My turn to ask a question: Was updating/altering an xl spreadsheet from info on my halifax bank account, so connected to internet and bank. Suddenly xl sheet and web page plus tabs on other web pages lost info, the screen was all over the place with bits missing. So thought of being hacked in some way so shut router down quickly and shut down comp. Re-started and scanned comp, all clear of any virus attack. tried opening xl sheet, un-able to open, either in use or encrypted or read only. Tried name change and saving but will not allow. Tried restore point to last friday, no good. Have back up, so tried to delete, still won't let me delete. Presume file is corrupt in some way, any suggestions of how to restore file or delete would be useful. At the end of day it can stay and I'll rename my saved copy. cheers BB

There are a number of delete utilities that let you force a file to be deleted. They let you marke the file and then delete the file on reboot when processes cannot be holding the file. They can be found through google.

thanks haystack.

Since a couple of days, I've noticed videos on Youtube are lagging quite badly. I'm pretty sure the problem is with my laptop as a couple of other machines at home seem fine with Youtube. The problem on my machine started after a Flash Player update followed almost immediately by a Windows update.

Done all the usual things - ran CCleaner, cleaned the registry, ran defrag. Still no good. Tried uninstalling Flash Player and installed an older version. Weirdly, same result.

Can anyone speculate on the causes of this lag? I'm running Vista on a HP DV6 laptop.

Not sure of the causes but what browser are you using? If Firefox or Chrome etc. try viewing the video's in IE and see if it still happens? I'm not 100% on this but I think different versions of the Flash Player plugin are used depending on if you're on IE or one of the others.

Also have a look at the performance tab in Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) to make sure no 'rogue' process is using a lot of CPU power.

Jon, I have the same problem sometimes in Firefox, also get it with BBC iPlayer which depends on Flash, so will experiment

Hi jonuk76,

I'm using both Opera and Chrome. The problem is definitely worse in Chrome. Prior to the update, both my browsers played videos absolutely fine. Task Manager does not show any single process hogging CPU big time. I've even tried forcing Chrome to use an earlier version of Flash Player (by disabling the built-in plugin under "About:Plugins"). Darn! Pretty frustrating!

SC, I have a problem on one computer on iPlayer. I don't know if yours is a similar issue. It's an Acer Revo (small, low power Intel Atom computer) which I've connected to a TV, and it's really bad when trying to view iPlayer HD. It's pretty much unwatchable due to the skipping video.

In my case, the PC has an Nvidia Ion GPU which is able to accelerate video decoding (a GPU is generally much faster than the main processor at doing that). But for whatever reason, iPlayer is not using the video acceleration, and all the work is being done by the slow CPU. I've seen other complaints about it, but haven't been able to find a resolution yet... I can view high quality, 1080p MKV or MP4 files that I've downloaded elsewhere on this PC with no problems, but iPlayer unfortunately is a problem.

If its a fast GPU that you want - Chip maker Nvidia has revealed details of a new graphics processing unit (GPU) which it says will create the world's most powerful computer.

Mine is a pretty fast machine with loads of ram but no dedicated video card. I've wanted a twin screen for some time but that entails upping the PSU as well as the video card.. Maybe it's time I did.

Skinny - don't want it that fast - would have a problem keeping up with the video in that case :-)

klal - just an idea but maybe it's worth doing a proper uninstall of Flash and re-installing the latest version. There is an Adobe uninstaller here - http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html (also note instructions for manually deleting Flash folder after uninstalling). Unfortunately these problems can be difficult to track down..

Skinny - your next trading machine maybe? :)

jonuk76, thanks! I've just realised I missed out deleting the files in those other folders! Gonna try it in a couple of hours.

No worries, hope you sort it. There's some other things to try here as well if you haven't seen it already (like disabling hardware acceleration) - http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/flash-player-games-video-or.html

Thanks jonuk76. Appreciate your help.

Are these tablets any good? One of the reviews suggests Flash might be a problem as well. I guess the screen isn't top notch but it's dirt cheap at £180.

Scroll Extreme Android Tablet PC

Quick update on my Flash Player problem - completely removed version 11.2.202.235 from the system and re-installed it. Hasn't quite resolved the problem as I can still see choppy video. For some weird reason, the choppiness is not so bad while watching Youtube on Opera. Chrome is terrible though. B****y updates!

Next step - gonna revert to an older version of Flash Player and force Chrome to use that version rather than the current one.

Go back to good old fashioned I.E......lol

Final update! Sorted the darn problem. Turns out I had changed "Maximum Processor State" to 98% under Power Management Options while waiting for my new laptop cooler to arrive. Put it back to 100% and the choppy video problem is gone! :-)

I wouldn't have thought of that! Glad it got sorted.

Yes jonuk76, I sure am glad it's resolved now. A few weeks ago, a similar power-related issue existed on my daughter's laptop - it would keep freezing once or twice every day and each time I would hear an awful shriek! The hard disk activity light would be on continuously for about 2 minutes and then everything would come back to normal. Finally sorted out the problem with some registry edits. Been a good few weeks since I last heard those awful shrieks! If any one is interested, I'll post the tweaks here.