Thanks all.
Please forgive me for being impatient.

Hi all,

I recently had a problem with my system going incredibly slow. A bit of investigation revealed that just after boot up "system monitor" showed the processor usage to be 100%. Having now removed everything that I didn't recognise from startup in msconfig it's now down to 1%.

For anyone wanting to get rid of the myriad of programs that decide that they are so important that they should run in the background all the time, do the following.

Press Start
Press Run
Type msconfig
Click OK
Select the startup tag
deselect the things you don't recognise.
Click OK
Reboot

The thing you want to keep are things like
Task manager
System tray

And anything else you know that you want like (in my case)
Adaptec directCD
Microsoft office shortcut bar.

Thins I knew I didn't need were things like
shockmachine reminder
Quicktime task

HTH

Mike.

I belong to a tips website. During the past couple of weeks the right hand edge of any of their printer-friendly material is missing from my print-preview and the printout. They assure me that the fault is at my end and is a problem between my browser and printer

Snip, I try to print off Croc's week ahead list & find the same problem sometimes. I have cured it by choosing
File
Page setup
then altering the margins down.
Click OK then do the same but choose print preview and you'll see if it works.
Hope this works - or have you already done this?

yes I did seymour. No luck

Sorry, I can't offer any more help - that's the limit of my tech ability.

Someone else perhaps may help?

It may sound stupid but have you tried changing from portrait to landscape and then view print preview - what you want may come on an odd page. Had same problem with bigcharts print friendly - do not use this , use print from File menu at top.

thanks maddoc I can do both but I want the chart colours with a white background and If I print without print friendly I will get a coloured background. Not ink- efficient! Re landscape yes that works but no good to see quickly in a file. Anyway its meant to be portrait

I think I`ve sorted it. Clicked on view and changed the internet text size to smaller

Looking for an MP3 player so we can take music on holiday with us. I'm presently thinking of a CD MP3 player as they can be quite cheap on ebay and I can stick all my favourites on CD and take a minimum number of CDs with us, but wondering if anyone else had a better idea or could point me in the right direction. Think I prefer to have CDs as I can use them with my PC. Where to buy if not ebay, waht software people use for converting to MP3? All help gratefully received.

Advice on the best procedure to Format my hard drive,Im using Win XP PRO.
I need to clear all files and start again.

Format xp? I use a windows 98 boot disk and type format c: at the a:> prompt.
Bootdisk available at http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

However MS technical support comes up with this -

HOW TO: Partition and Format a Hard Disk in Windows XP (Q313348)
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q313/3/48.asp

Thanks Leo.Most helpful.
Cheers,Iain

Iain

When you reformat always choose NTFS format unless you have good reason to do otherwise.

Done that.The only problem now is no Sound.Windows cant find an audio device.
There is a yellow asterisk next to Multimedia audio Controller.Can i download this?

The software drivers for your sound will have been supplied with the sound card or, if the sound is built into the motherboard, with the motherboard. You'll need to load them/it. To download from elsewhere you'll need to know just what 'make' your sound card is. Or, if built in, the make and model of your motherboard.

Cheers

best place to buy routers and gear for a three PC home -network?-WIRED

thanks in anticipation

IAIN

I use http://www.cclcomputers.co.uk/ in West Yorkshire. Generally very reliable , helpful and fairly priced. I took a 2 year old 20 gig HD which had faulted back last week and they gave me a credit note which paid for a 60 gig.

On a small home network all the gear they sell should work however I tend to use their D-Link network gear unless the environment's very electrically noisy and then I might go for 3-Com - Each to their own though.

cheers leo1- gteat little thread this for friendly advice-
thanks

IAIN