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Hi, Quick question and something I've resolved by randomly pressing loads of keys at once before, but need to do again. The monitor, has soon as it gets into windows, is displaying everything upside down. Obviously someone has pressed something on the keyboard as I managed to sort it before by pressing a load of keys. What are they?

No, off the shelf. Computer active recommend a Dell and an Evesham.

Yeah that freezer trick worked for me too! However, I've just had a hard disk fail and this company got all the data recovered within 12 hours for about £100! They got the disk friday and I had the CD's in the post by Monday. They're called easyrestore.co.uk and I've been really really pleased with the service.

only very basic games really. Do want it to be able to handle movie making though, burning to dvd without hic ups, and for it to be useful for the next 5 years.

Office, Browsing, movie making and gaming and nothing more taxing than that

Sorry if this comes up alot. I have about 500- 600 quid to spend on a good general purpose family machine. What shall I go for. Should I be looking for a vista machine or is it too soon? What figures should I be looking at? I'm guess at kleast a gig of ram, that's about the extent of my knowledge. Also, it seems as if D processors are rated more highly than these dual core ones, well by price anyway, why? Thanks howard

What's re RIS!??!

Thanks but what is PE? I tried to get the files off my hard disk using my ide to usb adaptor but while it does the "do DO" sound when plugged into a working laptop, a "e:" or whatever doesn't come up to actually "open" what's on the hard disk. I.E there's no icon in "my computer" Any ideas? Or is this yet another hard disk I have with data gone forever!!?

I'm sure this has been asked many times but having had my computer "recover from a serious error" without a solution from MS loads of times, it's now failed just saying after the "ergo" screen "system32/config/system" The last I ever saw of the computer was when it started to do a bulk memory dump which was interrupted by a low power supply. Windows says I could repair by putting in the recovery CD but nothing comes up when I do that i'e' no new screen, nothing changes, just the black background and doesn't even get to the windows stage. Any ideas? I've had 2 laptops fail after 2 heavy years use...

I can't convert all the fles in one go, just each one indivdiually. Any other ideas for clipart?

Bugger, it's got a cannabis leaf in it!

Ahh, I've sort of managed it but the pictures are really small and low res. Any ideas?

Can't believe how helpful people are here! Right, trying it out on my computer... Extracted all the files but it's really confusing, i can see "transport" "animals" etc etc etc but the image is a tiny (looking) "png" image and next to it is a text document and svg file. How do I get it into the usual word location of "insert" "clipart"? They're tiny too!

Hi, I could probably find a few office xp disks but not the ones that match. Does that matter? Do I have to reinstall office entirely? I have just downloaded open office. Will this solution work on the old win 98 machines too? How do I convert the images?

Sorry if this has been posted before... All our computers are a bit of a mess when it comes to bloody clip art. For some reason they either: 1. Don't have any so when you go onto "insert" "clip art" in word, for example nothing much will be there or, even more annoying there will be the thumbnails but not the actual picture and sometimes it says we need to put the office cd in. Now I don't know which office cd matches which computer and perhaps some of the cd's are lost so trying to use that is out of the question What I want is this: Clip art that somehow embeds itself into microsoft applications so the children can just look for clipart in the usual way. I definitely do NOT want an annoying clip art program where you have to load the cd in every time. I want to get rid of the old clip art that in some cases are merely previews and are just annoying. I want to find, as cheaply as possible a good clipart/photo program so children can have access to clip art through powerpoint and word I've just spent a tenner on some focus clip art and it was crap, requiring cd's to be put in to use it and you also have to use it's viewer. Any ideas? I wish there was something free I could just download?!!! Thanks for your help!!!!! Howard.

Thanks for everyone's help. This forum is such a breath of fresh air from the way some other forums (non computer stuff) can turn out to be sometimes!

Ric, Robert Hall in cheltenham do ICT furniture. They've given me plans for desks that will fit the edge of the hexagon shaped room. You may find them useful. Thing is, you always need 3 quotes... Anyway, I'll be more specific, thanks to everyone for their help so far! Quotes are coming in at about 19k (!) and I think some of these are ott. Realistically we've got 12k, perhaps a touch more. My original computer spec was 10 machines with: 512 or 1 gig ram (which shall I get?) AMD chips but not sempron or intel celeron (however I've been told that sempron or celeron chips would be fine) 17 inch flat screen optical mouse usb's at front Windows xp pro with office small business edition No anti virus needed, we get sophos Desktop machines with the type where the monitor sits on the box, rather than ugly towers but this furniture may allow the towers to be hidden. Internet for each computer File and (you're right!) print server. Something simple I can understand and is reliable. One HP colour laser printer (which one?) I'd include the 5 toshiba's too which are about 3 years old.. What about this windows vista? Should I wait until this comes out? What will be the min spec vista can run on? I don't want redundant computers! Regarding the internet, all I know is, it's SWgfl and next to my room there is a box with loads of blue wires coming out of it which then go to each computer in the school. The computers don't talk to each other at the mo and i'll pretty much leave the classroom computers alone. I was originally tempted to have a wireless system in the suite so I didn't have to worry about piping the network cables around the room but have been told that this is a bit weird for a permanent suite with desktop machines and it would be very slow for 15 computers. What do you think? Just to add, the admin/office side of the school is seperate. The only stuff stored on the server will be childrens work, perhaps the odd bit of staff work but they have their laptops.

Brilliant! Thanks! What a great site this is!

I think this forum is going to be a godsend for me! I am trying to organise installing an IT suite into my primary school. We have to get 3 quotes so I've done that and all the solutions differ greatly! We currently have 10 laptops, the best 5 (which are 256mb toshibas running xp pro) would be upgraded (if you think it's worth it) with ram and included in the suite to save money. I would really like a server, merely to act as a file server really so children can go on any computer in the room and find their work. I don't think we need anything complicated for the server but we have had some sophisticated proposals! My questions to you are: 1. Do we really need tape back up? It's a primary school not a bank?! Would having a pair of hard drives, with one acting as back up be sufficient? 2. We have SWgfl provided. There isn't a proper network in the school, all computers run independently with one or two access points in each class. The suite currently has one access point because it used to be a classroom but we're having trunking put in with sockets and, because I want each computer in the suite to have the internet, the trunking will also have 15 access points. Now, do you need a server to enable these 15 machines to run the internet (properly and quickly) or can you just have a router that takes its "signal" from that one socket or perhaps independently from where the internet comes in? (not far from the proposed room, about 10m away) If the server went wrong, would you still have the internet for these 15 computers? Any other pitfalls to avoid? What kind of tables did you use? It's a hexagon shaped room!

Thanks, that's really helpful. I think payment otions being what they are, the county recommend crucial for the school but crucial don't list my laptop. Are you able to tell me what chip I should order from them exactly? Sorry, know this is a big ask, but there are so many options!

I could do with some help here. Two questions. Our primary school staff laptops are 256mb. I know some staff are really using their laptops and it's worth upgrading the memory to 512 but, really, is 256mb still an ok size for most? I don't want problems with staff laptops for a year now. 2. I want to upgrade my laptop (ergo ensis) from 512 to 1gig but it's already full up with 2x 256mb. It's an asus L4500R but crucial memory scan doesn't recognise it in its options for ASUS based laptops. Is there another asus board that would be similar so I can use that spec to orer chips? Thanks, Howard.