redhawk

Do you have the drivers installed for the webcam, do you have software to check if it's functioning?? When access a webcam via Flash web site you must right click the window and select "Settings.." Next click the last icon next to "Close" (Camera source) and from the pull down list select your webcam. Richard S.

Oops, I made a typo yes I meant VirtualBox not Virtual PC :\ You can still get Virtual PC for XP but you need version 2007 though the latest version seems to be for Windows 7 only. If you're using XP Home Edition the installer will say "Host OS Not Supported" just ignore it and continue the installation. FYI: VirtualBox supports 2 different sound cards, I would strongly recommend using ICH AC97 over Sound Blaster 16. As for bootable Linux CDs I would like to add DSL (Damn Small Linux) to the list, it's only a 50Mb ISO and packed with lots of useful programs. :) Richard S.

Of the 3 I would recommend VirtualBox it's easy to install and I think it has the best user interface. WMware Player does run slightly faster and has better USB passthrough but it's a real pain to download. Richard S.

It might be worth taking note that you can run an OS inside Windows with no need to burn CDs or to reboot your computer. All you need is virtualisation software such as Virtual Box, WMware or Microsoft Virtual PC. Speed of execution is near native although you may experience performance hits with intensive graphics operations like video playback. Having said that there are several advantages in using virtual machines over a real machine such as: - fast CD-ROM emulation because ISO images are accessed from your IDE/SATA hard drive. - snapshot mode for instant shutdown or reload of operating system state. - networking, sound and graphics compatibility guaranteed, Linux with new hardware can be problematic. - VMware supports USB passthrough so devices connected in Windows will appear the same in Linux. Richard S.

Jpegs can store thumbnail information with the actual image this is why in Recuva previews look normal but not after recovering. Richard S.

You should also be aware that Linux can read NTFS partitions fine but it's generally considered unsafe to write to NTFS partitions. NTFS has been reverse engineered because Microsoft will not release the specs for their NT file system. Live Linux CDs are useful for people with dead OS or just want to play around with something new that's not Microsoft. Linux cannot run Windows apps natively although there is Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) but it's limited and has a tendency for crashing. Richard S.

I found this post perhaps it maybe be related to your problems. Richard S.

I've tested Malwarebytes (free version) and I have to be honest it's ability to generate false positives seems to be it's best feature rather than doing the job properly. One of the main irritations so far was the inability to select files or folders before scanning you can only scan entire drives. Also results of flagged files can only be displayed if you abort or wait for the scan to complete. Is this because I'm using the free version?? False Positives examples: a) I had a text file stored in my profile folder with the following data: Malwarebytes flagged this as: Malware.Trace I had a copy of telnet.exe saved as t.exe in c:\windows\system32 Malwarebytes flagged this as: Backdoor.Bot So what are they doing here?? flagged by filename clearly they haven't check the code inside the executable yet. c) Files packet with UPX usually get labelled as Trojan.Downloader or some other nonsense. If you unpack and rescan they're not flagged anymore which proves a point their heuristic scanning is bollox. UPX is open source, the decompression libraries are readily available so I think there's no reason not to use them. d) Malwarebytes also flagged several legitimate programs/demos and skips quite a few of my virus collection :\ I'm sure people will disagree with my opinions on Malwarebytes but I certainly won't be recommending it to anyone until I see some improvements. Richard S.

Yes, I have a HND in electrical and electronic engineering. Richard S.

I so don't miss my Smith chart Richard S.

You said both laptops were crashing, if bdftdif.sys was the cause then it's highly likely bit defender was the problem. Try uninstalling see if that helps or check for updates perhaps there is a known bug in the software?? Richard S.

It's deliberately coded not to touch pagefile.sys whether it's locked or not. If you want to defrag it you must edit the executable and patch out pagefile.sys twice (stored as unicode text). Richard S.

Blue Screen Of Death happens when Windows detects a memory violation in kernel space and shuts down the OS because it's now unstable. Most crashes are caused by buggy device drivers, however faulty hardware, bad RAM and corrupted file system can also contribute. Do you have any information such as STOP code this would help determine the type of crash?? To find the STOP code use Nirsoft's BlueScreenView and click on the most recent crash dump. Richard S.

Recuva can only recover what it finds if clusters have been damaged or overwritten then you're out of luck as it would appear to be the case. Richard S.

Have you checked Device Manager for yellow markers?? Richard S.

I'm not sure if the Windows defragging API supports simultaneous drives but even if it did I doubt there would be any speed difference than defragging drives one after another. To defrag a hard drive data must be read and written via the IDE/SATA controller which would have a set maximum transfer rate. If you was to defrag 4 drives at the same time then each drive would only have 1/4 of the controller's bandwidth to use. As you can see 4 * 1/4 = 1 Richard S.

Hi Mike, you were wise not to pay these people to fix your computer $130 is grossly over the top for what appears to be a simple problem. I don't use wireless printers myself however since you can still use it then a) I doubt there's much wrong with your computer or system registry, b) it's highly likely to be an issue with your wireless router, perhaps there's interference/low signal with the set wifi channel?? Richard S.

Recuva says "Excellent" when clusters of deleted file are not in use by other files, this doesn't mean what you recover will be free from errors. Richard S.

Does that make the assumption that the Yahoo Toolbar should NOT be installed on the target machine?? Richard S.

Every time I've installed Firefox I disable Java but today a web site I visited made Java crash but not Minefield. So I thought weird, I'll go and disable it only to discover someone had removed the option to disable Java. Java or no Java I think it's a bad idea to remove this option, however I solved my problem by renaming one of the DLL files thus rending it inactive. I could uninstall Java but I need it to run Sun's J2ME emulator. Richard S.

It appears Java is enabled by default (not Java Script) there's no menu option to disable it or using "about:config" Is this going to be the norm for the latest version of Firefox?? Richard S.

Running system restore was not a good idea because with all the files moved around it's highly likely clusters belonging to deleted files have been overwritten. As for deep scan this won't help because if the files are damaged they will remain damaged, however still run Recuva and see what it finds first. Richard S.

Minefield runs plugins as a separate process I guess this was done to prevent badly coded plugins like Flash /Abat from crashing the browser. Crash protection sounds like a good idea but my experience with Minefield and plugins has been less than favourable to the point of being annoying. If you visit a Flash infested site like MySpace or you're watching videos then sometimes plugins can become sluggish or unresponsive. For example YouYoube videos will play but sometimes the panel stops responding i.e. cannot stop pause or fast forward (unless I use task manager). Richard S.

I don't know about daily but I do love a bit of Weebl and Bob (animated flash cartoons) Richard S.

Yet another release of Speccy and still it falsely claims my AGP is clocked at a whopping 256x. It's been my 6th or 7th bug submission (now my last) and still it persists and without explanation. Other programs such as Everest Home Edition can correctly identify my card as 4x so why not Speccy?? Does anyone from the coding team actually read the help forums and bug submissions?? While testing Speccy I had an error: "The specified service has been marked for deletion" any ideas what that was about?? and finally the RAM values are rounded incorrectly: I have 1.25GB of RAM (512MB + 512MB + 256MB) not 1.3GB as claimed. Richard S.