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I have just switched ISPs, from PlusNet to TalkTalk.
The actual switch was quite smooth (more than than I can say for the phone line switch!), download speed seems to be slow, pages and threads take a long time to open.
Is there anything I can do to speed things up? I have done a speed test - the download speed is 1958 thingys (mps is it?) and the upload speed is 142.
As usual, any advice would be gratefully received.
Don
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I have just switched ISPs from PlusNet to TalkTalk.
I have to say a bad move, despite being bought by BT Plusnet are generally excellent, TalkTalk dont have the best reputation.
Is there anything I can do to speed things up? I have done a speed test - the download speed is 1958 thingys (mps is it?) and the upload speed is 142.
1958 Mbps might be all your line supports, what did you get before? Though 142 up is slow, it should be between 250 and 450 depending on the service you are on.
Might settle down, the systems are rate adpative and optimise over time.
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Have you tried an alternative browser. Huge difference for me between the generic BT/IE one and Firefox for instance.
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snipquote
The browser makes no difference to the line speed.
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snipquote
Agreed, but Firefox is notably quicker than most browsers to load up, which I'm presuming is the point made by Pugugly {P}.
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That's what I was suggesting !
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snipquote
Fair enough then.
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1958 Mbps might be all your line supports what did you get before? Though 142 up is slow it should be between 250 and 450
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Not directly comparable, I am afraid. I have switched to a different phone line as well, there was a fault on this line, I was getting 1600 - 1800 beforehand.
Two reasons for switching. 1. I didn't feel that Plusnet handled problems well. 2. Cost.
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"I didn't feel that Plusnet handled problems well."
I think you'll find that's relative! Good luck, anyway...
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I've been with TalkTalk for 15 months on the TT International3 package at £20.99 monthly.
After one or two initial problems, it's proved the best thing I ever did leaving Tiscali/WorldOnline after eight years; my best mate got his first home BB service on the same package last month, is equally satisfied and was up and running inside a fortnight.
Initially I was on a similar 2MB service as with Tiscali, but TT provided faster download and upload speeds and much in line with the theoretical maximum; four months ago I was switched to TT's own LLU (Local Loop Unbundling) equipment at our exchange and I now get 6MB to 6.6MB on average and around 370-380kbps uploading.
Using FreshDownload, downloading files speeds reach up to 845-850kbps maximum, quite a difference from the 5-7kbps of dial-up...:-)
That's besides the cost including the £11 BT line rental fee; free AnyTime local, 01 and 02 calls and free AnyTime international calls to 30 countries including Australia, the US and Europe.
Considering I was paying Tiscali £14.99 a month for BB before then and £11 BY line rental, plus phone call charges, I'm now saving a considerable sum monthly.
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We've been on TalkTalk for almost a year.
What sort of connection are you using from the MODEM to PC? USB does not work well in my experience.
Use the Ethernet / LAN connector if you are not doing so already.
I got:
6985 kb/s download and 341 kb/s upload using www.speedtest.net/
6555 kb/s download and 370 kb/s upload using www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html
Real downloads from servers are similar to Stuartli and can sometimes be 800kB/s
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Real downloads from servers are similar to Stuartli and can sometimes be 800kB/s
I am with PlusNet and get about 7000Kbps / 400Kbps.
Downloads from servers are dependant on the network in the servers locale and how many others are accessing it at the same time, i.e. contention.
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I downloaded the latest version of DirectX (54MB) in one minute, three seconds this morning (using FreshDownload). See: www.freshdevices.com
This was achieved at speeds of around 750 to 775kbps; it may well have proved even quicker with another download on another server.
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>>USB does not work well in my experience.>>
In my case I've always used an e-Buyer rebadged Safecom ADSL+2 £15 wired modem for the "up to 8MB" service; the supplied TT USB modem is normally a Speedtouch 330 for which Thomson created an "up to 8MB" patch. Up until then I'd stuck with the Sagem F@st 800 originally supplied by Tiscali.
in any case, 8MB is the limit for most USB modems and pushing it at that.
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Explanatory note. Although I have owned computers since Alan Sugar first sold his Amstrads with a hard disk (20 mb? IIRC) I am technically an almost complete novice.
I am running Windows XP with Internet Explorer. The recently installed TalkTalk kit uses ethernet. On the back of the modem there are ethernet and usb sockets, these are in use.
I have run a series of broadband speed tests over the past three days, they have varied from 1958 to 2107 kbps download and from 124 to 142 upload.
I hope that all makes sense and is helpful.
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I have an ADSL connection with a theoretical 1MB download speed. I am using a laptop with a built in Intel radio card and a Linksys Wireless-G standard home gateway.
My download speed, according to the laptop varies from 54 Mbps (not often & usually when first connecting), to anywhere from 2 to 48 Mbps.
I realise that using a wired connection to the Linksys would give better performance, but physical layout of the set up precludes this, apart from the occasional router configuration.
My question is this - If I switch to a different ISP, with an offered speed of 3 MB, would I see any difference in performance?
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Roger. (Costa del Sol, España)
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That is completely cockeyed Malteser.
Are you getting download speed mixed up with wireless link speed?
Your max download speed will be the max your adsl link can support. As your lap top wireless card has a speed much higher than any adsl link can feed it, its not relevant. The only relevant speed here (for downloads from the internet) is the speed of your ADSL link.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Are you getting download speed mixed up with wireless link speed?
It seems so doesn't it, 54Mbps is the quoted speed for the 802.11g wireless protocol though the actual speed between the wifi device and the router will vary depending on distance and what is in between. This has nothing to do with the line speed of the broadband link.
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I think malteser means that if the WiFi is only running at 2 Mbps is there any point having the onwrads connection via ADSL running faster than 1Mbps. I suppose the answer is 'probably' on the basis that line contention won't be an issue on the WiFi ( unless the neighbours are using it), but may be on the ADSL line.
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Malteser said;
>>I realise that using a wired connection to the Linksys would give better performance, but physical layout of the set up precludes this,>>
It would probaly not give a better performance because the wifi speed is much faster than the max broadband speed.
And:
My question is this - If I switch to a different ISP, with an offered speed of 3 MB, would I see any difference in performance?>>
Probably unless your 54Mpbs wifi is running at less than 3Mbps due to the distance between devices etc.
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I'm a technical duffer, not knowing the difference between Mbps and MB quoted speed
Thanks for your replies - it is apparent that the limiting factor in our actual browsing experience is the ADSL speed , combined with or rubbish ISP's contention ratio, and not the limitations of the wireless link. The signal strength is usually "Excellent" or "Good" from the laptop to the gateway, so it looks as though switching may well be worth it.
There is regrettably, not the competition in Spain, compared with the UK, as our 1MB costs us around £28 per month and the proposed 3MB (inc national telephone calls, not that I want them) will be around £33 per month.
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Roger. (Costa del Sol, España)
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as our 1MB costs us around £28 per month and the proposed 3MB (inc national telephone calls, not that I want them) will be around £33 per month.
are you confusing bytes and bits ?
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After I've run CCleaner there is invariably up to 5 cookies remaining in the "Cookies to Delete" column. Is this because CCleaner is not 100% efficient at deleting cookies or could there be another reason?
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L\'escargot.
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Are they "Remembered" cookies such as the one for this website?
Otherwise you would have to keep typing in your username and password each time you went on a website.
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No, they're in the "Cookies to Delete" column and they're free to be deleted. I expect CCleaner to ignore cookies which are in the "Cookies to Keep" column (which it does) and to deleteall of the rest not just some of the rest.
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L\'escargot.
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No, they're in the "Cookies to Delete" column
1. what cookies are they?
2. try deleting after closing down your browser
3. in case it is bug from an old version, check to see you have latest version
www.ccleaner.com/download/ Version v1.40.520 (2,652KB)
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It's version v1.38.485 ~ I'll check for updates. I always disconnect from t'internet before I run CCleaner.
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L\'escargot.
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I've updated CCleaner to version v1.40.520 and it still fails to delete a small number of cookies.
Cookies currently remaining in the "Cookies to Delete" list after running the cleaner are m3.net, verifiedbyvisa.barclays.co.uk/barclays, webstats.landregistry.gov.uk and www.littlewods.com
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L\'escargot.
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Have you originally configured these particular cookies to be Remembered (as presumably you visit the sites regularly)?
You could try Deleting manually them from your Documents and Settings (Cookies).
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The odd thing is that the results of running CCleaner show the cookies to have been deleted whilst at the same time they are left in the "Cookies to Delete" list. In any case, I have "Always Block" selected for m3.net via Tools > Internet Options > Privacy > Sites. In Documents and Settings > Cookies there is only a DAT file (whatever one of those is!).
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L\'escargot.
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DAT means a data file. However, unless the application is known that created the data file(s), it is not normally possible to open them.
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Update .............
The only pattern is that there are always four cookies which remain in the "Cookies to Delete" list. The content of the list varies. Weird.
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L\'escargot.
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Should be a simple one this. When I fire up my browser, how do I 'lock' the homepage? It keeps changing!!!
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If you use Internet Explorer, first call up the page that you require as the home page. Then go to Tools>Internet Options>General tab>click on Use Current Page.
Same for Firefox except it's the Main tab.
Could also be worth running an antispyware program just in case it's being caused by malware.
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better check first that you haven't picked up a "home-page hi-jacker"
Billy
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Hi,
Previously impeccably reliable 18 month old Dell with ATi X300SE video card today gave BSOD quoting an ati12dvag.dll and possible hardware errors.
Booting in safe mode and removing all Ati software allows it to run in normal mode at 1024x768 on generic drivers however installing drivers from either ATi or Dell causes a repeat of the problem.
I have tried removing ATi drivers and then using Driver Cleaner Pro followed by CC Cleaner to remove old drivers and registry entires though to no avail.
Could the card be faulty even though it works generically?
Any idea?
Thanks.
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Potentially could still be hardware. Generic drivers will use the most basic part of the card and CPU for any sort of effects/acceleration. Put the proper driver on and then it will use more GPU hardware.
Try it in another PC? Or for the cost of such a low end card bin it and buy a new one. How much is your time worth per hour?
If my current PC was not one of these PCs for home type cheap deals, I even have an X300SE to spare. But theoretically in 18 months time it all goes back.
Oh and get and Nvidia one. That way if it was only driver related you'll never know ;-)
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ATi drivers are poor at the moment. All card makers are mucking around with drivers to try and get some performance out of Vista.
If its been previously ok, then check whats changed prior to the problem, what did you load, what are you running now that you werent.
ati12dvag.dll usually comes up with BSOD when windows cant write to card. (usually however it just freezes). Its a common laptop failure. Popout your video card, clean the fan and heatsink, clean the connectors. Yes the GPU on the card could have gone even tho it works in generic mode, ditto a memory module could have delveloped a "hole"
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Thanks rtj and TVM.
If its been previously ok then check whats changed prior to the problem what did you load what are you running now that you werent.
>>
Nothing, the only change recently was the addition of four users when setting it up as a family PC, no new software, also a week ago the use of a 17" instead of 19" monitor (the idea was for the latter to move to my new business PC) though same native resolution etc, youngest was on BBC CBeebies website when BSOD first occured.
I had updated the drivers about 9 months ago via Dell and had kept the .exe so have tried reinstalling the same drivers and new ones from ATi.
I have reseated the card and also tried a System Restore to the previous day without success, the restore point before that is a week earlier, perhaps I will try that today, if that does not solve it then I suspect that card has gone U/S.
Yes it is a basic card though gave a superbly stable and neutral image, ideal for graphic design and photo editing, not matched by my new, much more sophisticated and powerful nVidia 8600GTS in that respect (something I still have an issue with, see previous Q's).
Regards.
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The system (Intel 945G chipset) has integrated graphics (Intel GMA 950), I have enabled this in the BIOS and downloaded the Intel drivers, all is working fine, only noticable difference is that the the memory is reported as 900MB because graphics now uses system memory.
This indicates to me that the ATi graphics card is suffering a hardware fault.
Might look at getting a new graphics card though all fine for now.
Thanks.
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I have a 256MB ATi Radeon 9550 which I use with the current 7.5 ATi Radeon driver and, instead of the Catalyst software, the ATTI Tray Tools version.
This is only a fraction of the Catalyst size, yet performs very similar tasks (the ATi driver is from the AMD ATI website and the ATTI Tray Tools from www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Video-Tweak/ATI-Tray-T...l)
By the way, if you have swapped the monitor, you may have retained/selected a refresh rate that's not supported either by the card or the monitor.
You are probably already aware of this, but if you right click the Desktop>Properties>Settings tab>Advanced button>Adapter tab>click on List All Modes button, you will bring up a menu of all the colour/resolution/refresh rates supported by your graphics card.
Clicking on a chosen combination will Enable it - ensure that Windows doesn't need a reboot to do so.
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Thanks Stuart, I tried the basic ATi driver as well as Catalyst, reckon the card is U/S.
Also the monitors are the same native res and refresh as each other however the monitor swap was a week before the BSOD.
I also tried System Restore back a week and still got BSOD, this together with the fact that all is fine on the Intel GMA I think confirms the card is the issue.
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Ah well, time to get the plastic out...:-(
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Ah well time to get the plastic out...:-(
It is actually running fine on the integrated graphics, probably will get a new card though £30 to £40 should do it.
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If you were happy with the old one, then could buy the same again, e.g.
www.microdirect.co.uk/(12412)Asus-Extreme-X300SE-128MB-DDR-PCIE-DVI-TVout.aspx
What's the family PC used for though? If not 3d gaming or heavy Photoshop type editing, if you do not need TV-Out why not use the inbuilt Intel graphics? Sure you needed 1Gb of RAM when your PC but does the family miss 128Mb? Just a thought. Will save a tiny bit of electric too.
What you cannot be certain of is the graphics slot (is this a PCI Express motherboard or AGP?) is not faulty. I'd try the card in something else or another card in this first - although there'd be a risk the the graphic card/PC could damage the PC/graphic card if one of them is faulty.
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We moved house recently. BT transferred the line and have (after a few delays) confirmed that broadband was streaming down the line.
Problem is that the service is still intermittent - BT are adamant that the broadband is OK. When we check, the signal seems to be inconsistent and I'm wondering if the BT HomeHub is at fault. I've read that these are updated by BT down the wire and am wondering if it needs resetting. Any help would be much appreciated ..........
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IanS
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i had this problem at work bt said it was ok but i persisted and it turned out the cable from the pole to my phone had gone faulty ,something to do with copper insulation or something,anyway the phone worked fine but tinternet was very poor
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Yes its your line, Its got high loss or noise and or you mught be a long way from the exchange.
Had this at a clients house, it kept dropping out. BT could do nothing to fix the line. In the end I found another router that was more tolerant and it hasnt happened since.
( a Belkin as it happens )
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Does the BT homehub have a menu somewhere for displaying line attenuation / noise margin I wonder? Could be worth checking as it doe ssound like a dodgy line.
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I'd persevere and get BT to check the line.
My wife's elderley uncle recently got Sky Broadband. After a lot of delay it turns out there was a problem with the line. To get it working a new line was run to the exchange which also required new telegraph poles! End result is working Sky broadband on the "free" offer with minimal install charge. If BT will do that for a Sky local loop unbundling customer then sure they can check the line.
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The BT hub may improve after being connected for a few days as not only does it download the latest firmware at regular intervals, it trains itself to work at the highest speed that the line will support. You probably will get disconnections until it's completed both procedures.
I don't have one but I've been reading up about the things because I'm likely to be getting one in the near future. There's a very useful web page on the subject at www.frequencycast.co.uk/homehub.html . They're more versatile than you might think, as long as you can get them to work in the first place.
I've known people who've solved their problems after resorting to using an alternative router, but persevere with the hub if you can as it's needed for certain BT services (BT Vision, Broadband Talk etc).
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Thanks all for your comments. Just has a long call with BT who are convinced that the line is OK and reckon that I've downloaded some software that is slowing things on my side. Yeah - downloaded it onto 3 different computers?
I have another router and will try that otherwise I'll have to nag them again. Becoming very tiresome!
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Further update .............Finally got through the gatekeepers and on to someone who knew his stuff at BT and started to work on my system. Eventually established that the line was fine but the router/home hub had reset it self and needed to be reconfigured.
Long call last night and son's laptop connection is now superfast. Now need to get the desktop reset and we're cooking. Call booked for this evening with the same bloke.
Incidentally, he told me that it was 4am at the BT call centre in India. Really is 24 hour service!
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A relative of mine has been on the phone to me asking how to remove this trojan, can someone give me a safe link to a free removal tool.
BTW she has stopped her granddaughter accessing her computer and going on the youngsters Beeboo ? site as they are just passing on viruses to each other.
Thanks Mal.
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Thanks for that Stuartli.
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As I have mentioned in another thread on the computer related questions section, I am considering changing my ISP to be able to get a 3MB ADSL service.
As this is Spain, nothing is simple. First I have to cancel my existing contract. Once this is done, I then have to make a brand new fresh application to the new ISP. This can take three to four weeks!!!!
In the interim period, I have been offered a "piggybank" on the wireless connections of two of my neighbours. One is very weak, and is security enabled with a WEP key, which I have. I can ,just connect and use it although the signal often disappears.
My more immediate neighbour has an unsecured network, using the Apple network associated with his laptop. I can easily connect to it with a good signal, but none of my Internet applications can use it - even with my firewall disabled.
What am I doing wrong here?
I have tried to use the XP facility to create a new network on my laptop as I have done with the other secured network, but the wizard insists on trying to create or ask for, a manual WEP key, which is not needed. There is no option that I can see to add a network (Apple......)in this case, which is open to all.
I would be grateful for advice!
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Roger. (Costa del Sol, España)
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Malteser,
we need more details about this apple network. Is it a regular wireless router? what router make, etc etc
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Is the IP address being provided by DHCP and if so is it picking up an address or carrying one over from another network? A neighbour of mine had exactly this problem when switching from a Netgear router to a Linksys one using XP. Check that the IP address you have on your PC is on the same subnet as on the base station. If not, try setting it manually. The gateway address should be 10.0.1.1
Failing that, since it's Windows, set the Apple network as the default and then reboot. Seriously.
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Meant to say:
The gateway address should be 10.0.1 ... if he's using some kind of "Airport" device and if I recall correctly.
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Having a bad day.
Gateway address: 10.0.1.1
Client addresses in the range: 10.0.1.x
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I am using a Logitech wireless keyboard (and mouse) - never again! (but that's another story)
I assume that I must have knocked something or pressed somethingh, because when I use the 'del' key at the bottom right of the number keys it inserts a full stop (which seems to be the 'uppercase' on that key.
Any ideas please?
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you have "scroll lock" on
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Why thank you for that RF.
Er, ok, I have tried to take it off but no joy! Please humour me - what am I failing to do?
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try numlock then
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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I'm considering changing my laptop and am looking at two secondhand ones for sale at work as I don't want to spend much.
One of them is a 1.7 GHz Pentium-M (I think this may turn out to be a Centrino)
The other is 2.3 GHz but it doesn't say what type of processor so obviously that needs to be checked as in my experience the Celeron is rubbish. My current laptop is coming up to 4 years old and is a 1.7 Ghz Pentium 4 and it seems faster than any other Celeron laptop I've seen.
So, which one's better, a Centrino, Pentium-M, or should I just save my £350 and stick with my old but relatively trusty P4 1.7 GHz? The only reason I'm thinking of changing is that it's starting to feel worn out and no matter how many times I re-format it, it doesn't feel as quick as it used to and sometimes freezes for no apparent reason...
Blue
{Subject header changed and question moved to the correct part of the thread, as per the "PLEASE NOTE" message at the top - DD}
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1.7 Ghz Pentium M is fine though memory is equally important.
Better off with an Intel processor, I had an Acer with a 1.66Ghz Athlon mobile processor and it seemed little faster than the previous Dell / Intel PIII 1000ghz machine, mainly because the speedstep type function seemed slow to respond to demand. I now have an Acer / Intel Core 2 Duo 1.666 Ghz T5500 processor and that is great.
2.3 Ghz could be one of the last Pentium M's if so it woud be a fine machine, it could also be Dual Core if less than 6 to 9 months old, on the otherhand it could be a Celeron though is probably a Pentium 4 mobile processor, not quite as advanced as the M though fine nonetheless.
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Meant to say, you mentioned £350, well for £380 you can get a great new Core Duo machine:
www.dabs.com
quicklinx: 4KJ3WS
Or for £480 a Core 2 Duo:
quicklinx: 4HY6WS
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If your gogin to splash £350, then cheddar has hit the nail on the head. 350 for a second hand old technology laptop is WAY to much, when modern technology is so cheap.
On the other hand, always buy the best laptop you can afford, as price does equal quality in this market
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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On the other hand always buy the best laptop you can afford as price does equal quality in this market
Dont competely agree, the £480 Acer has top quality components, Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel 945 chipset, Centrino, DVD-RW etc. Only pay more IF you need dedicated graphics (better for games, worse for battery life), Bluetooth, a 17" screen etc. The T5500 Core 2 Duo is just a little slower than say a T7200 though will be about as future proof so only pay a few hundred quid extra for the faster Core 2 Duo if you really need the speed now, memory can be upgraded later if required which is usually cheaper than buying it with the machine from new.
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Dont competely agree the £480 Acer has top quality components ...
What about the chassis, dear boy? How heavy is it? What kind of plastic is the case made from? Does it have a motion sensor for those little oopsie moments? With a laptop it's not just about the computing components.
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e-Buyer has just started offering this Toshiba Satellite L30-10V with Intel Core Duo T2080 - 1.73GHz (x2), 1MB L2 Cache at £379:
tinyurl.com/2e3rxc
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Spot on basketcase. My exact point. I did say buy money buys the best quality, not technology. The technology is cheap. How you design, build and integrate it costs money.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Well, not worst exactly of course. Let me explain:
My dad's computer has just given up the ghost, and it's too old and decrepit to be worth even attempting to fix. I was going to look out for a second hand one, but he has stated an intention to buy new.
He uses it in the most basic possible way - wroting out invoices and receipts, and occasional web browsing for airport parking or whatever, so any new computer available now is far beyond the capabilities he needs. The slowest most dinosaur-esque new computer will be 10x as fast as his current one.
So, it stands to reason to try to find the absolute cheapest, slightly out of date technology based computer possible (with the proviso that it is basically of good quality).
the obvious call was dell, with their cheapest barebones system being £250 inc. VAT. Can that be beaten?
Oh, probably want XP rather than Vista, on the grounds that I don't know how to work Vista personally, and teaching my dad to use software which I DO know about is hard enough...
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You can buy well specced new barebones sytems from BigPockets for far less than that:
tinyurl.com/2y2ehm (scroll down the page for various models and specifications)
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Sorry, link for full choice should be:
tinyurl.com/2y2ehm
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Can't help you with the worst new desktop, but the worst new desktop customer service, in my opinion, comes from a company whose name rhymes with Bell.
Clk Sec
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£145.94 inc vat
www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/128595/rb/0
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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By God TVM, the mere thought of my dad and Linux has brought me out in a cold sweat!
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By God TVM the mere thought of my dad and Linux has brought me out in a cold sweat!
Times have changed, as Michael Dell will confirm. I used to help out a friend of my wife's with her computer, running XP. One day the hard disk failed and she happened to mention that her subscription to Norton was also about to expire. I put in a new disk and installed Ubuntu Linux, dual booting XP, as an alternative to the carpware required for safe running in Windows. Two weeks later she asked me to get rid of XP. That was almost a year ago and I haven't had any "support" issues. I notice that her husband is now running Ubuntu on his laptop as well.
www.ubuntu.com/
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I could do you a brand new 17" Dell 1024x128 flat screen to go with that. It came with my new PC though I then ordered a 20" 1600x1200 screen. List price is over £130 inc vat and delivery, open to offers.
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He might want to upgrade to a flatscreen, I'll see what he says when he's back from holiday.
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I have a 40GB USB drive which I store music on to play in the car. One of the folders will not open, and when trying to defragemtn the drive I get a message saying the prescan can't complete because there is a corruption in the file (folder).
I've tried using scandisk, but it doesn't seem to find anything, and I've tried deleting the folder, but it won't let me access it, saying the device is not ready.
Can anyone suggest any solutions?
An obvious (if possibly extreme) solution is to format the drive, but if I do so, will I be able to format it to FAT32, since it has to be so in order to work with the car stereo?
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What you need to do Bazzabear, is dig deep into your memory, about 15 years back when you used to do everything in DOS. Open a dos prompt, and type chkdsk g: /f.
Why thank you Bazzabear, what a wonderfully helpful and friendly bear you are, that has wprked a charm. How strange that chkdsk works where scandisk fails.
(In case you hadn't guessed, I worked it out for myself in the end! )
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Nice one, O Bear of much brain! Will remember that trick!
--
e Prôf - Another Recycled Teenager
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I have a Creative Zen MP3 player and have just been given an iPod nano - how can i transfer music from my computers 'zen music library' to the ipods 'itunes' music library? is this possible without having to download the CDs all over again?
Thank you!
moved over from IHAQ thread - PU
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iTunes is the work of the devil. But if you want to use it, you can just go into the menu in iTunes and tell it to check a particular folder (i.e. the zen one)
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iTunes is the work of the devil.
It is, but you have little or no choice if you happen to have an iPod. The Zen software is only marginally better. Why can't portable music players just let you drag and drop files as you would to an external disk drive?
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you have little or no choice if you happen to have an iPod
Take a look at Sharepod - night be useful to you:
www.sturm.net.nz/website.php?Section=iPod+Programs...d
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Reckon the Creative Zen is probably as good as if not better than the iPod and a lot more flexible.
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Do iPods demand you use iTunes with them then?
Glad I never got one!
I was forced to install iTunes on one of my computers because Windows Media Connect just would not work on it with my soundbridge. It now works, but it's rearranged all of the folders in my music collection into ridiculous, nonsensical order.
Do any decent mp3 players allow you to just drag and drop files? Or do they all feel the need to force you to use their own weird software?
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Yes, most of the non IPOD ones do, The trick is NOT to load the software that comes on the cd. Windows just then (usually) sees them as a usb drive.
------------------------------
TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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I have a Creative Zen, which sounds superb but is horrible to use. You can drag and drop files but not without the Zen software. It can be used as an ordinary external USB hard drive but placing MP3s on it in this way makes them unplayable.
The worst thing about it is that if you recreate the directory structure of your music on your PC, you can't navigate through it in the same way. The player insists on ordering tracks by 'album' or 'artist'. It obtains this from the ID3 tags embedded in the files. This is hopeless for classical music. Is the artist the composer, the soloist, the conductor or the orchestra? What use is the album title when you have several dozen albums called 'Symphony No 3'? None of this would matter if it were possible to navigate through the directory structure.
I suspect I'd dislike using an iPod for similar reasons.
Anyway... returning to the original question, as BazzaBear says, it'll be easy enough to import the original music collection into iTunes and then transfer it to the iPod. The trick is to locate the music on the PC (probably in a directory called My Music), something that gets obscured by the software.
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I really resent having to pay for additional software, but you might like to consider
www.redchairsoftware.com/notmad/featjb.php
I haven't tried it yet, but am seriously considering doing so. Have a read, and see if it will solve your problem.
Tim
--
Tim{P}
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|more than one album with same name|
Depending on how much effort you are willing to put in, you can edit the album names, to such as Symph No 3-1, Symph No 3-2 etc. Or group a few tracks from each of several CDs under a new album name, like 'My classics'.
But each track header has to be edited to do this -- you can start by putting the tracks in a folder and then operate on each of those tracks in turn. Does not take all that long once you get used to it because you can cut and paste your new album name, to each successive track header, to the save typing.
I use Virtuosa to do this. Virtuosa creates a heading, in its listing, with that name, and they appear under it as you do the renaming. When all are under the new heading you know you have no mistakes and they will/should be OK on your player.
Bit of an unusual interface, with Virtuosa, not exactly my choice -- there are other skins I have not tried -- but it does work rather well. You can download and try it for (2 or 3 ?) weeks.
My biggest complaint goes to its use of blue, with black writing (- etc) on it that is hardly legible.
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Had above V 7 something and have tried downloading V 8 but it keeps getting "stuck" at 92% download. I get the error message "Error 1714 The older version 8.1.0 cannot be removed". Yesterday, I was getting the same message but that Version 7. something could not be removed. One of the updates said I should install an update that installed a different Adobe uninstaller but I couldn't install that either. Nor can Control Panel, Add/Remove programs uninstall the old version.
Any (simple) suggestions?
Thanks
--
Phil
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Oops - cancel that request.
Seems it was a problem with Installshield which I solved by downloading and running Windows Install Cleanup from Microsoft.
Thanks anyway
--
Phil
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This one locked. new 'un started at what seems like a natural break in questions.
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