Clever s*ds - help required please!!

[maisie ladybird]

You've heard of Jim'll Fix It - well here's Gill'll Fix It - for me to learn line dancing.

[giraffe]

I have a really irritating problem with my laptop.

I have tried reading up online about it and I can find lots of people with the same problem, but I haven't a clue what they are taalking about to fix it.

Every few minutes my screen goes completely black, then after nearly a minute it comes back and a second later it goes again. It can do this five or six times and then is fine for a few minutes and then does it all over again.

When it comes back on it says "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered"

It has happened 44 times since 25th August and has happened 11 times in the past hour.

Any suggestions?

Just to let you know that my laptop has in the last few days stopped doing it's black screen thing. (I hope)

I'm wondering if there was an insect in there that has now died. A few days ago I was having to keep shaking it upside down every few seconds to revive it, but it has been fine for a couple of days, so I'm hoping it has recovered.

[LAT]

Fingers crossed the problem's solved.

[Bunnylump]

Surely shaking it upside down can't do it much good? Aren't there bits inside computers which whizz around and are quite delicate?

[clvrlad]

I have a really irritating problem with my laptop.

I have tried reading up online about it and I can find lots of people with the same problem, but I haven't a clue what they are taalking about to fix it.

Every few minutes my screen goes completely black, then after nearly a minute it comes back and a second later it goes again. It can do this five or six times and then is fine for a few minutes and then does it all over again.

When it comes back on it says "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered"

It has happened 44 times since 25th August and has happened 11 times in the past hour.

Any suggestions?

Just to let you know that my laptop has in the last few days stopped doing it's black screen thing. (I hope)

I'm wondering if there was an insect in there that has now died. A few days ago I was having to keep shaking it upside down every few seconds to revive it, but it has been fine for a couple of days, so I'm hoping it has recovered.

I didn't notice your original post
I had a similar problem with my laptop
It only happened when running certain software (a game in my case)
I eventually solved it by upgrading my memory (the game had been recently patched and was using too much memory)

without knowing what exactly your doing on your laptop i cant say whether that's relevant or not :-/

[dramaticat]

I've been without my iMac for the last three weeks. it was having problems of freezing up and beeping at me - sometimes in a very loud and alarming way. If I switched it off and switched it back on again, the problem was gone. It happened intermittently, sometimes several times a day, sometimes there were days in between when it was fine. Reading about other people's problems, they all seemed to have this when they first switched the machine on. I never had this - it only happened after I had been using it a while.

So I've been surviving on borrowing Mr dramaticat's iMac (he bought himself a MacBook while I was taking my iMac in for repair!) and using my PC laptop. Accessing documents hasn't been a problem, but of course accessing my calendar, email address book etc etc have!

I get a phone call yesterday to say it's fixed. (Rant here about having to phone them several times - hanging on for around 15 minutes to even get answered - to get an update on progress over the last three weeks. Why did they never phone me to say what they were doing?) Good, I say. We've replaced the logic board, he says. Oooh, that sounds serious, I say. He says, well the fault was so intermittent, we couldn't work out what the problem was. So we replaced the logic board anyway [geek with fingers crossed smiley here]

Hmmmm - do I want to take bets on if it's actually fixed or not

[Biscuit]

can anyone help me.

I am looking for a way of recording payment applications and contract information other than within our current accounting package which is pegasus opera and wondered how other companies manage it. Our system at present is too long winded and does not easily allow me to work out creditor days to make sure we are efficiently chasing up monies.

Currently we:
1. raise a payment application within a word processing package and send to client. We post a journal on the accounting package to account for the turnover.
2. when they make a payment which might be for the full amount of the application or less then we raise an invoice on opera. We then post another journal taking out the turnover that is now in opera and would be in twice if we didnt journal it out. When this invoice is raised we do this net of retention which we need to include in turnover so we do another journal increasing the turnover in respect of retention.
3. when the builder pays the retention monies usually in approximately 3 months and 1 year then we go through the same process as in step 2.
4. to keep track of all the payment applications and retentions i enter these on separate spreadsheets. effectively producing a very basic payment application debtors list.

Where there may be many payment applications i find that i have to make a mini manual statement which i do in excel with each project being a different tab.

This all sounds a bit of a mess and I wondered if anyone has a solution for me - i would even consider purchasing some software if this solved this.

Regards

Paula

[MBH]

When I worked at Mandta, the construction industry used to be one of the markets they sold software into - so I know a little of what you're talking about. Back then we wrote bespoke systems so they did exactly what the industry (or more specifically the customer) needed.

My answer would be an Excel spreadsheet as well - but I work from the principle you should only need to do any job once (or rather, in one place) and the whole picture should be visible. It puts me in mind of the job I did for the charity funded from 3 different sources (2 in advance and 1 in arrears) that needed to proportion each invoice out between the relevent funders and keep track of allocated as well as spent money, and then update the actual spend from the bank statements. [The opposite version to your 'retentions']

I certainly don't know any off-the-shelf answer, and I don't know exactly how a bespoke spreadsheet solution would converse with your accounting package - but we could talk.

[eirian]

while we were on holiday, my harddrive died. I've successfully reinstalled everything, but my graphics seem really odd. It's like my whole screen is stretched sideways.
I've checked the settings and they seem the same as they were, but it's like the screen is set on widescreen instead of normal - so everyone looks fat!

Any suggestions?

[LAT]

To Biscuit: - I don't know Opera either so can't really comment on that but I would have thought you could achieve most of what you want in Excel. I use it to monitor invoices raised, payments received and overdue amounts, all entirely separately from the actual accounting. And I just check the balances reconcile each month. But having said that we only have 4 customers!

But is this the person who handed in her notice at work only a matter of weeks ago?


Sorry Eirian, no idea about your issue!

[MBH]

But is this the person who handed in her notice at work only a matter of weeks ago?

I've got to admit - I did have the same thought.......

[Biscuit]

yes notice is still in the pending tray - dad is hoping it will disappear i think.

In the meantime I am trying to make life a bit easier - i am recruiting someone to do most of my job, cut my days down to 3 and work remotely but go in for core times and management meetings.

My mum has a couple of operations and I do not want to upset her too much before she has them. Her first one is in November.

[LAT]

It must be very tricky working for family. I don't envy you.

I do hope all goes well for your Mum though.

[Bunnylump]

Yes, me too. I hope everything goes smoothly - it's worrying when older people have to have operations, isn't it? I don't blame you for trying to keep things as level as possible for that reason. However, don't let things slip back to how they were, will you? Don't forget that your wellbeing and happiness is important too.

Sorry, I know nothing about accounting or computers, so can't help on the other queries, sorry.

[LAT]

My daughter has asked for help with four crossword clues. I helped with 3 of them but am stuck on this

One could be Gates in business? Not half.
8 letters -E-A-T-R

Any ideas anyone?

[clvrlad]

try megastar - gates inside mar (mar being half of market)

[LAT]

Ooh thanks. I'll pass that on to her.

[tricia]

Can some one explain why our air conditioning at work leads to huge variations in temperature, while some areas get extremely hot other areas such as mine are freezing . Today I have been sitting with a huge bulky cardigan on , my hands had started to turn blue with cold, whilst accross the othe side of the building people are wandering about in shirt sleeves complaining of the heat.
When we ask for the air conditioning to be turned down in our area - they say there is nothing they can do...as the other areas will complain it is too hot! I asked one of the engineers does this mean I have to stay cold.... The answer was Yes! - there was nothing else he could do I found that a most unacceptable answer.

What complicates the matter furthe is that I am part of the phone team so we are attached to the phones by means of a head set and "umbilical" cord

Senior management know my views on this!

Tricia

[giraffe]

Take a thermometer in with you, they have a legal requirement to keep it within certain limits. The other side is probably hot because of the sun on the windows, or the thermostat is in the wrong place.

[Bunnylump]

It's possibly because the whole floor is dealt with from one ducting system, or that you are at the end of the flow. Is there any way you could ask to be moved to another desk? I asked D about it, but he says he won't diagnose a problem without actually being able to see how it's set up and what the problems are (fair enough really). Giraffe is quite right, though, there are legal minimum temperatures you should work in. Although I suspect it's more the draught that is the problem rather than the cold?