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Have you tried making a custom toolbar and adding the desired 2 or 3 items to it to fit it on one line? Just a thought.

Have you tried connecting directly with the modem without the router ? Does the router have the latest firmware? Is the modem failing? Is it getting adequate ventilation? Heat is your enemy and causes a lot of problems. I use Earthlink over AT&T lines, supported by AT&T and had one issue early on that was solved by moving me to a different port on a different card in the AT&T switching station as it was determined by the tech that came out that the port on the card I was connected to was bad.

Since you mentioned Photoshop and contact sheets, have you used the contact sheet utility within Photoshop (File>Automation Tools>Contact Sheet)? You can put a user defined number of images as well as a user defined image quality. I use it all the time to send clients multiple images on one sheet for comparison viewing.

How does it compare with the built in XP picture resize wizard?

If your PC is suffering from heat exhaustion, file corruption and eventual “lock up” will occur at a minimum if left to it’s own time frame without you re-booting. My money is still on a heat problem as a root cause.

Many “odd problems” are caused by everything getting too hot. Have you checked your fans and ventilation?

I find that blowing away the existing partitions with some form of DOS or a Linux CD first, then booting from the XP CD to find only unallocated space is the way to go.

The Dell laptops I have (5) with XP pro and 1 with Win2K have a Dell only XP pro disc or Dell only Win2K disc (it is BIOS locked, not to a specific computer just a Dell product ) and only a small diagnostic partition 32mb at the beginning of the hard drive. The disc can be slipstreamed to update as service packs come out. The XP home laptops I have seen have a recovery partition.

There are two files within the itunes folder that tells it what music you purchased. You need to copy them over from your backup and replace the ones created with the new install. That will make it so you can sync with your ipod. I will have to check the names of those files as I do not use an ipod or itunes I helped two friends with the same problem.

After your last post or two I noticed a small difference. I have the TabBrowser Preferences 1.2.8.9 extension installed to give me greater control over my tabs and windows. It replaces the default setup and provides for more options. It is found at http://216.55.161.203/theonekea/tabprefs/%5B/url%5D. It may be the little extra control you need to be satisfied. I also attached a complete list of extentions I use to compare with yours as you may have two that conflict in some way with each other.

As Jim does, I use adblock and filterset G, set to default and have no issues with buttons on cnn. Instead of customizing right away you may wish to try the default setting and see how it works for you.

I agree with Leif. Another place to store and share is http://www.box.net/%5B/url%5D 1gig free or 5gigs for $4.99/mo

Not any problem at all in my usage over the years. They (FDM, Stardownloader, etc, etc) just do not kick in on the two sites you mentioned.

Part of what you state in your original post is similar to one of my experiences 5yrs ago when my wife’s laptop was experiencing harddrive bearing failure along with some inexplicable secondary issue that moved Dell to replace the entire laptop after two new motherboards and three new harddrives. As far as the bearing failure, it caused freezing of the system and on occasion a BSD. The OS was Win2K at the time. I will testify in court that freezing the harddrive then placing ice packs around it after it is reinserted will allow the burning of a CD or two before failure. This little exercise kept me out of the dog house as I was in my wife’s mind the one responsible for backing everything up. The replacement laptop is still running well 51/2yrs later. This was a long winded way of saying you may not ever find a satisfactory answer as to the cause of your troubles.

The black you refer to has to do with your video card and/or driver. You did not mention if you had the ATI or Intel video. Either way I would return for a refund if you are in the first 30 days. I would then buy the comparable (and somewhat superior) Latitude notebook. You will have a choice of Nvidia (my personal choice) or Intel for graphics. If you have the Intel setup there is a new driver on the Dell site posted on 7/7/06. If you update the driver uninstall the old one first and if it refuses to uninstall use “Driver Cleaner Pro” (just google it). Dell designs their notebooks as Latiudes then reconfigures the BIOS to turn it into an Inspiron. Good Luck.