Al de Man

Do you have a desktop PC or a laptop? If it's a desktop and you're looking to carry on using this camcorder for a while, then it's worth buying a PCI firewire card because your transfer rates will be quicker, and according to this site, you won't need drivers and the video quality will be better. I have to say I'm sceptical of those last two points, especially as they were made in 2006 and refer to the latest Windows at the time which was XP.

Looks like a bloody old model (relatively speaking). Apparently, you do not need drivers for versions of Windows later than 98SE if you're connecting via firewire although this may not be the case for versions of Windows which came out after the camcorder, ie Vista and 7.

Karma would result in them picking on someone with no insurance, but I'm sure they thoroughly assess their victim before pulling the stunt.

This doesn't actually prove anything other than how easy it is to find out what car he drives, (assuming it's the real AOC's Facebook account).

The link spazs out, but the URL is correct. http://www.ceoemail.com/ andrew.harrison@bestbuy.co.uk With that particular probelm though, I think you're going to be hard pushed to get them to do anything unless you can find a lot of other people with a similar fault developing on their cameras and prove it's a design fault.

It's been comfirmed by the CPS that the home-owner will not be prosecuted. I think it's safe to say 99% of the population would agree with the decision. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-14248097

Our cats had a terrible infestation of fleas because they'd became resistant to Frontline. We tried Advantage and it cleared up in a matter of days.

Of course they are. The printer itself is a loss-leader and they screw you horribly on the running costs knowing that a decent proportion of idiots will buy original cartridges. When colour ink first came out in a tri-chamber cartridges at about £25 a pop, volume for volume it was more expensive than Chanel No.5.

It's partially true. The bit about the reset button is complete ********, but the chip does store information about the cartridge's usage to try and prevent people using those messy refill kits with syringes. I bought a chip resetter on eBay for a fiver or so which allowed you to put the cartridge back in to finish off the dregs although the printer monitoring software would report the cartridge as being completely full again, unlike in that video. Previously, the printer would monitor how much you printed and estimated what was remaining in the cartridges. All you needed to do to reset it was take the cartridge out whilst the printer was on and put it back in again. Nowadays, I use a £25 CIS for my printer which took about five minutes to install, came with the equivalent volume of ink as about a dozen sets of cartridges and is simplier to refill than cartridges.

To be fair, how could you expect the retailer to know the layout of your parents' home? Did they pay by credit card? It might be worth approaching them if they did.

Meh. I'll put money on The Sun going to 7 days a week.

Pretty horrifying sight. It probably only collapsed because they were working on it at the time rather than a "natural" failure.

1.7 on a W with 66000 on the clock. I took it out for a brief spin around the block and all I could think was "This is tight", both in terms of response and space, since I drive a mini-MPV. I'm looking forward to giving it a good caning.

Actually, it was £50. Are you stalking me? To be honest, we weren't expecting to buy one so soon since we only started looking the day before and hadn't even begun to think about getting the cash together.

It doesn't matter now. We've just put a deposit down on a 2000-reg one. Heads will roll if this turns out to be a turkey (particularly bald ones;)).

I have a friend in Hong Kong who lived in the UK for ten years and she was delighted to find scotch eggs in M&S out there, even though they were almost £3 for two.

I'm trying to decided if you're being facetious. My girlfriend has just got a new job so looking for a cheap car and I thought about this thread.

I'm sure the glass could incorporate some LCD technology to allow varying degrees of tint. http://www.prodisplay.com/intelligent-glass-technologies.html

If it's a faulty drive and you're swapping like for like, then that's all you need to do. No software changes required.

How many individual files are there? I'm doing a recovery on a hard drive and using an unlicensed version of GetDataBack. It's done a better job than anything else that's free, although the save function is disabled. However, it allows you to open recovered files in their native program to show it's worked. In the last 24 hours, I've saved over 2000 pictures, one by one by one by one....

Whooooooo? I've just done a quick google and it looks like it's a rebadged Clevo, which is an Taiwanese OEM brand who Novatech use as well. Look on the underside of the laptop and you'll see a solitary screw about 4" from the back and 6" from the DVD bezel which doesn't appear to be holding anything in place. My guess is that it's holding the drive in. Remove that screw and (with the laptop off and the battery out) see if you can slide the drive out. You might find it easier to pull if you eject the DVD tray before powering down the laptop. It looks like your drive is a Samsung SN-S082 and there are a few on eBay, but one specifically stating it's a pull from your model laptop so the plastic door will match. The picture in that last auction even shows the bracket on the back of the drive with screw-hole which is holding it in place.

Ok. It may be just as well to replace the drive. Other than cleaning the heads with a cleaning disc, optical drives are pretty much non-maintainable. Laptop drives tend to follow a standard nowadays, in terms of size and interface, but the plastic bezel will vary so it matches the rest of the laptop's casing. If you're not that bothered about the external appearance, you can take it as an opportunity to upgrade the drive for something a bit faster and compatible with newer disc standards. Do an eBay search for your laptop and you'll probably find which drive you have presently. They're normally only held in with a single screw or two and if you're lucky, the screw is accessible without having to dismantle the laptop. What's the model of the laptop?

Does it appear ok in Device Manager? I fixed one laptop recently where the optical drive had stopped working and all it needed was a couple of entries removed from the registry.

Dropping Atari STs 3" on to a solid surface was a universal fix when the chips worked loose.

It should be a piece of p*ss. Open the external case and remove the drive. Kill the power to your PC, open it up and if it's reasonable modern, you'll find your optical drive will have SATA power and data interfaces which you can temporarily use. Power the PC back up and see if it recognises the second drive and if the data's accessible. Let us know how that goes and if it's still not working, we'll delve in to it in a bit more detail.