Computer Questions (formally Your Desktop)

Thor, give yourself a break man and download Chrome. It's ages ahead of other browsers, i don't see why people bug themselves.

So I've switched to Mozilla Firefox and another problem has surfaced:

I needed the WMP plug-in, and downloaded it accordingly. But even after it has seemingly been installed, I still can't play videos at the site in question. It STILL asks for a plug-in?! Weird.

Too late now. I've spent too much time transferring all the bookmarks etc. to Firefox, so this will make do for a while before I possibly change again.

I have a question about playing DVDs on PCs.

I seem to remember that your PC "remembers" the DVD region and then sets that for all subsequent DVD regions. Is this correct?

Anne has brought 4-5 DVDs that are the equivalent of a CD-R - they are documentaries bought from the BBC that are not available for sale. I am worried that, if I play all of these the PC will remember this format and lock me out from playing "proper" DVDs.

Is this likely?

Cheers.

Cheers.

Could all the files have come to the greater volume of your recycle folder and the remaining files directly deleted as though you had emptied the recycle folder?

I know that sometimes if I am deleting a lot of files I get a warning that the volume is too large for the size allocated for the recycle bin. I have to agree that these extra files will be deleted without going first into the recycle bin. I have always assumed that these files would be lost unless I used some sort of recovery program that recovers files that have been emptied from the recycle bin by mistake.

I may just be talking rubbish, if I am not then you may have permanently lost the files that you are missing.

It's way easy to export html bookmarks and import them in any other browser.

Chrome has bugs. I just tried to sign up for a rebate program and it wouldn't work. When I switched to IE8 it worked. I like Chrome because it is vastly superior speed wise but this isn't the first time I've had issues.
Tom

The company said point blank that they were having issues with Chrome.
Tom

Putting "wordpress" and "messageboard" into Google I found this:

http://bbpress.org/

Is this something you could use? Maybe Erik or Bregt could help answer this?

Looking at their site and a google search should give you a head start.

I think that I may have recovered things now!

Since the turn of the year I have been thinking of updating my free version of Avira AntiVir software from the old version 10.x to the new and sparkly 2012 version. Why try to fix something that wasn't broken? But last night I decided to give it a try anyway...things seemed to go okay and I went to bed last night pretty sure that the software update had gone okay: the update progressed normally and the program seemed to be working okay when I checked it.

But this afternoon when I fired up the laptop I found that there was something missing from the updated version and this meant that I did not have any antivirus software protection in place - and there seemed to be no way of updating the current version further (a scheduler didn't seem to be working).

Okay, I checked the various Avira forums and had a look around and it seemed that this was a reported problem and that an update would soon be coming. Someone suggested (not to me directly) that reverting back to an older version (the one that I had previous to the update (and which is still being supported with regular new virus definitions, etc)) would be a good place to go in the meantime.

Good. A plan. However, searching REVO Uninstaller's list of installed programs I could not find any sign of the Avira program and checking CCleaner and Windows Control Panel's uninstall functions I still could not find any sign of the antivirus program. Bugger. How could I uninstall a program if I can't actually find the program?

Further reading of the forum found a suggestion that the only option to get rid of the program was to do a clear reconfiguration of the hard disk - which I thought was a bit extreme!

Luckily, I thought that it might be a good idea to do a Restore Point prior to upgrading the antivirus software (I tend to do a manual one just in case an automatic one is not done). So, I signed on as the administrator, found the relevant Restore Point and tried to restore the laptop back to before the antivirus upgrade. Long story is that the the restoration failed to happen completely probably (the computer suggested) because of some security program that was running in the background prevented the restore point completing fully. So I had to restore the computer back to post-Avira update!! Bugger.

It looked like I would need to enter the scary realm of Safe Mode.

Entering Safe Mode it seemed that all internet connection was severed (good because I wanted to do this anyway) and it looked as though all security software had been disabled - certainly the newer version of the Avira had been switched off. So it looked like I was "go" for the Restore Point.

And I sit here now apparently with a computer that is in a state the same as it was last night before I tried to update the software. And there seems to be no ill effects of the whole process. The Avira software is back to version 10.x, the protection seems to be up and, now the program appears in the list of installed programs wherever I look.

I know people poo-poo Windows but this System Restore facility seems to have been a godsend for me in this case.

The day may not turn shitty after all - at least, not from what appears to be a dodgy, badly-prepared antivirus update.

Does anyone know how you record video of what you do on your desktop?

I want to make a 'how to' video for someone.