|
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
Well it had to happen one day, hard drive failure. I must have seen it
coming although there were no signs from my trusty four year old home built PC, as I had ordered a new one a few days earlier. It suddenly wouldn't boot fully into Windows. Not overly concerned as the data on the hard drive was probably ok at this point, I went through my usual recovery tricks of XP repair, rescue disk ,booting from various Linux disks and so on. Couldn't even get to restore through DOS or Safe mode. But they all just continuously started up then powered down just before they got to the Desktop. Now previously I had helped my daughter (they don't do backups do they) recover data from a non-bootable HD by using an IDE to USB drive converter - a brilliant idea that worked well. So I got out the same kit and it fried my HD! I think the 12v power supply must have failed and put out too much voltage. (I thought it might be worth mentioning to warn people to be extra careful if they need to go down that route). Now luckily I had backed up all of my images (20 gigs worth!) 3 days before, My and my wife's Docs a few months before and emails seemed to be still on the Virgin Server. So not the tragedy it could have been but as you know- a big pain starting a new system up from scratch which brings me on to my main point - Windows 7 !! After reading some reviews that it was much better than Vista I thought it was probably time to upgrade from my longstanding and sometimes troublesome XP. How disappointed I was. My first reaction is that it is less intuitive, dumbed down and has actually lost features like a calendar and Outlook Express. The Windows LiveMail I am using here is so cluttered and full of stuff it's very unfriendly. This brings me to a question that has often been asked and which I have previously taken little heed of in the past:- What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. Now to catch up with the weather - did someone mention cold while I was away ;-) Dave |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
On Mon, 1 Nov 2010 00:21:40 -0000, Dave Cornwell wrote:
What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. I use Thunderbird for my emails and 40tude Dialog as my news client, preferring to keep the two separate, although Thunderbird will handle newsgroups perfectly well and Dialog can manage emails. -- MCC |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
?"Alan LeHun" wrote in message
... Lost Outlook express? But that must be a step forward? Noooo, that can't be right. Outlook Express hasn't existed for years. Windows Live Mail 2011 does a passable job, although having to add s to quotes is rather annoying. It fulfils my needs and under the hood is largely the same as Outlook Express, it's just been given a lick of paint to bring it up to modern interface standards. To be perfectly frank, and it pains me to say this, the cloud is the future I'm afraid. I'm not convinced. They said the same 15 years ago, when Java was going to be the future and by the year 2000 we'd all be using very cheap and powerless PCs to access our desktops and files on someone's server halfway across the world. Didn't happen, people prefer to have things on their own hard drives. These days there are more in the way of glorified bulletin boards (ie Facebook), but things like email have and always have been designed to be accessible wherever you are. Documents wise, nothing wrong with using personal webspace for the non-important stuff. For the more important things, there's not much wrong with backing up to pen drives or cheap external hard drives. Anyway, to the OP: WLMail 2011 will do pretty much everything you want, although as the defaults look similar to Outlook Express to me I'm not sure where you're getting the clutter thing from. If you click the View tab you'll see options to turn off things you don't use. |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie.(Ron - you can skip this ;-)
On 01/11/2010 00:21, Dave Cornwell wrote:
What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. Now to catch up with the weather - did someone mention cold while I was away ;-) Tsk, tsk for not paying attention. :) This very same topic was introduced a month ago by me as I have recently migrated from XP to W7. After using Turnpike since 1995 I realised I had to move forward (YMMV). I dabbled with Windows LiveMail and hated it so I asked for opinions on this illustrious NG. :) Consensus appeared to be Mozilla Thunderbird which I tried. Although not as flexible as Turnpike with regards to filtering it is a good second so have continued to use it. It is stable and does what it says on the side of the can. HTH -- Wendy Tinley Sheffield |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie.(Ron - you can skip this ;-)
On 01/11/2010 08:09, Wendy Tinley wrote:
On 01/11/2010 00:21, Dave Cornwell wrote: What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. Now to catch up with the weather - did someone mention cold while I was away ;-) Consensus appeared to be Mozilla Thunderbird which I tried. Although not as flexible as Turnpike with regards to filtering it is a good second so have continued to use it. It is stable and does what it says on the side of the can. I will add my vote for Thunderbird too. And just to point out that although its filtering is not full regex like TP it is able to add custom header fields and apply global kill rules across all newsgroups (something which TP notably lacked). I do miss regex and would urge any TB users to request it to move the regex match feature up the wishlist. Regards, Martin Brown |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie.(Ron - you can skip this ;-)
On 1 Nov, 05:09, MCC wrote:
40tude Dialog as my news client, Thanks for this - I am on XNews at the moment (at home) but having downloaded this I'm impressed ! Richard |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
Martin Brown wrote:
I will add my vote for Thunderbird too. And just to point out that although its filtering is not full regex like TP it is able to add custom header fields and apply global kill rules across all newsgroups (something which TP notably lacked). I do miss regex and would urge any TB users to request it to move the regex match feature up the wishlist. I like Thunderbird but found it occasionally displayed duplicate posts so, being an Apple Macman, I purchased MacSOUP which has no bells or whistles but is fast and reliable and is great for offline viewing. -- The ex-Meteorologist formerly known as Purbeckview |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
On Mon, 1 Nov 2010 02:54:53 -0700 (PDT), Richard Dixon wrote:
On 1 Nov, 05:09, MCC wrote: 40tude Dialog as my news client, Thanks for this - I am on XNews at the moment (at home) but having downloaded this I'm impressed ! Richard Sadly 40tude Dialog is no longer supported but it is very stable and has an excellent filtering system to get rid of the dross :-) -- MCC |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
"Dave Cornwell" wrote in message ... Well it had to happen one day, hard drive failure. I must have seen it coming although there were no signs from my trusty four year old home built PC, as I had ordered a new one a few days earlier. It suddenly wouldn't boot fully into Windows. Not overly concerned as the data on the hard drive was probably ok at this point, I went through my usual recovery tricks of XP repair, rescue disk ,booting from various Linux disks and so on. Couldn't even get to restore through DOS or Safe mode. But they all just continuously started up then powered down just before they got to the Desktop. Now previously I had helped my daughter (they don't do backups do they) recover data from a non-bootable HD by using an IDE to USB drive converter - a brilliant idea that worked well. So I got out the same kit and it fried my HD! I think the 12v power supply must have failed and put out too much voltage. (I thought it might be worth mentioning to warn people to be extra careful if they need to go down that route). Now luckily I had backed up all of my images (20 gigs worth!) 3 days before, My and my wife's Docs a few months before and emails seemed to be still on the Virgin Server. So not the tragedy it could have been but as you know- a big pain starting a new system up from scratch which brings me on to my main point - Windows 7 !! After reading some reviews that it was much better than Vista I thought it was probably time to upgrade from my longstanding and sometimes troublesome XP. How disappointed I was. My first reaction is that it is less intuitive, dumbed down and has actually lost features like a calendar and Outlook Express. The Windows LiveMail I am using here is so cluttered and full of stuff it's very unfriendly. This brings me to a question that has often been asked and which I have previously taken little heed of in the past:- What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. Now to catch up with the weather - did someone mention cold while I was away ;-) Dave Dave How about taking the hard drive placing in a external case and trying it on a lap top via the usb usual connection. Now if the problem is XP at least the hard drive should still function as a storage device and thus all your documents and personal stuff plus outlook emails ; can be recovered . You can then either take the data off or buy a new hard drive and reinstall on that and import all the email data from what was your original OS HD but now a storage drive. Does that make sense? |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie.(Ron - you can skip this ;-)
On 1 Nov, 10:10, MCC wrote:
Sadly 40tude Dialog is no longer supported but it is very stable and has an excellent filtering system to get rid of the dross :-) Most useful !! Richard |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
"Dave Cornwell" wrote in message ... Well it had to happen one day, hard drive failure. I must have seen it coming although there were no signs from my trusty four year old home built PC, as I had ordered a new one a few days earlier. It suddenly wouldn't boot fully into Windows. Not overly concerned as the data on the hard drive was probably ok at this point, I went through my usual recovery tricks of XP repair, rescue disk ,booting from various Linux disks and so on. Couldn't even get to restore through DOS or Safe mode. But they all just continuously started up then powered down just before they got to the Desktop. Now previously I had helped my daughter (they don't do backups do they) recover data from a non-bootable HD by using an IDE to USB drive converter - a brilliant idea that worked well. So I got out the same kit and it fried my HD! I think the 12v power supply must have failed and put out too much voltage. (I thought it might be worth mentioning to warn people to be extra careful if they need to go down that route). Now luckily I had backed up all of my images (20 gigs worth!) 3 days before, My and my wife's Docs a few months before and emails seemed to be still on the Virgin Server. So not the tragedy it could have been but as you know- a big pain starting a new system up from scratch which brings me on to my main point - Windows 7 !! After reading some reviews that it was much better than Vista I thought it was probably time to upgrade from my longstanding and sometimes troublesome XP. How disappointed I was. My first reaction is that it is less intuitive, dumbed down and has actually lost features like a calendar and Outlook Express. The Windows LiveMail I am using here is so cluttered and full of stuff it's very unfriendly. This brings me to a question that has often been asked and which I have previously taken little heed of in the past:- What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. Now to catch up with the weather - did someone mention cold while I was away ;-) Dave I know with windows 7 you can then run at 64bit thus much faster and more memory -in my case anyhow. At the moment my athlon 64 dual core 6000 is apparently limited by XP which in turn only allows 3gb of ram. Of course unless you're a gamer or want to run hi def films or video processing why all the powr and speed? Mind you I've had problems the last several days. Kept losing the picture or the whole system jsut hanging requiring a reboot but as I have the PC running via HDMI into a larger LED screen I can't see the boot up info; it goes straight into desk top image. That means if aI have a fault and want to go into safe mode or bios etc, I have to fit another monitor. Anyhow it tirns out my fault was due to the earthing sheath on the power supply lead was resting on the graphics card and apparently shorting the card out or hanging the video onece moved no problems since. Howevr your predicament is a timely warning that it's time to back up. By the way to all and sundry I'n not going to apologise for not mentioning the weather......oops too late. |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
"Dave Cornwell" wrote in message ... Well it had to happen one day, hard drive failure. I must have seen it coming although there were no signs from my trusty four year old home built PC, as I had ordered a new one a few days earlier. It suddenly wouldn't boot fully into Windows. Not overly concerned as the data on the hard drive was probably ok at this point, I went through my usual recovery tricks of XP repair, rescue disk ,booting from various Linux disks and so on. Couldn't even get to restore through DOS or Safe mode. But they all just continuously started up then powered down just before they got to the Desktop. Now previously I had helped my daughter (they don't do backups do they) recover data from a non-bootable HD by using an IDE to USB drive converter - a brilliant idea that worked well. So I got out the same kit and it fried my HD! I think the 12v power supply must have failed and put out too much voltage. (I thought it might be worth mentioning to warn people to be extra careful if they need to go down that route). Now luckily I had backed up all of my images (20 gigs worth!) 3 days before, My and my wife's Docs a few months before and emails seemed to be still on the Virgin Server. So not the tragedy it could have been but as you know- a big pain starting a new system up from scratch which brings me on to my main point - Windows 7 !! After reading some reviews that it was much better than Vista I thought it was probably time to upgrade from my longstanding and sometimes troublesome XP. How disappointed I was. My first reaction is that it is less intuitive, dumbed down and has actually lost features like a calendar and Outlook Express. The Windows LiveMail I am using here is so cluttered and full of stuff it's very unfriendly. This brings me to a question that has often been asked and which I have previously taken little heed of in the past:- What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. Now to catch up with the weather - did someone mention cold while I was away ;-) Dave Oops one more point. Maybe someone will correct me out there, but surely we now have large enough solid state hard drives (no moving parts Ma) and those things should go on and on *bit like some NG users* Oh the irony. However solid state hard drives will eventually help victims like Dave. Any donations to his plight can be made in brown envelopes and stuffed behind the cistern in the third cubicle mens toilets on the M11 Little Chef just after Epping. |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
Richard Dixon wrote in
: On 1 Nov, 10:10, MCC wrote: Sadly 40tude Dialog is no longer supported but it is very stable and has an excellent filtering system to get rid of the dross :-) Most useful !! Richard I normally use 40tude dialog on a Vista machine, it was necessary to run it in XP compatibility mode for it to function correctly. I assume the same consideration would apply to Windows 7. Xnews also seems quite good but I haven't investigated the filtering capabilities so far. Alan |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
Richard Dixon wrote in
: On 1 Nov, 10:10, MCC wrote: Sadly 40tude Dialog is no longer supported but it is very stable and has an excellent filtering system to get rid of the dross :-) Most useful !! Richard I normally use 40tude dialog on a Vista machine, it was necessary to run it in XP compatibility mode for it to function correctly. I assume the same consideration would apply to Windows 7. Xnews also seems quite good but I haven't investigated the filtering capabilities so far. Alan |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
Alan Gardiner wrote in
: Richard Dixon wrote in news:9a8082e1-03c4-4c90-b8eb-d41c8e0089d8 @k22g2000yqh.googlegroups.com: On 1 Nov, 10:10, MCC wrote: Sadly 40tude Dialog is no longer supported but it is very stable and has an excellent filtering system to get rid of the dross :-) Most useful !! Richard I normally use 40tude dialog on a Vista machine, it was necessary to run it in XP compatibility mode for it to function correctly. I assume the same consideration would apply to Windows 7. Xnews also seems quite good but I haven't investigated the filtering capabilities so far. Alan Apologies for the duplicate post. Alan |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
In article ,
Dave Cornwell writes: What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. I haven't used it myself, but I've heard good things about Thunderbird, though it's not supposed to handle newsgroups as well as it does email. I suppose that Agent or Free Agent would be a possibility for news. -- John Hall "I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else." Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-84) |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
"Lawrence Jenkins" wrote in message eb.com... "Dave Cornwell" wrote in message ... Well it had to happen one day, hard drive failure. I must have seen it coming although there were no signs from my trusty four year old home built PC, as I had ordered a new one a few days earlier. It suddenly wouldn't boot fully into Windows. Not overly concerned as the data on the hard drive was probably ok at this point, I went through my usual recovery tricks of XP repair, rescue disk ,booting from various Linux disks and so on. Couldn't even get to restore through DOS or Safe mode. But they all just continuously started up then powered down just before they got to the Desktop. Now previously I had helped my daughter (they don't do backups do they) recover data from a non-bootable HD by using an IDE to USB drive converter - a brilliant idea that worked well. So I got out the same kit and it fried my HD! I think the 12v power supply must have failed and put out too much voltage. (I thought it might be worth mentioning to warn people to be extra careful if they need to go down that route). Now luckily I had backed up all of my images (20 gigs worth!) 3 days before, My and my wife's Docs a few months before and emails seemed to be still on the Virgin Server. So not the tragedy it could have been but as you know- a big pain starting a new system up from scratch which brings me on to my main point - Windows 7 !! After reading some reviews that it was much better than Vista I thought it was probably time to upgrade from my longstanding and sometimes troublesome XP. How disappointed I was. My first reaction is that it is less intuitive, dumbed down and has actually lost features like a calendar and Outlook Express. The Windows LiveMail I am using here is so cluttered and full of stuff it's very unfriendly. This brings me to a question that has often been asked and which I have previously taken little heed of in the past:- What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. Now to catch up with the weather - did someone mention cold while I was away ;-) Dave Dave How about taking the hard drive placing in a external case and trying it on a lap top via the usb usual connection. Now if the problem is XP at least the hard drive should still function as a storage device and thus all your documents and personal stuff plus outlook emails ; can be recovered . You can then either take the data off or buy a new hard drive and reinstall on that and import all the email data from what was your original OS HD but now a storage drive. Does that make sense? ---------------------- Unfortunately that's exactly what i did try but the IDE to USB unit that had previously worked well virtually set my HD on fire. I haven't checked yet but I think the power supply lost its voltage regulation! Dave |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
"Lawrence Jenkins" wrote in message eb.com... "Dave Cornwell" wrote in message ... Well it had to happen one day, hard drive failure. I must have seen it coming although there were no signs from my trusty four year old home built PC, as I had ordered a new one a few days earlier. It suddenly wouldn't boot fully into Windows. Not overly concerned as the data on the hard drive was probably ok at this point, I went through my usual recovery tricks of XP repair, rescue disk ,booting from various Linux disks and so on. Couldn't even get to restore through DOS or Safe mode. But they all just continuously started up then powered down just before they got to the Desktop. Now previously I had helped my daughter (they don't do backups do they) recover data from a non-bootable HD by using an IDE to USB drive converter - a brilliant idea that worked well. So I got out the same kit and it fried my HD! I think the 12v power supply must have failed and put out too much voltage. (I thought it might be worth mentioning to warn people to be extra careful if they need to go down that route). Now luckily I had backed up all of my images (20 gigs worth!) 3 days before, My and my wife's Docs a few months before and emails seemed to be still on the Virgin Server. So not the tragedy it could have been but as you know- a big pain starting a new system up from scratch which brings me on to my main point - Windows 7 !! After reading some reviews that it was much better than Vista I thought it was probably time to upgrade from my longstanding and sometimes troublesome XP. How disappointed I was. My first reaction is that it is less intuitive, dumbed down and has actually lost features like a calendar and Outlook Express. The Windows LiveMail I am using here is so cluttered and full of stuff it's very unfriendly. This brings me to a question that has often been asked and which I have previously taken little heed of in the past:- What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. Now to catch up with the weather - did someone mention cold while I was away ;-) Dave Oops one more point. Maybe someone will correct me out there, but surely we now have large enough solid state hard drives (no moving parts Ma) and those things should go on and on *bit like some NG users* Oh the irony. However solid state hard drives will eventually help victims like Dave. Any donations to his plight can be made in brown envelopes and stuffed behind the cistern in the third cubicle mens toilets on the M11 Little Chef just after Epping. ----------------------- Too risky - George or Ron will nab it first! Looking back on the episode I think it was probably something akin to your earth short problem. After all - why would it hang when booting from a live Knoppix Linux CD? It would always reach a random point well into any boot, including the Linux or Windows logo then reboot. Anyway who cares- I've now got a quad core 640 Athlon, a better graphics chip and Windows 7. What joy, not! Dave |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
"John Hall" wrote in message ... In article , Dave Cornwell writes: What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals with Newsgroups. I haven't used it myself, but I've heard good things about Thunderbird, though it's not supposed to handle newsgroups as well as it does email. I suppose that Agent or Free Agent would be a possibility for news. -- John Hall "I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else." Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-84) --------------------- On some Forums they seem to be saying that Thunderbird v2 is better than the new V3 as it has gone doen the Windows Live Mail route. Or, perhaps they are just resisting change like me! Dave |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie.(Ron - you can skip this ;-)
On Mon, 1 Nov 2010 23:09:10 -0000
"George Booth" wrote: Maybe someone will correct me out there, but surely we now have large enough solid state hard drives (no moving parts Ma) and those things should go on and on *bit like some NG users* Oh the irony. Possibly. But I've been in the computer software business for (gulp) just under 40 years. I have lots of backups of this that and t'other for which there are no longer drives that accept or understand the medium. Some /very/ fancy programs to work on the data, that don't work on current hardware too. If you want to store it for genuinely long periods put it on paper. It's the only medium that stands a chance of surviving and being readable in the distant future. Not a great one at that, but it's still the best we've got :-(( Mike |
(OT) Computer woes, longish and for the slightly more techie. (Ron - you can skip this ;-)
"Mike Causer" wrote in message news:20101101235226.529efdf9@surya... On Mon, 1 Nov 2010 23:09:10 -0000 "George Booth" wrote: Maybe someone will correct me out there, but surely we now have large enough solid state hard drives (no moving parts Ma) and those things should go on and on *bit like some NG users* Oh the irony. Possibly. But I've been in the computer software business for (gulp) just under 40 years. I have lots of backups of this that and t'other for which there are no longer drives that accept or understand the medium. Some /very/ fancy programs to work on the data, that don't work on current hardware too. If you want to store it for genuinely long periods put it on paper. It's the only medium that stands a chance of surviving and being readable in the distant future. Not a great one at that, but it's still the best we've got :-(( Mike Hello Mike they were my comments about solid state hard drives: my premise was that standard disk drives are mechanical in other words lots of physical spinning and movemenet when finding data. In fact the things are fantastic peices of precision engineering howevr they do spin rather rapidly hence when moving an external when operating you can feel the gyroscopic properties of the device. I know solid state is much faster with no physical movement bar electrons and surely that makes its longevity far more favourable than a disk drive with far less power consumption? You caused me to doubt my own words but after looking around I see they are being marketed anyhow. But I think with forty years in the business I'd take note of your opinion. Cheers http://www.crucial.com/uk/promo/inde...ssd&click=true |
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