Is Avast not free anyway? So is AVG. Office 2008? Is that out already. From what I remember, Office 2007 used to save files in a special .xml format, unless you specifically changed it to save as Office 2003/2000 compatible .doc files. So if you have saved all your documents in the special file format, Open Office might not be able to read those files. Of course any files that you saved with the rest of Office ie: Excel, Access, Publisher or maybe even html files that you created, all this stuff needs to be saved. Other thing to save if you are using Outlook is your Outlook data file. That is where all you emails will be stored. Now whether Open Office will be able to import this Outlook data file is something I am not sure about, but I have a feeling it will state if this is possible in the Open Office online documentation. If you can save all this onto CD, DVD or memory stick, it will be safer than trying to save onto a spare partition, just in case an accidental wrong option selection during Windows reinstall results in an erased partition table for example. Yes, if you want these applications back, they will have to be reinstalled. however, if you reinstall Office 2008, then you should be able to get all your Office files back and working the way they were before.

Good luck with your Windows re-install.

Hello Emmabug. I think you have Gigabyte P35 board, the BIOS of which you have just updated from F4 to F5,yes? ANd you are still getting some driver problems? Can you check GPU temperatures? Should idle about 50 and load to about 65-70. If its higher, then card is overheating causing errors. Hope you are not overclocking the GPU. If all that checks out, try a different driver. If you have not got latest driver, go to AMD website and download ATI 48xx driver. Use ATI Uninstall utility to uninstall driver, then install new driver.

Good Luck.

Hello there. Im in the UK too. I check my download speeds by going to known websites that will give good download speeds. So, go to nvidia.com or amd.com and start downloading any large driver file of your choice and observe what download speed you are getting.

Good luck

If the device is faulty, it can show it as working properly in Windows desktop when its not. Open a command window (From the Taskbar-Start menu, click on 'RUN' type CMD in the textbox, press Return) and type PING 127.0.0.1. You should get a reply back if its working. Have you had the faulty PC successfully connected before? Reason Im querying the cables is that if they were crossovers, you might get a NIC that can auto switch its pin connections to match the cable type whereas the faulty PC might lack this funcionality and therfore be unable to switch its port pin connections. This would then definitely require a straight thru cable. Are you 100 percent sure you have used the correct drivers for the card? The other area you may wish to check is: NIC Properties->Configure->Advanced. Now the parameters here vary according to brand/model of NIC. So my general advice would to put as many of the parameters on auto as possible. If there are any power parameters or Wake Up parameters, these should be set to 'on all the time'.

The only other way to overcome this quickly without further headaches is to buy a new PCI NIC. They are very cheap devices now. Also if you do buy a new NIC, disable the onboard one. And its parameters should be set fine without requiring any further action.

Ok. Because you cannot physically hear any noises from the drive does not mean it is not working. There are no visible moving parts in a hard drive that you could possibly see, because all the moving parts are sealed in an airtight area of the drive. So dont worry about that. To check to see if the drive is definitely faulty or not, there are two things that can be tried.

1) Switch off PC. Disconnect old SATA drive power and data cables. Connect these to the new drive. Now power up your PC and go into the BIOS and see if it detects the drive.

2) If possible, try the drive in another PC and see if it gets detected there.

Oh yeh. After you have finished testing the drive in your PC. Exit BIOS without saving configuration and after your PC has powered down, disconnect new drive and reconenct the power and data cables to your old drive before proceeding onto anything else.

Good luck