Clever s*ds - help required please!!

[clvrlad]

i'd
check all the connections
make sure everything is on
if the printer has a status indicator see what it says


if that fails try a different connecting lead

then cry


you can leave out the last one if you want :-p

[Laura]

When my printer stopped working, I uninstalled and then reinstalled it. Don't know if that is recommended by anyone technical, but it worked.

[giraffe]

Yes.

[gill216]

Windows has performed a critical update and totally screwed up my laptop. I have a strange looking internet screen, all my toolbars have gone and there doesn't seem to be anyway of getting them back. It also decided that I should have MSN as my homepage (I've managed to sort this bit out). I was going to restore back to before windows decided it knew best but I find all my restore points have vanished. I have no bookmarks either.

Any ideas?

[giraffe]

I think I have worked out why I can't always print from my new laptop. It seems to depend which side of the machine i plug the printer into. I suspect that some of the USb thingys aren't connected up / working.

[SparkOut]

Windows has performed a critical update and totally screwed up my laptop. I have a strange looking internet screen, all my toolbars have gone and there doesn't seem to be anyway of getting them back. It also decided that I should have MSN as my homepage (I've managed to sort this bit out). I was going to restore back to before windows decided it knew best but I find all my restore points have vanished. I have no bookmarks either.

Any ideas?

I'm guessing you've had an upgrade to Internet Explorer 9.
In the top right hand corner you will probably see an icon of a house, a star and a cog.
Click the star and your favourites list should hopefully show up. In the top left hand corner of the favourites list "window" there should be an icon with a green arrow, pointing to a (very indistinct) representation of the favourites list docked to the left. (Don't analyse that bit, it's a couple of rectangles with an arrow.)
Click that icon and the favourites list should dock to the side of the browser window.

To recover toolbars, right-click an empty part of the blue translucent area between the tabs and the home/star/cog icons. Pick the toolbars you want to show and click to show a tick against the ones you want.

Hopefully that will sort out the main things. You don't have to stick with Internet Explorer if you have another preference.

[gill216]

Thanks Sparkout. That worked. I now have my toolbars and my home page back

Next question. My tabs used to show along the top of whichever site I was on. Now it seems that I have to right click the icon at the bottom left of my screen and then go to open new tab. Is there a way around this, its the long way to go about opening a new tab?

The other problem I have is that it tells me that internet explorer is not my default browser and do I want to make it so. I keep telling it no but it insists. I've been to my control panel and my programme list and that tells me internet explorer is 64-bit. Then it tells me you cant have IE 64-bit as a default anyway. What is it playing at.? (I have windows 7). Shall I just delete IE altogether?

[SparkOut]

Thanks Sparkout. That worked. I now have my toolbars and my home page back

Next question. My tabs used to show along the top of whichever site I was on. Now it seems that I have to right click the icon at the bottom left of my screen and then go to open new tab. Is there a way around this, its the long way to go about opening a new tab?

The other problem I have is that it tells me that internet explorer is not my default browser and do I want to make it so. I keep telling it no but it insists. I've been to my control panel and my programme list and that tells me internet explorer is 64-bit. Then it tells me you cant have IE 64-bit as a default anyway. What is it playing at.? (I have windows 7). Shall I just delete IE altogether?

There should be a small empty "tab stub" to the right of any tabs you have across the top of the browser screen. That's the "open new tab" place - if you point the mouse at it, it should show a white page with orange star icon in the tab stub, and pop up a tooltip saying "New Tab (Ctrl+T)".
As for default browser... do you want to install something else to use for browsing the internet? There shouldn't be any reason why you can't have a number of different ones on the same computer, I have Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera all on mine for various testing purposes. I've a feeling where it insists on asking you to choose about having IE as the default is to do with the "Browser Choice" that Microsoft were forced to put in as a prevention of "anti-competitive practice". Have you got a new "Browser Choice" shortcut on your desktop? If you open that it will tell you you can try out different browsers. You can also tell it to shut up and leave Internet Explorer as the only one if you want. It's entirely up to you. Many people insist IE is "bad" but honestly, it's *all* simply a matter for you to choose.

[giraffe]

I have received an email that has a little paperclip sign by it. I thought that meant there was an attachment, but when I open the email there seems to be no attachment. Am I wrong about what the paperclip means or is it possible to have an invisible attachment? Other people have allegedly received the attachment.

Still having problems printing, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't and there doesn't seem to be anything I'm doing differently when it does and when it doesn't.

[Laura]

Does anyone know what to do if your computer starts telling you 'There are no more files' when you try to save anything? This currently includes word docs and excel docs. Not tried much else yet, but it's making life difficult. Using Windows 7.

Laura

[SparkOut]

These links may help:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 66a37148c9

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... e416fb58b3

[Laura]

Thank you! Think it's sorted now. Fingers crossed, anyway.

[Bunnylump]

OK peeps I've got Norton antivirus on this laptop and twice now in the past week it's said "there is a problem which requires attention". It then gives me a link to the "support centre" which just tells me to restart my computer. This then seems to make the problem go away. Anyone got any ideas what that's all about or if it's something to be concerned about please?

[clvrlad]

whats the link?
does it give any more info?

[Bunnylump]

Well, it did have some number code but I can't remember what it was. If it happens again I'll write it down.

[Scurra]

[Bunnylump]

So how did you manage to survive the experience??

[LAT]

Something I never got the chance to ask up in Withernsea so I might as well ask now.

How do I stop Word deciding how it wants me to format my writing instead of me deciding myself as I go along. Of particular annoyance is when I might for example have a brief list of, say, three things which I want to indent and number, but then want to go back to normal writing. How can I stop it numbering and indenting my next paragraph? I have wasted ages in the past trying to stop things like this happening.

[eirian]

Choose the Tools menu and go into Autocorrect.
There's various options in the Autoformat as you type tab which I always switch off. Nothing more frustrating than autonumbering... *

*well, obviously there are lots of things more frustrating - Scurra's puzzles for one

[MBH]

My alternate answer is to NOT put any formatting on as you type it. For those 3 items simply type....

The best dances for fitness are:-

Salsa
Jive
Cha Cha

Then carry on typing your next paragraph. It only takes a few second to then highlight the list and apply the bullet or numbering you want. [Worth while not leaving spaces between them, as you can do that in the formatting as well]