techno-terminator wrote:
What on earth is Beginners latest offering???

SmutjeUK wrote:
Is there any idea on the price yet?

Road_Dancer wrote:
When you say 'Your computer won't work when the external drive is attached', do you mean that it won't boot? If so, most likely cause is the boot order setting in your BIOS.

Most desktop computers are set something like this:
Boot Priority
1) Optical Disk Drive
2) External USB device
3) Internal Hard Drive

What should happen is, you computer turns on, completes it's Power On Self Test (POST) and then looks for something to load in the order it's told too. If it doesn't find something it can load from, it moves down the list. Often External USB drive confuse the computer as they don't respond properly to the "Can I load from you" request, so the computer sits there doing nothing. USB printers with memory card slots used to be notorious for this.

If your PC boots to Windows with the drive unplugged, and then reads the drive fine once it's plugged back in, there's nothing to worry about, either get into the habit of leaving the drive unplugged when you first turn on the PC, or get someone to show you how to change the Boot Order.

If however you computer doesn't work at all when your drive is attached, then it's likely a problem with the external drive, and hopefully is only going to probelm with the USB -> Hard drive circuit board in the external box itself. Any decent computer shop should be able to swap the drive into a new case.

Gwyn wrote:


Has anyone else noticed a dramatic drop in spam in the email inbox?

5 pieces of spam since before Christmas .

According to the Beeb it is not clear why but it is a world wide phenomenon.
My husband says he's still getting as much as ever though.