System Restore doesn’t work in Windows XP | Ask Jack
Arthur Whitemore says System Restore will create a restore point on his PC running Windows XP, but it will only keep the latest restore point. System Restore used to work OK, but now it only creates a restore point for the current day. A new one is created the next day, but the previous day's restore point is gone. My C drive has 12.3GB of free space and system restore is set at 12% of disk space. Arthur Whitemore System Restore mainly keeps track of changes made to your PC, including the Registry, so that you can go back to an earlier state if you run into a problem. You can see if there are earlier restore points because the calendar dates show up in bold. If you can't see any, try restarting your PC in Safe Mode. This loads a sort of "bare bones" Windows, which might not include the program that is stopping System Restore from working. This could be a virus or an anti-virus program. It's not too surprising if an anti-virus program tries to prevent changes to system files. If System Restore does work correctly in Safe Mode, then your next challenge will be to find out what's stopping it. Running MBAM ( Malwarebytes Anti-Malware ) would be a good start. If it's neither a virus nor an anti-virus program, you could try eliminating start-up programs. While you can use Windows' msconfig for this, AnVir Task Manager Free is worth a go. Of course, the most common reason for System Restore to stop working is that you have run out of disk space. There is a Microsoft Support page for this: System Restore "restore points" are missing or deleted . There's also a more useful document: Troubleshooting steps for issues when you try to use the System Restore tool in Windows XP . System Restore typically takes up 200MB to 400MB on home PCs, so you should have enough space (12% of 12.3GB is roughly 1.5GB). However, you can look to see how much space it is taking up. To do this, you must be able to see hidden files and folders.
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System Restore doesn't work in Windows XP | Ask Jack
Video: India unveils world’s cheapest ‘laptop’
The $35 device is aimed at university students – and the price could yet fall further
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Video: India unveils world's cheapest 'laptop'
Apple posts highest ever quarterly earnings after success for Mac and iPad
Steve Jobs says tech firm had enjoyed "phenomenal quarter" after revenues rise 88%, with net profit up 78% at $3.25bn Record sales of Mac computers and strong demand for the iPad has helped Apple post its highest ever quarterly earnings. Steve Jobs declared last night that Apple had enjoyed a "phenomenal quarter", after it smashed analyst forecasts. Revenues rose 88% to $15.7bn (£10.2bn) in the three months to 26 June, with net quarterly profit up 78% at $3.25bn.
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Apple posts highest ever quarterly earnings after success for Mac and iPad
Steve Ballmer | MediaGuardian 100 2010
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer slides down the MediaGuardian 100 as the software giant is overtaken by Google and Apple Job: chief executive, Microsoft Age: 54 Industry: digital media Turnover: $58.44bn Staff: 88,180 Worth: $13.3bn 2009 ranking: 5 "We have only one way to go, and it's up, baby. Up, up, up!" said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer two years ago. Now it feels like he's playing catch-up, catch-up, catch-up. Ballmer's slide down the MediaGuardian 100 is not to be dismissive of a company with a market capitalisation of more than $200bn. But it is a reflection of how the software giant has fallen in the pecking order, superseded first by Google and now by Apple, whose own market cap exceeded Microsoft for the first time this year. But it's not all about the numbers. It's also about perception. No one wakes up thinking "What will Steve Ballmer do today?" They do with Steve Jobs. Well, some people do. Ballmer fought a rearguard action against Google with the launch of Microsoft's search engine Bing . His company has also fallen behind Apple and Google in the smartphone market. The Microsoft boss dismissed the iPhone at its launch in 2007 as having " no chance ". Now it finds its core territory – the PC – under threat from tablets such as the iPad. " The race is on ," said Ballmer. " We've got great long-term optimism. " Critics of his company may suggest he needs it. Microsoft's revenues went into decline last year for the first time in its 34-year history, and it embarked on a cost-cutting programme that will see 5,000 jobs go around the world. The company's Office software and Windows operating system, which runs on more than 90% of the world's PCs, continue to do huge business, but its online services division including search, Hotmail and its "Live" services have racked up huge losses , and there were embarrassing technical problems with its XBox 360 games machine. The debate about the number one position in this year's MediaGuardian 100 was all about Apple and Google; Microsoft did not even come into it. "Ballmer
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Steve Ballmer | MediaGuardian 100 2010
Virus phone scam being run from call centres in India
Britons targeted by cold callers pretending to be from Microsoft phoning to fix a fake computer problem The scam always starts the same way: the phone rings at someone's home, and the caller – usually with an Indian accent – asks for the householder, quoting their name and address before saying "I'm calling for Microsoft. We've had a report from your internet service provider of serious virus problems from your computer." Dire forecasts are made that if the problem is not solved, the computer will become unusable. The puzzled owner is then directed to their computer, and asked to open a program called "Windows Event Viewer".
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Virus phone scam being run from call centres in India
Intel’s best-ever profits lift technology stocks
Intel reveals better-than-expected sales and profits – boosted by demand for chips – as technology shares in US and Asia rise American microchip manufacturer Intel cheered investors overnight by reporting its best-ever quarterly profits – comfortably beating Wall Street's forecasts – in a move that has pushed technology stocks higher across the world. The second-quarter figures from the world's largest microchip maker herald the start of results season in the US. Analysts had feared they would show slowing demand, not least because of the economic turbulence in Europe, and raise fears of a double-dip global recession. But Intel announced much better than expected sales and profits, boosted by strong demand for its chips from makers of both PCs and servers. For the three months to 26 June, Intel made a profit of $2.9bn (£1.9bn) – or 51 cents a share – compared with a loss in the previous year of $398m, which was distorted by a $1.06bn fine by the European commission after a long-running competition investigation. Analysts had, however, been forecasting profits of about 43 cents per share in the second quarter. Second-quarter revenues of $10.8bn were also higher than the $10.25bn forecast by Wall Street while investors were also pleased by Intel's guidance for the next three months. In the second quarter, Intel's profit margins were 67% – higher than the 64% expected by analysts – and Intel said it expects a similar result for the third quarter, with revenues of $11.2bn to $12bn, higher than the $10.9bn analysts had been forecasting. Intel CEO Paul Otellini said there are definite signs that corporate customers are renewing spending on IT. "Now that corporations have some breathing room in the economy and their budgets, you're starting to see those machines that were four or five years old get refreshed," he said in a conference call with analysts. Intel's second-quarter figures herald the start of a slew of results from American technology firms with quarterly results from Google and chip maker AMD due on Thursday, IBM on 19 July, Microsoft on 22 July and Cisco's figures next month. The news from Intel saw technology shares rising in the US and Asia overnight and pushed British chip designer Arm Holdings to the top of the FTSE 100 index leaderboard in early trading in London. Technology sector Intel Computing United States European commission Richard Wray guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Intel's best-ever profits lift technology stocks
Britons admit they just can’t live without home internet
Domestic web connection joins holidays, mobile phones and fridge-freezer among necessities of modern life, Joseph Rowntree Foundation finds A computer and an internet connection at home are no longer viewed as luxuries but as essentials, according to research published today. The latest Minimum Income Standard report released by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the social research charity, gauges what members of the public think people need to achieve a "socially acceptable standard of living". Participants decided that a computer and internet access at home were now vital for all working-age households to enable people "to participate in society", both to access job opportunities and to get discounts on services. The Minimum Income Standard differs from the government's official poverty line (which is set at 60% of the median income) because it looks beyond money and focuses on what a household has to budget for. It is an attempt to determine what, aside from physical necessities such as food, warmth and shelter, people need to allow them to feel part of society. Participants confirmed that fridge-freezers, DVD players and mobile phones are "such an integral part of modern life that everyone should be able to afford them". Everyone should have enough money to allow them to buy birthday presents and to go on a week's holiday a year (not abroad), they said. A car, however, is not seen as essential: it was judged that a minimum budget should cover only public transport. The inclusion of a computer and internet connection echoes the government's drive to get more people online – a campaign motivated partly by the desire to streamline public services and partly by a drive to foster digital inclusion. The Race Online 2012 strategy calculates that 10 million people in the UK have never been online – four million are among the country's most socially excluded, it says. The Rowntree paper reveals that a single person needs to earn at least £14,400 before tax to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living. A couple with two children would need £29,200. Because the price of food, council tax and public transport have outstripped official inflation, families on a low income have seen their benefits dwindle. The report calculates a single person whose income had risen by only the official inflation rate would have experienced a 10% fall in his or her standard of living over the past decade
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Britons admit they just can't live without home internet
Trying to fix a PC that sometimes refuses to start
Pete Morton has a Mesh PC that does not always start correctly but, if left on, can boot after two or three hours I've got a PC which intermittently refuses to boot, sometimes for several hours. When it's misbehaving, it doesn't show a splashscreen, there's no hard disk activity, and it won't boot from a CD, either. If I leave it powered on, it does seem to boot eventually, after anything up to two or three hours. Memory tests and hard disc tests run clean. The PC is a fairly high spec two-year-old Mesh PC. It has been a dog from 13 months, but Mesh wash their hands of it, because I didn't buy extended warranty. Any idea where I should begin or should I just cut my losses? Pete Morton Intermittent faults are very difficult to diagnose, and I can't think of anything that would cause a PC to hang for a couple of hours before booting. (Anyone?) In this case, I'd guess that the likeliest culprit is either the memory or the hard drive, though you say these check out OK. It might be dust or a stray wire or bit of metal fouling a chip on the motherboard (that last one isn't common turned out to be the cause of my son's PC rebooting at random). It might be the power supply, but again, this seems to work normally once the PC has booted. Although you say Mesh has not been helpful, you could try asking on its support forum, in the section called Mesh Computers Owners Club - Customer Care and Technical Support .
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Trying to fix a PC that sometimes refuses to start
Lung-on-a-chip could be used to predict the effects of toxins or drugs
The lung-on-a-chip device mimics a human lung and allows living tissue to be studied without opening up people or animals Scientists have grown lungs in the laboratory, a major first step towards growing tissue that could one day be used to replace diseased or damaged human lungs. In one study, scientists at Harvard Medical School and the Children's Hospital in Boston created a device that mimics a human lung, by incorporating lung and blood vessel cells into a microchip (see video, above). Meanwhile, at Yale University, scientists have grown lung tissue that carries out some of the basic functions of the organ, including exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide. Both studies are published today in the journal Science . The work at Harvard will be used mainly for studying the workings of living lung tissue without having to open up people or animals. It could also be used to test the effects of environmental toxins or new drugs. The lung-on-a-chip could predict how human lungs absorb airborne nanoparticles and mimic the inflammatory response triggered by pathogens, said Donald Ingber , the vascular biologist who led the work at Harvard University's Wyss Institute . "Organs-on-chips could replace many animal studies in the future," he added. "We really can't understand how biology works unless we put it in the physical context of real living cells, tissues and organs." The device was able to replicate many of the natural responses of lung tissue, such as detecting pathogens and speeding up blood flow so that immune cells can deal with the invaders. The Harvard team is working on building other organ models, including ones made from gut, bone marrow or cancer cells. The Yale scientists, led by Laura Niklason , started with lungs from adult rats and removed the cells, leaving behind only the network that supports the branching airways and blood system. This support network was later used as a scaffold to grow cells for a new lung, which was implanted into rats for up to two hours at a time. "We succeeded in engineering an implantable lung in our rat model that could efficiently exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, and could oxygenate haemoglobin in the blood," said Niklason. "This is an early step in the regeneration of entire lungs for larger animals and, eventually, for humans." To make the technology work for humans will take several more years of work using stem cells to grow the complex structures required for a fully-funtioning organ, said Niklason. Medical research Biology Research and development Gadgets Alok Jha guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Lung-on-a-chip could be used to predict the effects of toxins or drugs
A laptop for university
Phoebe Whitlock is looking for a portable that's more powerful than a netbook I'm looking to get a laptop for university. It needs to have a big enough screen for me to work on. A large memory would be a bonus so I can transfer my music and pictures to it. Weight is not really an issue as I will have it on my desk most of the time, it just needs to be portable from home to university. I was looking at a Dell as they are funky looking and practical. My dad has a Samsung netbook, which is excellent, but I definitely need something bigger.
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A laptop for university