I guess the one tyketto is talking about is the 2nd one down. SATA to IDE iomax

Cheers all. Still mulling this one over, but 5 sounds better that 20, so will probably go that route. As the SATA drives don't need Master/Slave jumpers, I assume the IDE motherboard will automatically allocate master & slave? I need to format the SATA drive but using the IDE Hard Drive as the control.

I am used to seeing the blue java circle spinning for a few seconds in loading pages tab - but what is the meaning of a slowly spinning (anti clockwise) grey circle?

Magic Circle?

You can take a Test to see that you have the latest version of Java running:

HERE

My daughter's laptop (Win 7) tends to freeze now and then. I can see the disk is busy as the light stays on througout the freeze. The freezing can last as long as 30 seconds or sometimes all the way upto a couple of minutes. Each time that happens, I get yelled at! Tried various things to stop the freezing (and the yelling!). I've disabled Superfetch (which certainly seemed to help a lot) and turned off a few other non-essential services. However, the freezing does occur, though not with the same frequency as earlier. I've noticed the OS partition on the drive is running rather low. Could this be a contributing factor? Can it lead to disk thrashing?

I've considered expanding the C partition. Would that solve the problem?

Thanks for any pointers.

How much RAM have you got? If RAM is low, windows will use hard drive for memory, and there isn't much hard drive left.
My immediate response would be to transfer a good chunk of non-essential stuff from C drive to D drive. I don't think (may be wrong) that windows will automatically use D drive for essential uses like memory overrun, restore point, back up etc, so it may be struggling to find space on C for those services.

Hi Harrycat,

The system's got 4GB of RAM.

EDIT: Done all the other usual things - clearing out temp files, cleaning of registry, defragmenting drive, etc. All that helped to a good extent.

HC, I've already transferred a lot of stuff from the C drive to D. Things like her documents, music files, etc. In fact, we stopped installing new programmes on C: and use D instead.

Not sure what you mean by 'expanding the C partition'. I think that changing partitions requires formatting.
It's a long time since I had a full hard drive, so not now sure, but I seem to recall that Windows needed 15% space on the hard drive to fulfill all it's functions, so 4.78gb spare may not be enough. I confess I am not up to speed on 7, so others may be more helpful.
Your system info/ task manager (ctrl+Alt+del) should show you how much of your system is being used.

HC - I should be able to increase the size of the C partition by taking space from the D partition (in other words, shrink "D" and create an unallocated partition and then merge it with "C"). Was planning to use a tool such as MiniTool Partition Wizard. My main concern was whether by going thru these steps, do I have a chance of solving the freezing problem?

Got to be worth a try (though never done that myself) as I think you have proved that space on C drive is your main problem. Worth backing up as much as you can to a flash drive or external hard drive just in case it all goes wrong.

Yep, doing just that. Got my 1TB USB drive out. After backing up the C and D drives, will go ahead and expand the C drive. Fingers crossed!

When I move away from Stockwatch, but leave the window upon,many times it doesn`t update the prices, and I have to refresh, also MAM seem not to be able to
pin point why if I move to another window and come back to Stockwatch it demands I re- log in, not a big problem but annoying.

Anyone else bugged by this?

This sounds to me as though you are accessing the data, whilst it is stored in some kind of cache and then said cache gets full up and then it is emptied and re-filled with you doing the 'Refresh'.

Who is your ISP?

By the way, I would presume you've checked whether you have the latest Java?

The login problem is to do with various MAM cookies.

You can have a look at them, by say using CCleaner, and then select the ones that you want to either keep or delete as and when you "Housekeep" and 'Delete Cookies'.

This would allow you to go through a sorta kinda 'start again with tidied up MAM cookies'.

Cheers Exec, yes re.Java but when I click on the Java link it tells me I am running an old Java, then when I download the latest one it tells me I have it already, hmmm.

ISP is BT,no other probs with them at all.

Have a look HERE

thanks Exec` seems I am running the correct Sun Java

cheers

Anyone still getting the annoying Java Fatal Error note on the desktop? First day today of a new computer and guess what? Bl++dy Java error message! Stockwatch applet seems to be the cause. Help please. I don't want my lovely new machine to end up like the last one with a desktop littered with these wretched notes. What is going on?

TOK,

It seems to be an IE9 - Java compatability issue - does it happen if you try another browser such as chrome or firefox?