Thanks Optimist.

Also giving the staff access to t'internet, so want to know how we can log the usage without them being able to delete the history.

Any ideas?

SC

Set your system up with a proxy server that controls all internet access.

One way is to convert an old PC into a firewall with Smoothwall Express. A standard installation will give you a good firewall and a basic proxy server, but this can easily be expanded to give enhanced logging, content control and timed access etc.

If you decide to take that route I could give you some pointers as to what addons to use.

I'll have a google about poxy servers - have just had the internet connections and new kit installed.

For those who have a DELL computer and have or are upgrading to Vista.

A site I belong to (see previous post) wont load on my system DELL/Vista upgrade.
It appears if your system comes with the latest version of McAFEE, McAFEE has a bug which either stops some sites loading and/or slows many sites down.
The tech boys at this site have had several reports re this.
I have informed DELL and await their reply.
Will update this if anyone asks.

some help needed here folks...my company auto-updates my software on my machines and they chnged my firewall today to the integrated symantec offering, now when i have to sign into any kind of secure server, it blocks it...anyone got any ideas, i have allowed all IE traffic and have tried to change the security level but it is set by the company.....i cant be bothered caling some guy in India who has no idea what I am on about

Treblewide

Do you have Java on your PC I have seen a number of comments recently on the Internet about companies stopping Java being loaded onto corporate PCs.

haystack yes I do however I work for a technology company...if they have stopped Java being loaded the place would grind to a halt.....but hey that would not surprise me

looks like long painful phone call to India then!

Now here's a funny thing:
Switched on my PC this morning - everything seemed fine. Clicked on my icon's to connect t'internet & was presented with 'My Documents' folder instead. I've got separate icons for IE and BT/Yahoo & it happened on both.
I thought o-oh and tried a System Restore (panic? moi?) to load in yesterday's settings. I managed to get the Start page up and MS page asking to restore to an earlier date but then nothing, I couldn't click on the proceed button.
I then turned off the PC. The only difference I noticed on the Start - Turn Off Computer pop-up was that 'Hibernate' was showing instead of 'Stand By'.
To cut a boring story short, everything worked fine on the second attempt.
Am now running a deep virus scan. Nothing so far.
Is this just 'one of those things' ?

Bolshi

I've not heard of that before, but could it have been caused by an automatic MS update?

O. I'm on auto update so not sure when updates are done, but this happened before connection to the web or any other chores.
All seems OK and virus deep scan gave a clean bill of health.
Fingers crossed I guess.

Edit: Friend of mine yesterday had Norton warn her about an automatic MS update & it told her NOT to download the update.

Bolshi,

Are you on Vista, as the problem you are describing was one mentioned in yesterdays papers (I think it was the Telegraph). As for your mention, "The only difference I noticed on the Start - Turn Off Computer pop-up was that 'Hibernate' was showing instead of 'Stand by". That has happened to me several times after loading Vista from XP. It is a fault that many have complained about. It appears that if you have Vista and Mcaffe, they are not working well together.They have sent me a fix to do, so if it works I will post it here.
Cheers Greek.

Thanks Greek but no, I'm not running Vista.

Home XP.

just had a new router installed,runs 3 PC's on ethernet cable and all get speeds of 9.5 megs which is good as iam on 10 meg VM (old ntl),
the problem i have is that the laptop on wireless only gets 5.5 meg,
is there anything i can do to get a better speed,
my router is NETGEAR rangemax WPN824.

TIA
steve

I get more than that on wireless with a Netgear router. Are you using the wireless adapter on the laptop that matches the router? Does that speed also apply when the laptop is very close to the router?

There are a few settings on the router that I changed from default as a result of a forum and it seemed to speed things up. The UPnP is to do with being able to share music for a HiFi system. It may slow things down a bit.

Mode set to Auto
UPnP OFF

There may have been a couple of others, but I forget which.

Has anyone tried this third party defragger?

http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/index.html

My XP laptop seems to be struggling to defrag its main drive which is probably dominated by EOD files. I've tried the MS defragger three times and it is still showing lots of red bars.

TP

TP

I've not tried the one you mention, but the one to have is Diskeeper. It's the full version of the one that Microsoft use. Don't bother getting the trial version as you will end up buying it anyway.

One of the reasons that a defrag does not defrag all files, is that the directories can't be defragmented while Windows is running. This has to be done at boot time and the built in one does not do this. I recently installed a free version of Paragon Partition Magic 8 which also has this facility, although when I tried it, it seemed very slow.

You can defrag in safe mode with the built-in defrag, it is somewhat better at getting the last few files done. Mind you I don't think it makes any difference in real terms.

Optimist,

Thanks for that pointer.

"Don't bother getting the trial version as you will end up buying it anyway."

There are three versions.

http://www.diskeepereurope.com/en/07_general/products_dk.htm

I am sure the top version is overkill for me. I thought I'd buy the Home version as I can always upgrade. Do you think I should get the Pro edition anyway?

TP

Before you spend money TP, have you checked that no other applications are running when you defrag and that the disk drive has a reasonable amount of space free?

Kayak

Yes on both counts.

I do use Quotetracker for my real time US stocks, but I'd turned it off.

And the drive is not much more than 50% full.

It reduces the amount of red each time, but I felt something bespoke might do a better job and the blurb about the software that Optimist found is highly persuasive - and I'm a sucker for anything like that. Which is why I need you folks to stop me making a fool of myself!!!

TP