difinity

I have a mini 9, an awesome bit of kit. I upgraded the wireless card to one that does A,B,G and N. It has an 8Gb solid state drive, so no moving parts at all. It has a built in 3G card as well so internet everywhere. I know the new mini 10 comes with a hdd only, IMO a downside in something so small.

The .sif error suggested a read error, as you've tried 3 original discs i didn't think it was that. You could also try to check the hdd for bad sectors. Go to the manafacturer and download their diagnostic software.

Have you tried a different cd/dvd drive to install the media from?

I've seen/repaired a few laptops where the cable between the laptop and screen has become damaged through repeated bending of the cable as the lid opens and closes.

My mistake, i doubled checked last night and it has a score of 7.7

The spec of your pc is similar to one i built at the weekend, apart from the one i built had a 80Gb intel SSD, it got a score of 7.5 in windows, mighty quick for under £200.

There's also a Vista repair disc available from here, x86 and x64 versions. Download: Windows Vista x64 Recovery Disc — The NeoSmart Files

I repaired a USB stick which had suffered the same fate a couple of weeeks ago. I use an old IDE cable cut down as the wirer to join between the flash board and the USB connector. Take your time when desoldering the USB connector from the board you don't want to pull the contact points off the board. If i can find a camera i'll take a photo as i still have the repaired stick on my desk.

What about a fan/s powerer by usb ? [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Mobile-Fan-External-Cooling/dp/B00080G0BK]Amazon.com: Thermaltake Mobile Fan II External USB Cooling Fan - Us: Electronics[/ame]

You could plug in another graphics card either a PCI one or another PCI-Express depending on your PC. I am currently running 3 monitors off 2 PCI-Express cards.

I don't think its a Windows 7 problem, as i have just booted up ubuntu from a cd and it shows the same problem. Intranet and our network is fine, but no access to the internet. I've run the ubuntu cd on the other identical laptop and no problems there.

It's IPv4

It's DHCP

I have just completed a Win 7 install on a Dell laptop. It connects fine to our network and i can see everything on our network. However it won't connect to the internet. If i ping addresses it resolves the IP address of the site, and i have the proxy correct. I have an identical laptop next to it i have been comparing the settings and i can't seem to find anything different. Can anyone help, this is driving me crazy.

I have a 2.5" drive i am recovering from at the moment. My windows PC refuses to boot with it attached with an adapter, however booting a laptop with an ubuntu cd, the hard drive mounts and i can recover most of the files.

I've had problems with drives being recognised when using a USB adapter. Might just have been a poor one, but i always use a 3.5 to 2.5 IDE adapter.

There are some CMOS/BIOS clearing utilities on the UBCD that i have used to clear passwords before.

A portable version of this software has been released. I find it great for removing fake antivirus software and other gremlins. SUPERAntiSpyware.com - SUPERAntiSpyware Portable Scanner

testtest, i've sent you an email, hope it does the job

I've used Ontrack before with a drive that was totally dead. Payed something like an initial £100, then they gave me a login so i could see what files were going to be recovered. An excellent service.

I bought a cheap £40ish PCMCIA creative sound card off ebay for the job of recording a couple of DJ friends as the mic socket was mono. I also used audacity to do the recording.

We have several trolleys here, and they all have access points mounted in or on top of them. The worst idea ever..the cables get damaged and if the laptops try to connect to the access point before it, itself is connected to the network then that causes problems to. It's not good if the network cable gets pulled out of the trolley half weay through the lesson when kids have work to save either. We are hoping to remove the access points from all of the trolleys and go for a proper managed system.

Coffee !! .....and good problem solving skills.

I pay about an extra £60 on my house insurance a year. There is a £50 excess to pay on any claim, but not only does it cover my phone but also my laptop, for loss or accident.

Thanks for your replies so far, i have been reading about sysprep and trying to get my head round it and why it is needed for a while, i like the idea of having fewer images to look after. I will continue to read some more. @bandgeekmafia78 Seems the images were not backed up, and the RAID on which they were stored became corrupted due to overheating.