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THank you for the article. I work in a tech recycle firm and we wipe around 50 drives a day. There are complications to consider. If the computer no loger works, the drive may be defective and have bad sectors. If this is the case some sectors may not be completely wiped and you may find that you should not sell it on when data may still be on it and that it may not work as intended for the buyer. When we find defective disks we degauss them, meaning we run them through a high powered electro magnet to wipe the data.

Thank you for trying but the laptop is clean from dust, it was part of my check, I checked the RAM was working well and it runs a live Linux CD fine. I will have to try and seek someone who has had the same install. It was kind for you to offer the help.
A

Thank you Ted for your reply,
Sadly, from both the f8 boot from the hard drive and the boot from a win7 recovery disc, all options fail. Booting into Safe mode with networking, or command prompt, selecting repair, selecting last known good configuration, low graphics mode all have exactly the same outcome.
Every which way I try I end up with a black screen and movable mouse pointer howeverleft or right click to get to make a response gives nothing.
I can use Linux LiveCD to check all is there and I have backed up vital data, but I have no idea how I would reintall this as it is a non standard product.
It may well be that it is a single file that has gone wrong, I just have not been able to find out which one. Possibly corrupted on update or whatever. I just wish companies and governments who give away or even sell computers to less savvy people would properly educate on backup and reestore or reinstall actions necessary for maintainance.
Thank you again
Adrian

Just to add there appears no way to get a command line up GRRR!

Thank you Tinto Tech,

I will try this out and see if I can install it new.

I will report back whatever results I get.

Cheers.

OK so no one has replied on the Dell site

This is so odd, similar rated hardware yet there obviously something halving the connection to the router.

This still continues to vex me so I will try the Dell community to see if they have had any similar instances of this,

Thank you for considering this.

A

Sorry for any confusion, both machines access the router wirelessly and independently, there is no connecting through another machine

Oh and I have now changed it to peer to peer on the node type with no change in apparent download speeds.

OOps submitted early

..exactly half that of the netbook. It would be unlucky if the protocol difference gave in effect an exact half.

I just cannot fathom it.

I am going to look into changing node type tp see if it makes a difference.

Thanks again for looking at this

Thank you for looking at this, Ihave managed to stop the Dell manager through msconfig disabling WLTRAY in startup and Dell wireless manager in services but with no visible difference. I went through the all advanced options on the network adapter with no change to browser speed reception. However, I did note that modes for BSS and IBSS were set to 802.11b and not configurable to 802.11g. I then remember on SIW it reported that the netbook wireless had a node type of peer to peer whereas the laptop reported “0” (ipconfig/all showed this as “unknown”). So I wonder, does the laptop think lets use the basic setup and run in case it is an adhoc or bridge connection and run ad the lowere speed?

But having typed this it can’t be right,

The speeds registered in the browser are the connection speeds to the internet, the issue we are concerned with is the connection from the netbook to the laptop, the difference in speed between 802.11b and 802.11g is 11 and 54Mbps. The drop I am experiencing is exactly

When I think about it, I have had this before when loading drivers for wifi on a friends desktop. It was a Tenda USB wifi and again it was wifi conflit that gave reception but not stable connection. What am I doing wrong when installing wifi drivers. Do I need to uninstall XP wireless network manager if another network manager is installed with a driver?

OK as probably suspected, When using the LAN cable only, both computers recorded the same levels of around 6.4 Mbps. Again when using the wifi, the laptop was half the speed of this whereas the netbook matched it.

To expand on the setup now as that may help.

My Netbook is running Win7 on a Dell Mini, the installation was uneventful and to connect up I just go through the win7 interface.
The Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 510m, I reinstalled the XP OS from the recovery disc. Installing the driver for the wireless did not seem a problem though this uses Dells own WLAN interface. I initially had no known problem though I think the the half speed connection was present. I have had one incidence of conflict between the XP wireless manager and the Dell manager, I found that the only way to have a stable connection, even thogh XP was not managing the network (the Dell manager was) the only way for stability was to ensure the correct password for the network was in both managers.

I tried to see if I could install just the driver and not the network manager but in device manager, the WLAN device is not present unless I install the WLAN manager with the driver.

It looks like both managers are sharing the connection but the browser is only receiving half the connection.

Does this sound relevant.

BTW I see you are in the SW of England, I am near Stonehenge myself

Thank you for any help.

Adrian

Thank you I will report back later

Thank you for the ideas, yes I have tried another psu but I will look into the batt and connectios

A

This is a big question and much of what is above is true, but there are other options and it would be worth knowing your web skill level, and what you want to get out of it ultimately.

If you skill level is very limited you may well consider facebook, but not everyone is a fan. Facebook could divert your followers but as a social resource and contact medium it is great.
If you want to use the experience to develop a family tree knowledgebase, facebook does not help as far as I am aware.
If your skill level is high you may wish to consider installing phpgedview – Which allows others to login and manipulate the tree and at the end of the day others can help your research.
You may want to add other forms of community software such as a cms like phpBB or install a wiki.
You could have a community bulletin board to maintain your chat whilst updating a tree program on your computer. This program can then generate a website for others to see and comment on. I use GRAMPs in both Windows and Linux to produce sites like this which means you can have a lot more control. There are a great many genealogy programs you can choose from.
You may wish to utilise a genealogy site to help with proper research ancestry.com will give you hard evidence and a tree builder. You can then export your tree as a GEDcom file to other programs or relatives.
I have not used werelate.com, but I heard it is good, though I am not sure if you classify who can see restricted info.

There are so many options that only you can decide what is best for you but if you give more about what you want and what you are prepared to do, then perhaps we can help the idea prosper

Good luck in your quest.

Adrian