DennisD

I had WinAntivirus on my pc a few months ago. I was using F_Secure at the time and it got through. F-Secure told me it couldn`t delete it either. Went down to PC World, and one of their Techs was brilliant. He studied the screenshots I`d taken down with me, and after 20-30mins (and this is with no charge) he downloaded onto a CD a program to remove said infestation, and printed out the instructions. Back home I went, and following the instructions to the letter, I restarted my puter in safe mode, (this was all new to me), and to cut a long short, eventually had the little runt in the grip of this removal application. Only one thing left to do; press delete. Pressed delete, and got the wonderful message "visit our website and and purchase the full version". What ? You take me through all this and then drop that little bombshell. Never been more p****d in my life. Binned the disk, and the instructions, and can`t remember the name of the flaming thing. Really cruel. Didn`t know about this place at the time, although I can actually see the funny side now. Regards Edit: Got rid of it with a destructive recovery. All I could think of at the time.

Only once have I ever bought anything on the web using my credit card. I`m really really nervous about doing this. Forgive me if this seems like a stupid question, but why is it not possible to purchase something, and then with one mouseclick completely remove all details of your card from your pc. Am I right in believing that once you make a purchase, your credit card details are there for anyone clever enough to find them. If I am wrong, I would love to know. Regards

Hi CraigMartin, I`m not sure if this will help, but there`s a whole page devoted to that particular update at this address. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927978 I`ve got this update on my pc and as you can see from the attached pic it is used only rarely, and I`ve no idea when or why. Maybe from the above info one of the other guys can make sense of it. Hope this is of some use. Regards

Hi rridgely, Thanks for the quick reply. Just acquired Spyware Blaster and SuperAntiSpyware. Been a FireFox convert for some time. Regards

Some stunning wallpapers and screensavers can be downloaded free from here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/planetearth/ Great site. Explore. Regards

Checked this out Humpty. No good. Doesn`t come with pipe and slippers. Regards

Very brutal as you say, but I don`t think they have many sexual offenders. Makes my eyes water thinking about it.

Reading this thread has got me wondering if I`ve actually got enough protection on my pc. There are so many applications available. I`m relying for the most part on Norton Internet Security with very regular update checks and regular full scans, which I think (and hope) looks for most things in way of viruses and adware/spyware, and it`s also my firewall. Regular Windows updates. Occassional visit to Gibson Research Corp. for Stealth Test. (Just carried this out and apparently I`m invisible) http://www.grc.com/default.htm I also run AdAware SE Personal on a regular basis. Should I have more cover? (better too much than too little sort of thing), or am I right in believing I have adequate protection. Regards

Here in the UK, I think most people, including myself, would suffer a bad winter as long as we knew we had a decent summer to look forward to. But we can have a bad winter, and come April/May time start looking for the nice weather to creep in, and it just never does. Before we can turn round, it`s coming up September again, and we`re still waiting for the good weather. With regard to this winter, hasn`t been too cold here in the N.E. of England, but we`ve had week after week of really strong winds. A lot of property damage, and a couple of fatalities. In fact, just before christmas, London even had a tornado. Real freaky weather most places now. Been a lot of news over the last year or so about the Gulf Stream, or the Conveyor as it`s called in some quarters. If this thing ever stopped, and they reckon the probability of that is getting higher as time passes because of all the cold fresh meltwater coming down from the Arctic and mixing with it. Then the Northern Hemispere would be in real trouble. The events in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" would, the experts say, become a reality. I could always ask Humpty if he wants a lodger down there in Oz. Regards

1984, you should have put your hat, gloves and boots on and skipped to the gym. Joking apart, that is seriously cold. Brass Monkey cold! Regards

Hi KS-FINN, I always used IE6, and downloaded Firefox out of curiosity. When I first got this computer, I didn`t actually realise that there was an alternative to IE. I dowloaded IE7 just after it came out, and thought it was really good, especially with the tabbed browsing. However, I still occasionally got the dreaded "Internet Explorer is not responding, and will have to close". I now use Firefox2 99% of the time, and it has never, so far, failed on me. (I`m probably tempting providence saying that). The 1% I use IE7 for, is visiting the microsoft update site. Which I respectfully hope is something you do. Regards

Going on from cowboys comments, the police over here have very recently been given new powers with regard to car crime etc.. Now if they stop some guy and find that he`s uninsured, no tax, no M.O.T., instead of simply being able to book them, take them to court, and fine them. (Which they never pay). They now have the power to confiscate the vehicle on the spot. I watched a program that my local TV station made on the first day these new powers came into effect. They accompanied a couple of patrolmen looking for the usual suspects, who weren`t hard to find. The knowing smirks on their faces, thinking, yeh, here we go again, another fine I`ve no intention of paying. The knowing smile on the face of the patrol cop just before he told the guy his pride & joy was being confiscated. And then the smirk, and the blood, draining from the runts face as realisation sank in. Man, it was the best thing I`ve seen for years. Regards

Hi Andavari, I`m sitting here at 22.47gmt, and your remarks about Terminator 3 have just rang a bell in the back of my mind. It must be a couple of years ago that my son got me a copy of this from one of his army pals in Germany. Hard to tell it was a "back-up", because of the professional looking labels etc.. But after a 10-15mins or so of watching it, there was something not quite right. Might have been scene changes, as you`ve pointed out, but it was also very jerky with sideways panning shots. Was this just a poor copy, or the result of a poor original ? I think I`ll pop down to my local rental store tomorrow. Always liked that movie. Regards

Hi hazelnut, Your comments are appreciated. I`ve had a look at scuba petes guide, and considering the fact that it`s the first time I`ve seen it, I`m quite chuffed that after my hours of head scratching, and time spent waiting for each process to complete with all the different applications I tried, (DVD-RWs were only 1 X 2 speed and took 30mins to burn & half that again to verify), I eventually came up with the right combination. There`s hope for me yet. But, imagine my amazement when I burnt a DVD-R disk for the first time. I didn`t have time to re-fill my glass of whiskey, and that lovely tinkling sound was telling me it was done. Enjoyed every minute of the head scratching by the way. Great feeling of satisfaction when it eventually comes right. Regards

Hi rridgely, I burn them to watch on main TV, and I really look after my discs, so maybe it`s just unneccessary to keep a copy just in case. I`m actually famous in my family for keeping anything in case it comes in handy. Does that that sound familiar to anyone ? My wife reckons I`ll not part with my own *****. Not true. Regards

Hi 1984, I remember ages ago in your part of the world that it was decided to let speeding villains go on their way rather than wipe out civillians in some mad chase. It must be a hard call to make, but there has been a number of fatalities over here as a result of these chases. Very debatable.

After scrolling down that massive HiJack list, and then seeing your reply, I was completely creased up. Nearly fell off my seat. Sorry F8Lplayer. But that`s a peach. Regards

Yes, thats worth thinking about. Just acquired a good wad of birthday cash. Good way to spend some. I love movies, and it would be a shame to lose any. Thanks again

Came across these pics recently, and was wondering what the police are driving in your part of the world. I would hope the drivers unleashed in these beasts are as good as the machines they`re driving. Keep watching that rear view mirror. Regards

Thanks for advice. Downloaded and tried 7-Zip. Apart from the fact that it took the best part of two hours, the 4571mb only went down to 4372mb, although the file had only been compressed to about 90% of the original. Good program to keep, but I think I will bin the ISO files after checking the movie is OK. Regards

I`m wondering if its worth it, or even possible, to compress large ISO files. They soon start eating up HD storage space. Don`t actually have a compression program of any kind at the moment. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

Hi, I`ve been doing little else over the last week but trying out various free DVD "Back-Up" solutions, and I have downloaded and tried quite a few, believe me, and some of the programs I looked at just did my head in. The following info therefore, is meant more for you less experienced Newbie members like me, rather than the experienced L.O.E.G., and will hopefully save you the hours and hours I spent trying to find the most userfriendly and technically simplest solution. My criteria was to find the best way to create a back-up with Main Movie only & one relevant soundtrack. Absolutely stripped down to the basic self booting minimum. Yesterday I backed-up "War of the Worlds", "The Descent", and "Sin City". All created in DVD 5 format (1 X 4.7gb disc). The combination that has given me, up till now, absolutely perfect back-ups has been:- DVD Decrypter: http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/dvddec-options.htm DVD Shrink 3.2: http://www.softpedia.com//progDownload/DVD...nload-4128.html Ripit4me 1.6.4.0 (10th Jan `07): http://www.ripit4me.org/guide.html Download and install all 3 applications first. I found the simplest and IMHO, the best way was to: 1: Rip the DVD with DVD Decrypter into an ISO file. 2: Load the ISO file into Shrink 32, and ReAuthor the files down to the basic minimum:- i.e. Drag and Drop the main movie into the left pane. Right Click in the preview window below, and listen and choose the correct audio file. Select Compression Settings and make sure that the audio you chose is the only box left ticked. 3: Go to Edit>Prefs>File I/O, and deselect "Burn With Nero". Select "Back-Up", and you should now have 2 options:- a: ISO Image File b: ISO Image File & burn with DVD Decrypter Select option b: Shrink 3.2 will now compress the already decrypted file to the destination of your choice, and then DVD Decrypter will burn it. All you have to do is swap discs between each process. I thought this method better than Shrink 3.2 having to decrypt and compress at the same time. Ripit4me is a new application I found that works in tandem with Decrypter & Shrink, and will only be needed if the latter two have any problems with the latest encryption methods such as ARccOS and RipGuard. There is a very detailed help file on the download page. Finally: As I was doing a sort of trial and error thing with all these programs, I used DVD-RW discs to save having to chuck loads away. My first perfect copies played perfectly until about 50 mins into each movie, and then beagan sticking. But only on my main DVD player. They played fine on the PC, same on my PS2, and also on my daughters ?20 DVD player in her bedroom. This puzzled me for ages until I burnt a DVD-R, and tried that. Problem solved. My main DVD player just dosen`t handle DVD-RW very well. I hope the above will be of help to anyone trying to find their way round the problems of Backing-Up DVD`s with FREE software. Will be happy to pass on screenshots of any of the above. Regards. PS. Some of the software tried:- DVD FabDecrypter: Ashampoo burning studio: DVD ReBuilder: Shrinkto5basic with Machinist2dll: and others I`ve tried, uninstalled and forgot their names. Edit: FAO Moderator. Still being new, wasn`t sure whether or not this was worth making into a new thread. Advice would be welcome.

Hi Hazelnut, Mine says 453MB. I think I`m trying to pick up too much information too soon here guys. Last few days I`ve been reading just about every post in the forum by you guys giving advice, clicking through to every link and picking up stuff from every site visited. And sometimes I`ve found it irresistable to jump in and ask "what`s that for ?", what happens when you push this ?", etc etc. I`ve looked back on some of the posts and thought- "Wish I could delete that". Never mind. If you guys lived with a wife and daughter who had no interest in computing at all, and then discovered a place like this, you might be like a kid in a sweet shop as well. Great thing is, I`ve gotten myself some essential new software that I can trust, and I go to sleep at night knowing that you LOEG will dig us novices out of just about any hole we put ourselves in. So for a while, I think I`ll do a bit more reading, and just an occasionall tap on the keyboard. Great Forum Regards Edit: Spacing

Just downloaded Faststone Image Viewer after reading about it on here. Appears to be really fast and the 2.9 beta2 version supports camera card downloading. Love the left click zoom tool. Also downloaded the Faststone Capture Tool from next page over from TeeJay3800s above link. http://www.faststone.org/download.htm Never had a screen capture tool before, but this one IMHO seems to be really good. Love the "Scroll Down The Whole Page" capture. Regards

Hi Guys, You`ve piqued my curiosity with this page, although the subject is mostly going over my head. I didn`t get a CD with my pc (XP SP2) bought in June `06 from PCWorld, but I`ve just had a look, and I have four i386 File Folders in Windows: C:\WINDOWS C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache C:\WINDOWS\System32\ReinstallBackups\0000\Driver Files C:\WINDOWS\System32\ReinstallBackups\0002\Driver Files This is obviously something to do with reinstalling, but what exactly, my as yet uneducated mind can`t fathom. I`m already trying to pick Andavaris brains in another thread (Backups), but an "as simple as you can make it" explanation of what this means exactly, would definitely put you all on my Christmas list. I`ve mentioned in the other thread that I have a 6gb recovery partition on my hard drive for reinstalling. Is there a connection between that and the i386 folders ? I carried out a destructive recovery a while back and reinstalled from the partition. I wasn`t asked for a disk. Was the partition classed as a disk by the OS ? Can you League Of Most Extraordinary Gentlemen tie all these wavy loose ends together for me ? Or would it be easier to knit soup ? Regards