Kayak, interesting that you havnt had a drive fail, I have had 2 fail in the last 3 weeks, one of them had run non stop in my NAS for 3 years so I am not complaining about that. I used the failure to replace all 4 disks in the NAS with new 500GB drives.

And then ...... one of the new drives failed after about 30 hours !

We inherited a PC system with a bigger (then I use on my Mac) Monitor over the W/E.

Question is will the PC Monitor work with my Mac processor?

The monitor is a Gatway VX900. 18inch (measuring corner to corner). to many Ref. Nos. on the back to quote. I did notice that the lead from the PC monitor has a 15 holed pin coming out while my present Mac monitor lead comes straight out. My guess is it won't work but I don't know. Seem to think that this question has been answered on here but to many posts to go back on to find.

Stan, not sure it looks as though the gateway monitor does not have an digital input.

I use a Dell 24" Screen as a second monitor with my iMac 24" but thats a digital connection and only needed a lead from the apple shop.

Thanks S/M, do you think that if the gateway connection is not digital that I can get a non-digital lead one end and a digital the other end going into the Mac? or is that not possible? Maplins have just opened a store locally so I would go there 1st for convenience.

ED: The monitor is 8 years old, but hardly used.

Just in:

This is a customer service message from the Computer Doctors Ltd.

Over the last few weeks we have had an increasing number of customers that have purchased a program over the internet called Antivirus XP 2008.

THIS IS NOT A GENUINE PRODUCT AND YOU SHOULD NOT RELEASE YOUR CREDIT CARD DETAILS TO THIS COMPANY.

You can pick up this malware from many compromised websites , it will disable your PC, then promise to fix the problem for a fee of between 49.95 and 104.85.

Because it is well designed and looks like a genuine Microsoft product many people have paid up for the convenience.

We believe that Microsoft are going to release a statement regarding this product, but we thought that our customers would be interested to hear this information as soon as possible.

The product is not easy to remove, but we have had some success in removing it and its re-installer. If you get infected please give us a call (or any other competent repairer) to remove this program.

Regards

Customer services

Computer Doctors Ltd

whats the story on SP3 for XP at the mo - my XP just tried to update it automatically and i cancelled it as some time ago i saw peeps were having problems

Spaceman asked me to ask a silly question.

If I set my chart background to black, will it conserve energy and make the monitor live longer?

Maddoctor

I've been using XP SP3 for some months with no problems. MM reported a DHCP problem some time ago, but that does not effect everybody. It may well have been sorted by now but in anycase, there was a simple workaround.

Optimist , thanks for your comments

Am also using SP3 on my laptop with no problems so far (Downloaded about a month ago). To be honest, I can't see any visible difference from the old to the new.

Harrycat , thats what microsoft say on their website. I have only ever taken the critical updates and do not require all the other stuff which you get with SP3 so unless somebody tells me for good reasons i should take it , i will hold fire.

I 'housekeep' my machine like mad. I defragged it for the third time today about 10 mins ago. It only took about 10 secs.

Everything is up to date, including the SP.... .. . . .

Re: XP SP3: We cured the SP3 DHCP problem on one router type (Netgear DG834G) by upgrading the firmware to Rev 4.01.28 but it still fails on another type (LinkSys WRT54G3G) even after a firmware upgrade to Rev 2.11.05.

Microsoft's workaround is laughable. Uninstall SP3 -- or use a wired link with a fixed IP address and fill in the fields manually. How convenient. Tough luck if you're trying to use a public access point WiFi and they haven't upgraded their router firmware or are using the 'wrong' brand of router.

True to form, Microsoft is in denial that they have caused the problem.

re Windows SP3 - seems microsoft have categorised it as a "Critical Download" so every time i opened up my computer it downloaded and asked me to install. This i have now done - the download and installation went Ok but the programme blipped a bit on startup but seems to have settled down. The only difference i can see is the lengthy time now for Windows to fully start , bit of a pain.

also failing to let me into my mail server?

Somehow I've managed to disable IE Add-0ns. I've been to Tools but the Manage Add-Ons option is greyed out. Any suggestions about how to proceed. please?

TOK

You probably need to log on as 'Administrator' rather than 'User'.

More HERE

where it tells you:

Disabling all access to add-on management

To turn off the Disable option and the Enable option for all add-ons, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

2. Locate the following registry subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions

Note This registry subkey is available only in a domain environment where access to add-on management is disabled through a group policy by an administrator.

3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

4. Type NoExtensionManagement.

5. Double-click NoExtensionManagement, and then type 1.

The following are the values that you can specify:

0 - The user can enable or disable the add-ons.

1 - The user cannot change the status of any add-ons.

6. Click OK, and then quit Registry Editor.

To set this registry entry as part of Group Policy, follow these steps:

1. In the Group Policy Object Editor, expand Computer Configuration or User Configuration.

2. Expand Administrative Templates, expand Windows Components, expand Internet Explorer, and then double-click the following policy setting:

Do not allow users to enable or disable add-ons

ExecLine - Many thanks for that. I trembled when I saw mention of Regedit but I started down that route but couldn't find the registry sub key (thank God) so with relief I abadoned that. I then did some more Google research. One site suggested deleting the IE desk top entry and then go to the IE folder via My Computer/ Local Disk/Program files/Internet Explorer and drag IE.exe to the desk top. Hey Presto, all sorted. But again many thanks again for your help

Downloaded and installed IE8 yesterday... didn't work... rolled back XP to IE7 ... and that now fails!!! Now stuck with Firefox 2 (tried FF3 but it reacts with my acer 7004 sound system)...

Is IE8 out of Beta yet?

Not sure if this is a genuine risk alert or not, but for what it's worth:
"You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK,'regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard drive of your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list. This is the reason why you need to send this e-mail to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it.
This is genuine - you can check on:-
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/postcard.asp "