Clever s*ds - help required please!!

[gill216]

I saw a really strange flying creature in Spain and would love to know what it was. None of us had ever seen anything like it before.

Any idea's anyone? Google isn't helping this time.

We first saw it in shadow and it it looked like it was the size of a small bat. It landed on a plant (unknown ) and was obviously feeding on the pollen. It had a body which we all agreed could be described as that of a snail minus it's shell but it was striped yellow and black like a wasp. Its wings were transparent and pearshaped and about 2" high. We weren't decided whether it had 2 or 4 wings because they were flapping so quickly. It hovered rather than flew.

It also appeared to have a large "mouth". Needless to say none of us got closer than a foot away from it and were ready to run at any given moment.

[SparkOut]

Anything like this?

This is a "pacific" club-tailed dragonfly, but the others are "yellow" or "zebra" club-tailed dragonflies

pacific-clubtail.jpg (21.46 KiB) Viewed 808 times

http://www.iberianatureforum.com/index. ... 5031;image

http://img2.photographersdirect.com/img ... 647129.jpg

http://www.maroonraccoon.com/images/pac ... ubtail.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2598/373 ... ee.jpg?v=0

These are all variations on a theme, but I think you've got a "Yellow club-tailed dragonfly"

[Laura]

Gah! That's 'orrible!!!! Glad I wasn't there - I'd have spent the whole time hiding inside away from the wildlife!!!

[Bunnylump]

I think it's beautiful. But then I did marry Donald.

I just love it when you see unusual wildlife when you're on holiday (or anywhere, come to that). My best spot was in Greece - we saw wild tortoises, pine martens and Scops owls.

When we were in Dorset a few weeks ago we saw an Adonis Blue butterfly,amongst other things, which was beautiful.

[Laura]

I'd probably have been ok with them - I don't think they'd have come too near. I don't like getting close to creatures. I was once at the butterfly world in Roundhay Park, Leeds, and this huge moth thing landed on my shoulder. At the time I had a long plait all down my back, which sort of killed the big moth when I manically shook my head to get it to go away and leave me alone. I later discovered it was quite a rare moth!

[clvrlad]

you and judith fraggle would get on good then im sure brian has photos her running and hiding from butterflys

[gill216]

My screen resolution suddenly decided to change itself - I've managed to fix this via the control panel. However, my bar along the bottom that tells me what I have open no longer allows me to click the required item to open it. I have to start over again having first closed them down via task manager. Alternatively I can use task manager and then switch to. This is a pain. Can anyone help?

[Biscuit]

not sure if this helps gill but on my computer the settings under control panel/appearance are ticked for "task bar and start up" - start up

privacy settings -
store and display recently opened programs - ticked
store and display recently opened files - ticked

This may have nothing to do with your problem but it mentions it in appearance.

Hope this doesn't make things worse.

Biscuit

[gill216]

Was worth a try- thank you- both my boxes are ticked too.

[MBH]

That sounds odd Gill - does it allow you to switch between programmes by pressing and holding the ALT button and then clicking the TAB to jump from one to another?

I'm making the obvious assumption that you're already reset the computer, etc, and the 'problem' is continuing.

[SparkOut]

Do you mean the taskbar buttons don't respond, or that the taskbar is not there at all to show any buttons?
The first is a bit bizarre, the second probably because of the resolution change and could probably be dragged back into view by pointing the mouse close to the edge of the screen and then when the "arrow" changes to a "drag" pointer, hold the (left) mouse key down while you drag the edge of the bar up.

[gill216]

Well, I thought I'd solved my problem. Its worse than I thought. I solved that bit but my google isn't proper google anymore At the end of today I'm restoring back to yesterday when everything was fine- making sure I've saved absolutely every file I could possibly need. The good thing is Norton is telling me everything is OK from that end. Can I trust it? I suspect that OH downloaded football on my machine late yesterday because he couldnt be bothered to set his up. He won't confess though

[gill216]

Sparkout- the buttons didn't respond- they will now. They were there. Even the task manager button wouldn't respond.

[MBH]

Sounds like a 'hijack' of some sort - restoring was a good call

[SparkOut]

Yes... but, er... I wouldn't be at all surprised for it to recur if it's the nasty Google hijacker, so be prepared for the worst still.
When you say your Google isn't "proper Google any more" what is different? Do the links show on the results page as normal, but take you to "other" pages when you follow those result links? (Oh, and if that is the case - DON'T try it again now just to see!)
Or is it a different "look" that you normally have? Or are you talking about the Google toolbar?

[gill216]

Sparkout I've restored back to yesterday. Everything appears to be back to normal. Norton tells me everything is fine.
Even my screen resolution is how it was yesterday. I fixed that earlier today but it wasn't exact. Oh- and I did a complete scan too.

Do I need to worry? If so what do I need to do? I have a spare hard drive upstairs and all the software I ever use too.

Google was just weird. It didn't look the same and some of the results had warnings attached to them that they may be harmful. Needless to say I didn't open them.

OH did download some football player thing. I found a search solver toolbar in my program list (installed last night) so he fessed up. He said he had to download something from windows to make it play. It was a footbal thing just in case anyone is wondering I found that too eventually and got rid.

[SparkOut]

It sounds like you got it sorted. There are some really nasty things that can restart themselves even though you think you've got rid of them, and they chain more nasties to come in from the internet and make it almost impossible to catch up with removing each nasty.
So, it's always definitely worth making sure you have clean, up to date backups of everything (that goes for anyone - please get an external drive you can copy all your important files to, something like this http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500GB-Bu ... -3pin-Plug ) but it sounds like the problem was contained and then solved with the system restore. I'd be confident but cautious, just in case.

[giraffe]

Hear hear to everything Sparkout is saying. It sounds like he is describing that awful thing we had on our computer in the summer that didn't go even when the little man came and did his thing. PC had to go away and be completely re-whatsited.

(Sorry for the technical jargon)

[clvrlad]

and people wonder why i always keep every disk and insist on having the install disks......

think ive a copy of ms dos kicking around at home
and i mustn't forget the copy of borderland c++ on floopy i got way back in 1993..

[SparkOut]

and people wonder why i always keep every disk and insist on having the install disks......

think ive a copy of ms dos kicking around at home
and i mustn't forget the copy of borderland c++ on floopy i got way back in 1993..

I expect you have some wizard installers too. Do you live anywhere near the coast?