Clever s*ds - help required please!!

[giraffe]

I think that was what my old one had, but it did have the numbers written on the letter keys in a different colour.
This doesn't seem to have a numbers lock or hidden numbers.

I'll just have to change my name by deed poll to giraffe.

[Wulfruna]

Incidentally, I have always got ö with ALT + 148 (ä = 132; ü = 129) which I use for German script. Not that that's any help for finding it without a number pad!!

[giraffe]

ö I got that one by opening word, clicking a little symbol, clicking the ö then copying and pasting from word. A bit long winded but possible. Still think it would be less hassle to change my name

öö


(Ever get the feeling you're being watched?)

[giraffe]

Thought I'd see if my new laptop could talk to our printer. So I printed a puzzle. No problem.

Then I tried to print something else and I can't get it to work. I have set our printer as the default printer, but when I click print (Which isn't on a toolbar at the top with this laptop, but there was a print option on the page) it only gives me a choice of two printers, neither of which I own. It also talks about network printers. What does it mean by network exactly? I have a cable going from the laptop to the printer, I'm not connected to anything else except the internet by the wireless thingybox.

[giraffe]

Oh it's alright, there was another column of the list of printers that I had to scroll across to! I've found my printer.

You can safely ignore me again now. I wish they wouldn't move things!

I was just hoping I wasn't sending lots of copies of my document to someone down the road's printer!

[LAT]

well as long as it was more puzzles you were sending them, should have them nicely intrigued

[giraffe]

No it was information about studying music at university! Far less important than being able to print puzzles.

[eirian]

As I've mentioned elsewhere, my laptop has developed a habit of shutting down. Now, when I switch it back on, all it does is offer me the option of starting up in safe mode, so I'm worried it doesn't do a scan disk.

So, I thought I'd run one manually (always has been worth running them occasionally anyway), but I can't find where it is on Windows 7.

As the laptop doesn't always seem to have overheated when it switches itself off, I want to check through all the options before I phone up Dell - after all, they'll probably just say 'have you tried.....?'.
(have run a full virus scan (Avast) which didn't find anything)

Any suggestions?

[clvrlad]

Right-click the hard disk that you want to check, and then click Properties.

Click the Tools tab, and then, under Error-checking, click Check now. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

To automatically repair problems with files and folders that the scan detects, select Automatically fix file system errors. Otherwise, the disk check will report problems but not fix them.

To perform a thorough disk check, select Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. This scan attempts to find and repair physical errors on the hard disk itself, and it can take much longer to complete.

To check for both file errors and physical errors, select both Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.

Click Start.

[giraffe]

That sounds horribly like what mine did a couple of weeks ago, haven't taken it to be repaired, but I went through a series of things that sound exactly like what clvrlad said and it didn't help at all, just keeps shutting down and restarting.

[Bunnylump]

That was the exact problem mine had. It kept shutting down for no apparent reason, then started only opening in safe mode. That was when it got all corrupted and needed to be rebuilt from factory settings by my friend. Then it kept doing it, which was when I had the two and a half hour phone conversation with Dell which culminated in me going into orbit. If you do ring them, Eirian, they will get you to run the Dell diagnostic thingy while you are on the phone. If it's anything like mine, it will come up as NOT having any kind of hardware problem. At which point I got put through to the software people who told me categorically that it could not be software if the whole power switched off. I go transferred back to the hardware department and was told I needed to spend more money on upgraded warranty for them to fix it. Mass explosion and lots of bad words ensued.

They eventually agreed to send me an engineer free of charge, who came armed with a new heat detector thing and a new motherboard. It hasn't done it again yet, so fingers crossed that has solved the problem.

[gill216]

Am I seeing a common link? Dell?

[Bunnylump]

Yes. But you would have thought that they wouldn't try to lie to me about the cause if this problem has been a recurring one, would you? To be fair, I can't fault the engineer who came out. He was brilliant. Mind you, I did suspect that they deliberately sent me a really nice engineer to deal with the "scary lady"!! I asked him if he'd come far. He said "Yes, it's odd. I normally only cover the Milton Keynes area, but they asked for me particularly to come to this one..."

I'm usually such a pussycat, too...

[eirian]

Thanks for that clvrlad - have done that.
I suspect I will end up phoning Dell about it, but I'll have to either get Sigur to do it, or phone them while he's not around as he tends to get really jumpy when I start shouting at people on the phone!
That's why I usually try to email people - then I can read through what I want to say to make sure it's ok, as well as run it past other people... I can get a little, well, aggressive, at times!

[Bunnylump]

Well, I hate to say it, but I almost always work on the principle of "if you're nice to people you get more out of them." This was not, however, the case with Dell. I tried being nice and it got me nowhere. It was only when I turned into scary bitch from hell that they did anything and started offering me anything remotely like good customer service. Which is rather a shame, actually.

[clvrlad]

im always nice even especially when im not :-p

[giraffe]

I can't get anything to print. The other day I had a problem with it and I can't remember whAT I did to get it to print.

I am connected by a cable to the printer. It is set as my default printer. It just seems to go into the print queue and sit there.

Any suggestions?

[giraffe]

Also when I first went into the puzzle I was trying to print and clicked on the little picture of the printer, it went to the print page, now it doesn't seem to be doing anything.

[giraffe]

When i go to the control panel and click on the printer it say status offline. Is that good or bad?

[Bunnylump]

Is the printer switched on?