Recent Posts

5101

General Software Discussion / Re: Does anyone know a good scheduling program?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 25, 2006, 01:54 PM »

Sorry misunderstood ...

I haven't tried any of these but there a lot of programs that look possible.

See http://www.google.co...0download%20freeware

5102

Living Room / Sony recalls cameras over glitch

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 25, 2006, 07:18 AM »

From http://news.bbc.co.u...business/6179902.stm

If you have an unregistered Cyber-shot camera this may be worth checking out ...

Sony recalls cameras over glitch
Sony exhibition stand
This is the second major recall this year for Sony
Sony has said it will recall eight models of its Cyber-shot digital cameras after finding a defect in the liquid crystal display screen.

The problem is caused by a glitch with the image sensor, which may mean the screen does not display images correctly, Sony said.

The company would not say how many cameras were affected.

The recall applies to models sold worldwide between September 2003 and January 2005.

The electronics giant will repair for free only cameras that show signs of the problems, according to Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa.

This is the second time in just over a year that Tokyo-based Sony has announced defects in its digital cameras. It cited similar problems with 20 other models last October and offered free repairs.

It also follows the global recall of about 10 million Sony-made rechargeable batteries, affecting almost every major laptop maker in the world, because of fears they could overheat and catch fire.

The recall applies to models DSC-F88, DSC-M1, DSC-T1, DSC-T11, DSC-T3, DSC-T33, DSC-U40 and DSC-U50.

5103

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Desktop System Specs Info

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 25, 2006, 07:06 AM »

Some years ago, i used to use rainmeter. It's also very well known, and i think it's not as resource-expensive as samurize. (i don't think it looks as good, though).
For getting the full stats, i suggest everest (which still keeps a free version).

-jgpaiva (November 25, 2006, 04:05 AM)

Can you actually find the free version of Everest - I have looked recently for the latest version and can't find it (maybe it is just me being dumb) - there just seem to be 2 paid for versions now.

Rainmeter is now here http://www.ipi.fi/~rainy/legacy.html an is treated as a legacy app.

5104

General Software Discussion / Re: Does anyone know a good scheduling program?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 25, 2006, 06:08 AM »

I use http://www.splinterw...products/wincron.htm which is nothing in the looks stakes but does everything I need for scheduling stuff.

5105

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 24, 2006, 06:29 PM »

A happy ending - and a new support beginning (HELP) ... why is nothing ever simple?

Well I was impressed - scorchingly fast turnaround from Netgear. They sent a courier to collect the WiFi card and sent a replacement USB based device within 48 hours. I was impressed !!!

The USB device is dinky and works well - my network connection is now solidly at 270Mbps. My only criticism is that the USB2 chord is very short (barely 2 feet long) which is ridiculous. Only that I have it plugged into a USB hub on my desktop it would normally be buried behind my desk - not an ideal location for WiFi reception!!

Anyone know if it is possible to extend USB2 cables with an extension cable without causing headaches?

As part of my big purchase I decided to use a couple of 120Gb WD Caviar drives as 'network storage' and bought a Netgear SC101 box to put the drives in. It then connects to the router via a LAN cable and the drives can be partitioned (and even mirrored) from network clients. Partitions can be private or shared and you can opt to password protect content. All seems ideal and indeed I was really impressed with the ease of use - switch on an Explorer shows up a new disc drive.

Problems arose though when I re-installed NOD32 antivirus - now when I start windows the SC101 drivers crash out and unfortunatelyt have a big knock on effect on the system which has to be restarted in safe mode and the SC101 drivers removed. The driver service for the netgear device (Zetera Service) faults and wants to send a fault log to MS but the faulting module is IMON.DLL (according to the log file) so obviously they don't play very well together (which is a great shame). I have reported the problem to ESET(NOD32) and Netgear so I can only hope a solution is found. In the meantime can anyone recommend a free lightweight AV solution I could try until the NOD32 problems can be resolved?

Just to check the issue I installed the Netgear drivers on another system with NOD32 and experienced the same problems.

5106

General Software Discussion / Firefox 2 - peculiar cookie problem??

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 24, 2006, 06:16 PM »

I am getting a very odd problem with Firefox 2 and cookies.

Until recently I have had no problems accessing my email account and 'home' page with my ISP (BT Yahoo) and keeping logged in for 24 hours. Even when I was automatically logged out it just requested my password as a security check.

Now I am getting fully logged out and going back to the full login page when I access the pages (though not consistently). I have cleared cookies and the browser cache and checked that cookies are being stored for my session and everything seems fine.

At first I thought it may be a glitch with the login system so I tried to do the same in Internet Explorer 7 and I don't experience this problem in that browser.

Anyone any ideas ?

I haven't installed any new extensions in Firefox recently and I haven't changed the browser options wrt security/privacy etc.

5107

Living Room / Re: Agnitum Outpost 4 .... dumped

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 23, 2006, 01:44 PM »

Doesn't appear to be just my experience ... having said that I have been using version 3 for a while on my old system and startup was slow (esp. getting connected to the internet and IM clients almost always failed to connect first time even though they were in the trusted apps list).

It has been a long time since I ran a system without a third party FW app - I must say I am amazed at how much faster my system is with Windows FW & a hardware router FW.

5108

Developer's Corner / Re: Decent Outlook/Office Programming Resources?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 21, 2006, 01:45 AM »

Not that have done any ... these sites look useful starting points ...

http://www.outlookcode.com
http://www.developer....php/10926_1537041_1
http://www.vba-progr...ndex.htm#OutlookBkmk

I'd be interested to see what you come up with

5109

Living Room / Re: Agnitum Outpost 4 .... dumped

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 20, 2006, 04:49 PM »

No I didn't, but I feel happier leaving the NetGear firewall running as it has no impact on my PC speed!

5110

Living Room / Re: Agnitum Outpost 4 .... dumped

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 20, 2006, 09:45 AM »

My other computer has version 3 loaded and it too suffers from incredibly slow startup times.

I was really quite shocked at the impact Outpost 4 had on startup and system performance - it was more than noticeable. I also didn't install it in maximum security mode - so heaven knows what it will be like if you want to beef it up to pass leaktests!

It is really strange but it feels like a completely different machine using Windows Firewall - I know it has shortcomings but I'm not sure it is worth the price to have Outpost installed.

5111

Living Room / Agnitum Outpost 4 .... dumped

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 20, 2006, 08:16 AM »

Given that I am still in the process of reinstalling my system I thought it was about time I reinstalled Outpost and NOD32.

As I haven't had any previous Outpost versions I thought it would be worth having a bash at Outpost 4 again. Looking at Agnitum's website there have been a lot of new builds since the last time I tried it so I was expecting better things.

First thing I noticed was that my nippy/zippy machine suddenly turned into a slug - pages took ages to load and MSN Messenger (yes I know!) took forever to connect and generally timed out on the first couple of attempts. I was completely blitzed with prompts about SVCHOST (how the hell do you tell whether these net access demands are genuine or not?) - and these continued even after using it for a day, and after every reboot.

To cap it all I started getting random reboots - no errors, nothing logged just BAM restart ...

So to summarise - stable machine became unstable (random reboots), startup became extremely slow and tedious, browsing webpages slowed down to about 25% of the previous speed.

For now I have gone back to Windows Firewall - and I think I might just stay there since my router has a built in firewall too. I still have NOD32 running and I have installed AdMuncher and now my system is solid and fast again. Looks like I am back to the drawing board with firewalls - I certainly don't want the current incarnation of junk on my machine. What is really annoying is that I just renewed my subscription!

Anyone else experienced this?

PS. The Agnitum uninstaller leaves a lot of junk in the registry too - which is plain ridiculous given that it demands a reboot anyway - and you have to manually reactivate Windows Firewall.

5112

UrlSnooper / Re: Odd problem ... lot's of win32 exceptions

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 19, 2006, 12:22 PM »

Not that I ever found

5113

Post New Requests Here / Re: Tv tuner software please

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 19, 2006, 05:09 AM »

Try snapstream (www.snapstream.com), best I've used!

-Josh (November 18, 2006, 06:37 PM)

That looks really nice - shame it doesn't support lots of cards though (and doesn't currently support DVB-T digital TV at all).

I notice it only supports one ATI tuner chipset - I couldn't work out whether there was a trial version on the website so if you want to use this with an ATI card you had better check you have the correct chipset!

5114

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 19, 2006, 05:05 AM »

1-2 years ago Netgear had a very active userforum, not any more. Bad sign. Now you can sign up for a membership but I dont really see the benefit. 

-dk70 (November 18, 2006, 08:59 PM)

I agree as their online help stinks - I had over a month of "Hello my name is XXXX. I can't help but I know a man who can - he will contact you shortly". I did get contacted but only to ask for details I had already supplied. The only troubleshooting advice they gave was try the card in a different computer!

Actually I move to NetGear because I didn't have an altogether smooth experience with LinkSys. My router (WAG54g) dropped internet connections a lot and to use a computer upstairs I needed a booster antennae on PCI cards and a range expander. At the time they only did one which only supported WEP security and was a pig to set up. I have to say the WiFi PCI cards were good though. I also bought a LinkSys printer sharer which worked OK but only gave minimal support to printers (so most of the options in the Canon printer utilities window didn't work properly - such as ink levels and paper out). All in all Linksys didn't impress me too much with the quality of thought that went into products.

I put all my old Linksys stuff for sale on Amazon Marketplace and sold the lot.

Having bought NetGear 802.11n router and PCI cards I actually made a profit on the deal! (I bought 2 Router/PCI card packs from overlcolckers which were cheaper than the PCI cards on their own, and sold one of the routers for nearly list price - which was what I paid for the combination).

Even running my main computer at the moment via a cable to the router I am getting much faster speeds with the NetGear stuff and my internet connection is rock solid.

5115

Post New Requests Here / Re: Tv tuner software please

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 18, 2006, 06:38 PM »

The only software I have used with ATI tuners (other than ATI MMC) is InterVideo's WinDVR. It seems to work pretty well (and infinitely better than MMC) but it still isn't perfect.

Personally I have found using a Hauppauge TV tuner a revelation - the picture quality is at least 1000% better than with an ATI tuner and recording works well - still doesn't have commercial skip though.

Perhaps what you need to do is use an MPEG editor to strip out the rubbish from recorded programmes after the event. I use TMPGEnc MPEG Editor to edit and remaster TV recordings for saving to DVD Video format. It isn't cheap but it works very well and if the file is DVD compatible it can edit the file by removing the offending bits without recoding the whole file so it is very quick. You also have full control over the bitrates and format of the output. Add to that it comes with a Batch tool so that you can set up a pile of files to process and leave it over night. It will even switch off the computer when it has finished.

5116

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 18, 2006, 03:16 PM »

Fair enough I sent a scorching email to NetGear UK Customer Services complaining about their lack of response from technical support (this was after spending 37 minutes on hold waiting to speak to someone). Surprisingly I got a phone call yesterday (even though I hadn't given them my telephone number and I am ex-directory!) and they have offered to swap my PCI card for the new 270Mbps USB adapter. In some ways this suits me even better as it leaves me with an extra PCI slot if I need it in the future. Hopefully it will work 

5117

Living Room / Re: Microsoft abandons Internet Explorer and buys Firefox!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 18, 2006, 08:12 AM »

It only takes a few seconds to realise it is a spoof (like the link to download AKobe Phlash) ...

actually I quite like http://www.msfirefox...googling-filter.html and http://www.msfirefox...-for-ms-firefox.html

and on the 'About' page ...

We are a slightly open source community

    * We continue to be a leader and partner in slightly open source development, providing low cost*and alternative choices for technology. With millions of users already, we are one of the world's largest distributors of slightly open source software.
    * Our software development processes all take place in the public eye*. We have nothing to hide.


* Official US Civil Antitrust Complaint required

5118

Living Room / Microsoft abandons Internet Explorer and buys Firefox!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 18, 2006, 04:17 AM »

See http://www.msfirefox.com/

Notice the new minimum specs on the download page.

5119

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 14, 2006, 06:02 PM »

Yes that's what I thought (experience in the past and MS KB) but it is getting a little ridiculous that it doesn't matter which slot I put the WiFi card in it causes problems.

I'm really fed up with Netgear - their support is completely useless - I have been submitting requests for over a month and haven't yet had a single piece of advice from them. They do respond - but just to say it is to hard for them and someone else will contact me, when they do they ask for system specs etc. and after sending them in I never hear any more. Complete waste of time as far as I can see.

Given that I can't get it to work - even with Netgear "support" I am tempted to RMA the card and try the USB version - at least that won't be tied to PCI IRQs in the same way.

Currently I have the Netgear card showing up in my Devices list without a driver (!) and I am using a cable to the router to get online. Even so it says that the WiFi card is allocated to IRQ 5 (which would be unshared), but when I install the device driver Windows changes the IRQ assignment and it ends up shared with a graphics card and a 1394 interface.

At one point in all this fiddling I ended up with graphics card, sound card, network card and PCI bus management all on one IRQ - no wonder the mouse moved sporadically around the screen - that IRQ must have been almost permanently high!

Looking at the manual (p. 2.18) I guess if I disable the RAID, onboard LAN and 1394 then only PCI slot 3 should be shared - but I am guessing that Windows IRQ allocation will screw up any logic there - plus when I disabled onboard LAN Windows refused to boot at all - I would have to reinstall it all with the BIOS set that way - and then presumably it would screw up if in the future I needed to reenable the onboard LAN.

I'm almost at the point where I am going to settle for a wired LAN connection and forget WiFi, but given that I bought 270Mbs WiFi card I don't see why I should settle for a 100Mbs wired connection!

Anyone else reading this think of any possible solutions?

5120

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 14, 2006, 07:27 AM »

Frustrated and confused ...

I seem to have finally got WiFi working again ...

I have been running nTune's System Stability Test for two hours, on top of that I have had Windows Media Player playing music, HaupPauge TV card showing Digital TV and Firefox downloading 3 CD sized files as well as processing 40 open DC windows at a time.

Is it finally stable? Who knows, probably turn it on again tomorrow and find WiFi is screwed again!

Any ideas on how to distribute IRQs in Windows XP more sensibly? (I seem to remember the answer is no for this)

Currently I have IRQ 18 assigned to:

4 Hauppauge TV PCI related devices
1 GeForce Graphics card PCIe
1 Firewire/1394 device controller

The upshot is that analogue TV has interference lines across the screen.

I don't want to swap the cards around again because I have finally got my Audigy and NetGear's card on unshared IRQs.

I thought PCIe were handled separately from PCI cards? How do they end up sharing IRQs for the PCI bus ??

By the way do you know if I should have Plug'n'Play OS enabled or disabled in the BIOS for Windows XP? It is disabled by default and I know that was correct for earlier versions of Windows?

5121

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 13, 2006, 10:39 AM »

Thanks - there are loads of great links there ...

Now I am back using a wired LAN  .

I really don't know what gives with my WiFi card - my system seems to run fine so long as I don't try and access the internet via WiFi !!!

I reinstalled my Corsair RAM and tweaked all the BIOS settings to the recommended settings and I still get memory errors - now I have sent it back for a replacement! I ran MEMTEST86+ overnight on my older Crucial PC2700 and get no errors at all.

I ran Prime95 Torture test for 3 hours this morning - no problems at all.

Tried to look at a webpage and crash!

It's really frustrating as it seemed to be sorted for a couple of days. I reinstalled windows but I am still getting the same crashes and I notice that even on a fresh install the NetGear app keeps popping up the TaskManager list with brief 16-20% CPU usage even when the system is idle. All very strange - I can only presume there is a driver clash somewhere but there are no conflicts in the device manager and it is running on an IRQ on its own.

The only other problem that I can see is if there is a PCI problem - but my Audigy sound card and HaupPauage TV card both work fine.

Any ideas how to troubleshoot this? I have emailed NetGear and posted a request at ASUS forums so we shall see what happens. (NetGear email tends to be pretty slow and unhelpful).

5122

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 12, 2006, 06:02 AM »

Thanks - that is really useful.

Actually one of the things I did was to go through the BIOS and turn all the autos off because I noticed the CPU was being auto overclocked and the FSB was too so I set them to stock values. I decided it was simpler to turn off most of the "Auto" settings even if I don't change the Auto value manually it is easier to debug instability if you know things are behaving properly.

Since doing this and changing to my Crucial PC2700 RAM 2x1Gb I have had a rock solid system. I have also managed to sort out the WiFi issues by updating the Hauppauge TV card drivers (after that there don't seem to be any issues).

Over the years I have given advice on troubleshooting new systems - especially knock back the hardware to absolute basics until you achieve something stable and then add items piecemeal - shame I haven't followed my own advice in this case 

I have used Prime95 before and have downloaded the latest version, but I also found "Hot CPU Tester" which actually runs lots of different stress tests on different parts of the system (including memory) ... you can use the 'Lite' version free.

The nVidia firewall installed automatically but I have removed it again as it was very annoying - since then I have reinstalled Windows again so I have a clean system.

5123

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 11, 2006, 08:18 PM »

Thanks dk70 - I have RMAed the Corsair sticks I have now for a replacement - if I get problems with those I will definitely try tweaking a bit.

The trouble is I can't find a clear guide on how to tweak memory timings and voltages. The RAM I had was 2-3-3-6-2T but the automatic BIOS values didn't reflect that (it was set to 3-3-3-8-Auto). As I understand it (which is not much) the BIOS auto settings are more relaxed and the suggested values are tighter therefore the auto BIOS ones should work and tweaking them to the tighter settings are only likely to make problems worse. I haven't checked the voltage settings and am not sure what they should be anyway!

Can anyone point me to a simple guide on how to set the correct timing values (there seem to be loads of cryptic values that can be tweaked but I am not sure if I set the standard values 2-3-3-6-2T whether or not I should tweak any of the other values or if they should be left alone) and how do I find the correct voltage settings?

The BIOS does seem to set the Crucial memory timings automatically to the suggested values on Crucial's site.

5124

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 11, 2006, 07:46 AM »

 

5125

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 11, 2006, 04:31 AM »

I ran MEMTEST+ for hours and memory probs started to appear - which would explain all the oddities.

I have now removed the Corsair memory and put in my old Crucial DDR 2700 memory while I RMA the Corsair stuff. Ran MEMTEST+ over night and the Corsair is rock solid.

System now flying along and seems stable.

Strange glitch with my Wireless PCI card seems to have been fixed by swapping cards around the PCI slots - lets hope it stays that way!