PC Setup Menu

[steptoe]

You can get rather large USB data sticks these days...

but if I got a 40gb one I could take everything off the laptop and put the original discs back in, I have them, so it "should " go back to as new should it not?

or is not right?

a 60gb external drive is dirt cheap now cos nobody wants them, too small.

 

[extension15]

but if I got a 40gb one I could take everything off the laptop and put the original discs back in, I have them, so it "should " go back to as new should it not?or is not right?

a 60gb external drive is dirt cheap now cos nobody wants them, too small.

Try buying one that small (160GB I think)...

Isn't 320GB (or bigger) the norm these days??

 

[steptoe]

really.?

oh sh1t.

well maybe I should put a wanted on TEF cos I have no idea, and if someone has something so small maybe a couple of dozen quid will buy it?

how much for a big one then>?

 

[Robojin]

on this subject,,,,now, I will need taken by the hand here, cos Im a computer noob,!

my laptop has started taking for ever to start up, runs okish when finally gets going, Im talking about 3-5 mins here!!!!

WHY? is it just trying to load too many fish all at once at the beginning? when it does get going there isnt anything showing as using anything up when I do the ctrl/alt/delete thingy.

#2

I have another PC that is almost as old, a dell something but 2.6speed, but it cant see the DVD drive properly or something, keeps saying driver installation failed, so it wont actually read a disc, so I cant get on the internet to download a new driver until I load up FF (or even IE, its not on it!).

what can I do?

please reply to both questions using the ladybird system of wording, I really am lost once I go past the BS1362 part of these things.

thanks muchos, Albert.

#1 the low level services that might be loading at startup don't show in the 'Applications' tab of taskmanger, you will find these under 'Processes' although on this tab you have the ability to 'kill tasks' it will not help with load times and have little value if you don't have a scoobie about what they do

It's possible that over time as you have installed and deinstalled apps, some may have not completely removed the low level stuff correctly, so....

click on the 'Run' found at bottom of the 'Start' button dialog, type 'msconfig' and click run, up will pop (hopefully) 'System Configuration Utility', look at the 'services' & 'startup' tabs, these are the puppies that load and can in time drag load times into the oblivion, as a rule 'services' are mostly microsoft and are required don't change anything, however in startup you may find apps that are no longer needed, but take care as you may loose a vital function by randomly unticking, as a rule of thumb those that look like they support hardware leave be, others for s/w that might not relevant you could untick, but do so one at a time and reboot, see what happens, have you lost some functions, MS have built in a failsafe when you play with msconfig, each time you boot thereafter it will warn that changes have been made and will give you the opportunity to tick and save, then reboot

#2 this could simply be a setting in the BIOS, some early DVD drives run in PIO mode, if the IDE channel (DVD is on) is on AUTO and setting it to DMA it might cause this, or the DVD might just be kaput