Hi Optimist - yes everything boots up & runs ok - just the 2 DVD drives. Surprising as it seems, there are no spare power leads - the only power leads, (other than the one feeding the DVDs), are the ones for the mainboard, sata drives, etc - none of them would of course fit the DVD drives

Looking at the DVD power feeds - how are these set up - are they 2 connectors daisy chained together or separate ones? In disconnecting the power you may have dislodged one of the wires that go into the plastic power connector.

a cheap case fan that connects to the IDE drive power connector may be a useful test tool. I've got one that has a female and male connection so you don't loose a drive power cable on just the fan.

Are you positive the drives worked immediately before?
Is the PSU wattage man enough for the job - you mention additional and usb drives.
what happens if you disconnect power to all but the essential devices?
hidden in the bios menus may be power outputs for various voltage levels - do these look to be within 5 percent of the stated values.

ChuffChuffChaser

I see your problem. A new PSU may well be your best bet, but assuming it is a standard sized one, get one with plenty of leads and power to spare.

If you can get a new PSU from a shop, take the DVD drive with you and get them to hook it up to another machine.

Huxley - 3 connectors daisy chained - only 2 of which are used. The drives worked ok before I started "pratting" about :-((

Could be the psu is not powerful enough - I have 1 extra internal & 2 extra external drives (1 of which is rarely turned on & was off at the time).

Optimist - I will try the spare DVD (which also would not power up) on my wife's machine see how it goes.

Thank you again for your interest & response & similar thanks to you Huxley

Broadband speed query please.
I have just had a BT chappie round to test my line 'n stuff because of problems with BT Broadband. I am convinced it's them mainly but I'll let that pass for now.

The fault had cleared itself however he still came because, I think, I'm getting a bit uppity with them (5 faults in 9 months - less than 0.5 meg - which then clears itself after 4 or 5 days). At my base socket he was receiving a bit over 5meg. My upstairs PC only gets 3.5 meg at best. He said that my internal wiring was suspect. It is over 20 years old, routed around the front of the house, trapped between new plastic facia and brick wall, teed wrongly etc, etc.
My first thought was to re-run internal cable to my upstairs office but then thought that "wireless" would be easier option.

I have a wireless router. I would need a card for my PC.

Questions; I've read on here that wireless is not as good as hard wiring (I use an ethernet lead at the moment). However in this case, my office is directly above the main socket so no brick walls, could wireless, with my router down there, be better ?
Which card for my PC? What to look for?
As always, thanks in advance.

I use a Netgear router and USB WiFi adapters on the slave PCs. I get 108Mbs internally between the router and the WiFi adapters. The real speed is just determined by the connection to my ISP. This is supposed to be 18Mbs, but I get around 12Mbs usually. As the end user it is unlikely that you see a difference between wired and Wifi if the WiFi works alright in your physica room layout.

Bolshi,

I went down the home socket route. Here are some alternatives

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/default_ShopGroup.asp?ShopGroupID=61

And this looks like a good idea.

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopSearch.asp?CategoryID=336

My problem is caused by living in a Victorian flat with thick walls. WiFi will hardly go from room to room - but the socket system (with Wifi as well) is brilliant.

TP

Bolshi, there are actually a number of options:

Note that it is not sufficient just to plug into the master socket -- you need to disconnect the internal wiring at the master socket and reconnect it after the ADSL splitter, but of course you don't then need filters on any other sockets. This is what the engineer would have done when he pronounced the master socket better. This applies to all the options below.

1. Get BT to relocate the master socket to near your computer. This is probably the best technically unless you want wireless access in other rooms. BT charge for this, I think 30-50 or so. You can also do it yourself but it is illegal to do so.

2. Put the router downstairs and run a 100Mbps Ethernet cable up to your office (subject to any uppety wife). Probably next best technically.

3. You can try leaving everything as it is but disconnecting the bell wire in each socket. This is the third wire in a telephone cable, it is not normally needed by modern phones and has a tendency to act as an aerial picking up AM transmissions which interfere with ADSL.

4. Probably the worst solution technically is the wireless router. Personally I can readily tell the difference between a wired and fixed connection while browsing (although both are acceptable). Points to note are that the nominal speed is the total bandwidth, not in each direction, and will never be attained. So even a router claiming 108Mbps does not do more than 20-30Mbps in terms of throughput. Get a PC card of the same make as the router and if you use USB ensure that both computer and card are using the more modern USB 2.0, otherwise that will limit your bandwidth.

Phew! That's given me some things to ponder. Many thanks everyone.

"subject to any uppety wife"? Love it :-)

Help required please,i use one pc for a small business project which has a email address setup for say sales@****.co.uk,is it possible to add another email address to OE from a different host company like admin@****.com,so that i can keep 2 sales email address on the same computer,is it a case of just adding it in the setup????

Rick....

It is 'tools', 'accounts', 'mail', 'add'

Mega Bucks

You should be able to add as many email addresses as you want to OE and you should be able to set up a rule to direct messages from the 2nd account to a different folder. I'm not sure how easy it is to specify the 2nd email address as the sender on outgoing messages, but another way would be to install Thunderbird Mail Client and use that for your 2nd account.

Thanks folks.

If you set up multiple accounts in OE you will get a drop down list in the From field of any email you compose, allowing you to alter the sender from the default.

If you add extra mail acounts as above then it allows you new Email addresses for output. You can then choose when you compose a new message. The only problem is that often the Email server on your ISP may not allow Emails sourced from a different Email address ending (ie not one of their accounts).

I have both emails up and running and as K said a dropdown list appears,the only trouble is both the emails go into one inbox is there away around that so both have there own inbox folders ????

Rick.....

Rick

Yes, click Tools - Message Rules- Mail... There is an option to process mail from a specified account.

I have just installed NTL cable broadband at work. Have plugged into my laptop and it works, no setup - just acts like a network connection.

Now I need to connect it to my network and I don't know how to do this. Do I simply plug it into the router and it should work or do I have to connect to the main PC first (which acts as a 'sort of' server' but is still used as a desktop in its own right? The engineer cam and went whilst I wasn't there.

SC

You should use a firewall/cable router to connect to the NTL network and then plug your local network, including the laptop into the safe side of the firewall.

Thanks Optimist. That sounds easy enough :-) Will I need my network reconfiguring with a new router / modem or will the existing settings still work? Presently using Netgear router.