Oh no! More boring computer problems! Oh no!

I went back to the shop and the shop guy told me that all it means is that the BIOS needs updating, an easy enough job. I've just tried to update the BIOS now and it says 'You do not need to update BIOS'. So now I'm stumped. Have I wasted £40 on a useless bit of plastic or can I sort it out so my laptop can have 1gb of ram? Is a laptop from 2003 likely to be capable of managing 1gb of ram?

You may not be able to get that far, in which case you could run a hard drive recovery utility to harvest the data. I can't think of any good ones that are free, but they may reveal themselves to you after a google search.

Sym Sym, not sure if a hard drive works the same way but I had a memory card full of photos that became corrupt. I downloaded PHOTORECOVERY 3.07 and it retrieved them all no probs. This probably wouldn't work for you but it's worth a try - try Emule for a 'demo' version..

How useful are these data recovery services? Can these people do things that average computer user cannot?

The other is when there's physical damage to the drive (i.e. it makes horrible sounds and won't appear in the BIOS as a bootable device). Then you can send it to a company like Drive Savers and prepare to spend $600-1700 for recovery. Even if they can not recover files, you're out the $$$. They do have capabilities that the standard user or your company's tech guy don't, in that they can scrape the data off layer-by-layer and reconstitute it into something usable. Sometimes. I would never recommend this option unless you seriously can not live w/o what you have on your computer.

However, it can't actually access it. When I try and set it up, it gets stuck on "renewing IP address" and fails to connect to it. Anything I can do to make it connect to our wireless network successfully?

That means it's trying to find a DHCP server, and can't. Giving it a static IP address on the same subnet will work, but if you're trying to use a DHCP server it might cause clashes in the future.

quickie - is there a way in WinXP to minimise all windows with one click, like you can in win98?

I could probably write you a command-line one myself - but you'd have to install Perl on your laptop.

-- Ste

or if you want "like Windows 98" right click on the taskbar, and turn quick launch on. That "show desktop" button will be in there. (or right-click > show desktop, even quicker).

purchase laptop #2 later that day, april 05. intend to get laptop #1 fixed, but PC World cover tell me that due to it being a software problem, it is not their problem. i work out that if i reinstall windows, i get laptop working perhaps, but also lose 4 years of writing on laptop HD which i have cleverly yet to back up on External HD.

april 06, power socket on laptop #2 is seriously unreliable - making a connection is a tricky business of tweaking and twitching, and sometimes it feels like the only way to keep power going/battery juiced is to physically hold cable plug in place. this is not good.

i can get laptop #2 fixed under PC World Cover, if i could find paperwork, but will be without laptop for abt 3 days i guess, which is NOT GOOD (tho i have backed up laptop #2 HD on external HD). a friend has offered to try and get files off laptop #1 and put on external HD, but #1 it is a friend, so i don't want to pressurise them into doing it, and #2, i don't know if its possible. if it did work, i could theoretically 'fix' laptop#1 and operate it while #2 is being fixed.

argh. woe. and it is, of course, all my lazy ass's fault. but is there any way of feeding laptop #2 electricity via some source other than the power cable/socket?

as you may have guessed, i know not much about computers.

Don't PC World do 'while you wait' repairs, or something?

so this does sound do-able, then?

http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

if it would be safer in some ways, how would I plug it: between the modem and the wireless router?

Yes.

I wonder if my wireless router already give me the same protection.

Yes.

I was thinking something along the lines of

alias ssh="ssh username@remote-machine 'setenv DISPLAY `~/get_vpn_ip.sh`; xterm &'"

...but that doesn't seem to work.

Any ideas?

ssh -X user@host "VARIABLE_THERE=\"$VARIABLE_HERE\" bash -il"

i have a mac. i also have a linksys nslu2, and a lacie external drive. the linksys has formatted the lacie to ext3, and i mount the drive remotely and it appears as a locally connected drive. so, for, all good.

the thing is, i want to be able to do this in the terminal window. but it wont do it. something about an 'unknown or special file system'. what should i do, in the terminal to be able to mount this? (yes, i know i could just do it in finder, but i want to know why this wont work).

is it something to do with hfs and ext3? i dont know much about this, and ive tried to work it out, but i dont really get it

Try running the mount command from the terminal, without any options at all, when the drive is mounted in the Finder. That should just list all mounted drives, and their filesystem types, which should be a clue as to what options you need to pass to the mount command to mount it manually.

//WORKGROUP;music@LACIE/MUSIC on /Volumes/WORKGROUP;LACIE (nodev, nosuid, mounted by charltonlido)

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