Anyone have any bright ideas how I can tell whether my router's WiFi is dying or whether I'm suffering from interference from the (large number of) neighbours with WiFi?

symptoms are that I cna usually see a high-strength signal from the router, but can't connect (doesn't authenticate). This has happened over the last couple of days.

Scanning the area shows up to 10 visible WiFi networks at any one time.

You are probably right about the interference. You should be able to select a broadcast channel on the router to avoid as many as possible of your neighbours. However, if you are using a 108 Mbps router you will probably then be limited to 54 Mbps.

Also worth thinking whether you may have made any changes to the house, e.g. putting up mirrors or moving router or laptop.

Apologies if this has been done before which I'm sure is the case.

Daughter finally gets a shiny new mac. No probs getting on to the net but I know nothing of security for macs so paranoia setting in.

Seems avast is ok for macs. Anything else i need to do?
Cleaner not available but been reading about Onyx, securely erase trash, erase free space 7 times, App Zapper, Clean Space, zero my hard drive 30 times so Nasa can't get it......

Am i in the right ball park :-))

Is it worth updating to IE8?

Skinny

I've been using IE8 for around 18 months since the early beta. It was always good and the final version is even better.

Upgrade.

Opto - thanks.

Heres a puzzler for some very clever chap / chapess out there..............

My Laptop was fine until yesterday when it developed 2 faults together. Neither is life threatening, but both are a nuisance.

1) On startup, it just sits forever on the manufacturers loading screen. I work round this by hammering the F2 button as I switch it on, which does not take me to any system menu, but does open Windows normally!!

2) The internet works fine, except I cannot access my home page (Sky), either on start, from the little house icon or by typing in the address! All the other computers in my house can, just not this one.

Any suggestions please fellas. I have done a system restore and cleared all my history / cookies etc. all to no avail.

Alan

I can't see any connection between the two, but if you can't get some Internet sites then it could be a virus. See if you can access sites such as microsoft.com and the AV sites.

I'm assuming that you have the laptop networked to the same ADSL router as the other computers in your house.

Skinny,

Given a choice, I'd uninstall IE completely. Unfortunately, IE seems to be needed for the Microsoft updates.

Firefox and Opera are both noticeably faster than IE, imo. Interestingly, 45% of my site traffic comes through users with Firefox 3. IE 6,7 & 8 combined accounts for 42% of the traffic.

Thanks Optimist.

I have now fully updated my spyware/virus stuff and ran a check. I have also allowed windows to do a full update (which included IE8, which is awful). I have run full checks, restarted the offending piece of junk and got rid of the start up problem.

I still cannot connect to sky.com though I can connect to sky.co/news!!!. Everything seems to work except getting through to the e-mail section of sky for the missus to read her e-mail.

Frustrated? You bet......................

Alan

hewittalan6
I got my Sky email working thanks to hilary a long time ago. Does this help?:

hilary - 20 Jan 2008 15:02 - 6507 of 6509
Sky now use Google Mail and the settings have changed.

O/G

smtp.tools.sky.com
use SSL
Port 465

I/C

pop.tools.sky.com
Port 995

Use your full email address as username

You'll also need to check their webmail regularly as they put a lot straight into spam so it never reaches Outlook

hilary - 21 Jan 2008 06:36 - 6509 of 6509
Forgot to mention that you must also enable POP downloads in your Sky Email account online.

Thanks for that Bolshi, but not really, because its in a language I can't understand!!!

Anyway, suddenly the darn thing has started working for no reason I can see, so fingers crossed and thanks to all for their help.

Alan

Can anyone tell me how I get rid of IE8 and re-install IE7??

Thanks,

Alan

Hi again Alan. I've done it twice now :-((
Go to Start - Control Panel & Add/Remove Programs. It'll give you a list. IE8 is on it.
When you uninstall IE8 you automatically get IE7 back.
I'm glad it's not just me that's had problems with it.

Although I admit to liking IE8 and Microsoft in general, I do understand that there are other browsers that some people prefer to IE. What I can't understand is why anyone prefers IE7 over IE8.

IE8 is more secure, faster and more stable than IE7 and if you don't like the new look, you can set it to be like IE7.

I found I.E. 8 slower than 7 but what made me revert was that after my weekly housekeeping I have to reinstall adobe flash player to get moneyam to show the home page. 8 showed that I needed to install but wouldn't let me do it. No doubt something in my settings was blocking it but I couldn't find it, so unistalled 8 and hid it in the updates.

I've heard of problems with Adobe. Try uninstalling all Adobe software and then reinstalling.

Thanks Optimist,
as I say I'm quite happy to revert to 7. there were a few other niggles with 8 so I'll give them a few months to iron out the bugs and give it another try.

Have you tried running IE8 in compatability mode for the sites you have trouble with?

O
What's compatability mode please? I've never heard of it.