Computer Questions (formally Your Desktop)

I may give this a try.

What operating system do you have?

Phew....thank God you're not using windows xp 'cause i had some major problems with those and sticks that have been into university / college computers, despite the antivirus software. Windows xp handles even the slightest virus awfully, it's a disaster. Windows 7 operates ages ahead of xp in regards to viruses and trojans. I'd say that there's very little risk if you're using a good antivirus program (http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/v2/) but to be 100% sure, you should have a 2nd pc if possible, which doesn't have crucial stuff in it and put that stick in there first to be cleaned via anti-virus, and then into the major - main pc. Oh and can't stress this enough: always backup (even twice if possible) your crucial data, always always.

With us having 2 PC - a desktop and a laptop - we've divided up the workload between the two. Anne and I use the laptop and the kids the desktop (though Anne and I do use the desktop - call me a traditionalist but the desktop is a "proper" computer.)

So the "work" will be being done on the laptop. So far, Anne's using the stick in the desktop. So, I'll keep the laptop free of memory sticks from outside.

As far as backups are concerned at the moment I have an image backup of the desktop and I'm trying to get to grips with Robocopy on the laptop. I've been having problems getting the various paths sorted out so that the laptop knows which directories to copy from which users to their proper places on the external hard drive. And there's a access permission issue with some *.ini files on the laptop that are not being transferred over to the external drive using Robocopy. But I do have the majority of the documents/photos/music files backed up.

I'm still getting to grips with the new format for Windows Explorer and this new system doesn't seem to be as straightforward as XP was for copying the files (see above).

Thanks for the info, Demetris. I've gone for a free software package and I've been very happy with it. There's been a couple of times when I've had warnings about something suspicious trying to happen and it has dealt with them just fine. I've gotten into the routine of checking manually for updates 1-2 times a day so it's always up-to-date by the end of the day. And the system scans I do are always free of any minor or major alerts.

So, it's so far so good!

Now that sounds properly annoying...
(Incidentally, that level of security is available on XP as well. Very first thing I switched off.)

UAC on XP?
No such thing (discounting 3rd party apps).

I just meant elevation/demotion of priviliges: "users" vs. "administrators".
PLENTY safe. If you're able to screw up even over THAT level of security, I guess you don't deserve a PC.

(That said, UAC is way better to keep user CONTROL...but that's a completely different issue).

This may help:

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bi … swer=96816

I have a question for anyone who's a lot more knowledgeable than me.

My internet connection keeps dropping out when I am browsing - but it just seems to be when I am using Opera as the browser. Using either Internet Explorer or Chrome the dropout doesn't seem to happen.

Looking at the router everything seems to be fine. And when the dropout happens the router seems able to reconnect (the connection LED goes back from red to green.)

Has anyone heard of connection dropout instigated by Opera? And is it possible for a browser to do this?

No. There's not many tabs open at all. My traffic isn't very high at all. But I've been using Chrome now for an hour or two and I haven't had a dropout yet.

All the indications are that it seems to be browser-related.

Could it be a bug in the recently-issued update to Opera?

I've had a look on the Opera Community forum but I don't understand it enough to know whether there's a link to what I'm seeing.

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/to … ?id=772592
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/to … ?id=613832

These are showing some Opera-specific problems not seen in other browsers but I don't know enough to see whether it's related.

As a side note: David is on the PC now that's physically cabled to the router and will be using Opera. I'll see whether there's any issue when he uses it.

I suppose it could be an ISP problem.

I'll monitor over the next few days to see whether things settle down if there's nothing that's obviously wrong.

I've not had a dropout with Chrome when I changed over to it this afternoon. At the moment I'm just trying to exclude whether my experience could be browser-related (though it seems unlikely).

It surely must be more a reliability issue with my ISP (usually the connection is very stable) and that it may just be coincidence that it's always happening with Opera. Opera is what I'm using 95% of the time at the moment.

As far as Opera vs Chrome. I originally chose Opera over Internet Explorer but then Opera got quite sluggish some time ago and I then switched to Chrome - because of the speed. However - as it turned out this was probably because of my old PC - I felt that all the background updates that Google places on your PC when you install Chrome were compromising the performance of my computer. So I went back to Opera.

Now, I'm giving Chrome another chance to see if this problem I have at the moment can be resolved by moving away from Opera. It has been inconvenient moving over my sites from Opera's "Speed Dial" (an Opera function I love) and I'm hoping to move back to Opera if/when the problems I am having are fixed.

Computers, while logical, still mess up. I'm sure there is some line of code on your hard drive that is causing the problem.