Help required please,we have a webcam setup which we can talk to friends in the US and canada on a one2one basis using win xp and 10meg broadband,but is it possible to have say a 3 or even 4 way setup to talk to people in 4 locations at the same time and interact with one another ????

tia

Rick....

Windows Messenger

kernow

"I need to look up some dates in 2004 and 2005. I'm assuming old Calendar items are in archieve somewhere - they've dropped off"

Did you find the solution? I'm looking for some old diary info as well.

TP

Can anyone help please with guidance on fitting an ADSL microfilter to our bedroom telephone, a BT Relate 250? It isn't as easy as it sounds as the wire to the phone disappears behind built-in bedroom furniture and I can't find an extension socket. In fact, I think it might be wired directly to the master socket. Can I just cut the wire, connect it to an extension socket and then use a pig-tail filter? The problem with that is with the wires inside the Relate - black, blue, red and yellow. If those are the same colours outside the Relate (I haven't cut the wire yet) I wonder which one goes where in an extension socket? BT say that fitting the filter might help with our Broadband speed which is a miserable 460 kbs on a good day (the line is rated for 1600 kbs - we are a long way from the exchange.) Or should I recognise that this is a job beyond my hamfisted skills and get a man in?

You need a filter on every telephone (as well as on any other piece of equipment connected to the telephone, e.g. fax machines, Sky box, etc.). If you really don't have a filter on that phone it's surprising your ADSL works at all! But if so you should be hearing a loud hiss on the telephone (the ADSL carrier signal).

The colours you list are not standard and it would be difficult for you to relate them to the house wiring.

If your modem/router is connected to the master socket then the best thing to do (if it is a new-style NTE5 socket with a test socket behind the main panel, if you unscrew it) is to connect the splitter to the test socket and then reconnect the house wiring to splitter. That way all the house wiring is filtered in one go, you don't need any additional filters, and you remove any problems caused by bad wiring within the house. If you don't have a new NTE5 socket, you can get BT to fit you one although it is a simple job to do so, though illegal, after buying one on ebay :-)

If you can't do any of that then removing the back panel of your fitted wardrobe is going to have to be the way to go!

After all that though I'm not sure that you are being given correct info on the speeds. There is no 'rating' for lines. What speed does your modem/router report as the connection speed? That is what might be improved through all of this. If you are getting 460 kpbs on a website speed test, that is a totally different thing. Of course a higher connection speed will help, but if your speed test result is a lot lower than your connection speed then the problem is going to be due to the exchange or ISP.

TP - regretfully no. Dates were required for HMRC purposes as well. I suspect the File-archive setting was to blame - it was not set to autoarchive hence old items disappear and I had no archieve folders at all. Doesn't seem to be any way of stopping/changing outlook default settings to never delete anything either :-((
Thankfully my wife's paper diaries came into their own.

Thanks for that Kayak, and I think I half understand what you are saying.

Yes, I have an NTE5 socket in the lounge with a phone plugged in through a BT-supplied dangly filter. The computer is in a bedroom and is connected to an extension via another dangly filter. The offending phone with, as you rightly say, hissing Sid in the background, is in another bedroom.

As my wife would not appreciate me wrecking the bedroom and I don't fancy tackling all the wires in the main socket I think I'm going to have to call out an engineer.

Regarding speeds, the router manager shows down at 1632 and up at 448. However, whenever I use a speed test I always get download speeds of between and 400 and 500.

Again, many thanks. K

K,

"Doesn't seem to be any way of stopping/changing outlook default settings to never delete anything either "

I thought there was as I slipped into the same trap of losing old info that might be needed for HMRC. I now have info going back to the start of 2005, which was probably when I realised the problem.

Snag is that I can't remember what I did.

Anyone got any ideas?

TP

Kayak - Another thought flits across my mind. What happens if I cut the wire to the offending hissing Sid phone and tape up the wire ends leaving nothing connected to it? Will that solve the problem? I can easily run a filtered extension to the bedroom.

TOK, yes you can cut, tape up, and run another socket. You only need a filter if there is something connected to the wire/socket. You will probably get much better speeds than 1632 by just removing the unfiltered phone. However this probably won't make a lot of difference to your 400/500. That sounds to me like it's down to the exchange or ISP performance.

Once you have done that, you could probably get even better connection speeds by making the socket that your computer is on the master socket, and connecting all of the house wiring to the splitter (i.e taking the ADSL signal out before the extensions). This removes any possibility of the house wiring interfering with the ADSL signal, and it often does. To see if this would make any difference, all you need to do is unscrew the two screws on the master socket and connect your computer to the test socket that is then exposed (as this then removes the house wiring from the equation). If you get a higher speed then that is the most you're ever going to get, although you might need to get someone in to rewire your sockets.

Thanks again Wise Owl. Now, where did I put the pliers....?

TOK, this has been mentioned before on here, but are all the sockets run in series? If they run in parallel that will slow you down, I had that problem and altered my wiring and hey presto much faster downloads.

Good morning Seymour - The two extensions now in use are both wired directly from the master socket. (Is that series?) The bedroom one I vandalised yesterday was also direct from the master socket, I think. I'm now going to run a new bedroom socket from the computer socket. Bad news, I hear you say. BTW, cutting off the offending Hissing Sid phone doesn't seem to have affected speeds one way ore the other. Thanks for your interest.

For the connection speed to increase you'll need to reboot the router or computer if you haven't already done so.

You're running in parallel if each socket is wired direct from the master socket. Bad news ...

I currently have 512 mb of 333mh ram - I want to add an additional 512 - is it

a) possible to replace the the existing with 400mh ram and

b) if a is possible, will I see much improvement or should I stick with an addional 512 of 333?

a: I think that will depend on your MB
b: No. Yes.

Cheers Brian.

Help,i want to install net meeting on my laptop,its running windows xp,how can i find it,i thought it was already installed on xp,if its not how do i find the download???? Have just installed the driver for the webcam,but cannot find net meeting.

Rick....

Do you actually need Netmeeting? Windows Messenger does a lot of the same stuff.