue. After that I breathe again and use a microfibre cloth that you would normally use for coated spectacle or camera lenses. It's probably not the best technique but it's free and easy, and I haven't damaged any of my screens yet.

Chartist and Graeme Alexander - thanks for the printer info. I like the sound of both, and may get the Epson one myself. Chartist, Valueshop looks good.

Thank you optimist. Fans running when frozen.The light goes off. Fan area is not blocked. I have run "chkdsk" and after checking, I got the message saying "convert lost chain to file" Y/N, for which I said yes. There was no message to indicate for the amount of errors. I also tried to run "chkdsk/f", but got the message "file not found". Most of my time I spend on MONEYAM site so I am not sure if the problem is on one site only.I do not have a separte mouse for my laptop, I use the pad.

I have been using these for the past 3 years for my Epsom printer with no problems: www.choicestationary.com

I still don't like to trust giving my credit card details over the net (despite the many assurances) so I like their offer to use the Freephone facility.

"I also tried to run "chkdsk/f", "

Shouldn't there be a space before the /f ?

TP

ISLAHI

You have some disk corruption but that is unlikely to be the problem. You need to run "chkdsk /f" to fix it (note the space before the "/f").

Other things that can be fairly easily checked, and the keyboard and mouse - by plugging in external ones, and memory - Google "memory test" and download a test program. Sometimes laptop memory can become dislodged so it's worth removing it and reinserting.

Have been looking for work at a system that gizes a 3 screen display, running a synchronised display of animation and messages, matching each screen to each other so that the promotional messages are all interlinked. Does anyone know of any software that would allow us to do this ourselves, as the system we've looked at is exceedingly costly.

But of an Odd one:-
Can anyone (in S.London?) read 88MB (yes, Mega) removable HDD Syquest media?
About 10 years ago (before CD-writers were popular), these were about the only practical removable medium for large files.
They were used esp in Publishing; - so maybe there is an old Mac up to the job - and mostly they were an external drive with a SCSI (data) connection.
I have some images on the discs and would like to read them - I suspect it's some scanned image file (when a scanner was a rotary device!) but it's just possible they have been through an early PhotoShop.
I'm reluctant to send them away, since they are easily damaged platters, even though they are in a 5" "Casette" - any suggestions?

SC

I don't know how feasible it would be, but could you put all three sets of messages onto a single powerpoint presentation, and spread it over the 3 screens.

maddoctor:

could somebody please tell me what you can safely use to clean tft flat screens

The only stuff to use is Klear Screen. It's made by Meridrew International in California. It's also excellent for all PDAs, touch screens and so on. I've used it for years. There's even a version branded for Apple Macs called iKlear!

A chap in Harrogate imports it. http://www.screenclean.co.uk

I buy it in California for a quarter of the price that he has to charge for it.

(I was offered the UK distributorship at one point, but it was too much of a sideline for my company.)

MM , thanks , thats what i was looking for,

Optimist, thanks, we'd thought of that, but the problem is we need to have all the displays synchronised with each other, and I'm not sure if that can be done. I wondered if there was any commercial software up to the job.

SC Have you looked at www.maxivista.com?
skg

SC

Are you trying to use 3 seperate computers or one machine with 3 displays? My suggestion assumed the latter in which case you would have one very wide PP presentation split into 3 sections and spread it accross 3 screens.

If you're using three machines, I can think of some possibilities, but how complex will your message be? How often do you want to change it and how accurate must the synchronisation be?

Optimist, One PC, triple head graphics card, and three screens on a totem pole, i.e. one above another, three separate, but linked presentations, i.e. one screen shows something, one has text about it and a third adds to the message - that sort of idea. The presentations must be linked, but split second accuracy isn't important.

skg, I'm really looking for a software solution that allows me to run the presentations on each screen in a linked form. No problem sorting the hardware out - that's the easy bit!!!!

SC

Powerpoint may yet do it, but another way would be to set put a web browser in each display pointing at a different page on a local server.

You would have to create a web page for each different display and then write a script to swap the required files into the pages that your browsers are pointing at. You would need to refresh the pages at regular intervals which on an internal server will produce no more than a slight flicker, or I'm sure that it is possible to write some code into the pages that will refresh only when a file changes.

It sounds complex, but will not involve very much work, and should be achievable with standard Windows software. You would also have the option of putting the web server on a machine in the back office if that is easier to control.

Blimey, that sounds complex!!! Will have a look though, thanks.

SC

It's not as bad as it sounds, but if you need any help then PM me. You would have to get the web pages designed though.