tablaterenata

My Windows XP computer attempts to boot from a connected external hard drive when plugged in, which gave me an idea. If I install Windows 7 on the external hard drive, and use it, will it change anything on the C: drive when the external hard drive is disconnected? I want to be able to run the computer on XP when I need to.

In large lumps of soft, yellow clay I found smallish inclusions of clay that were a bluish grey in colour. Is this phenomenon well known and understood?

The location was Tilehurst in Reading, a hill known for its clay and an old tile making area. We as children were visiting a building site where the ground at Bear Inn Woods (right at the top of the hill) was being cleared for development. There were lots of large lumps of clay around, where the digger had cut through the yellow clay to reveal these lighter inclusions of bluish grey. I always wondered what caused it?

I obtained this visa online but was unable to travel, so I need to know if I should apply again.

I have a set of speakers with an amplifier that I used for sound from my computer, which worked when plugged into the Audio Out socket on the motherboard. I tried to plug it into my portable music player, but the sound is very quiet. I think it needs a transformer, but is a stereo one available? Such a transformer would need a stereo 3mm plug input and have a 3mm socket for the computer speaker amp to plug into. Any help welcomed.

I photographed a stick insect (Leptynia Hispanica) on a wall outside a house in Falmouth, Cornwall on 11th December 2013. It was obviously alive and made off later. The temperature was about 10ºC. I am wondering whether it was indigenous to England or could be an escaped pet?

I'll be visiting Australia soon and need to buy a laptop for my travels. I know about wifi being available for free in many coffee shops and burger places etc. But I would like to use mobile broadband by getting a dongle in Australia, so I can use the laptop online at the place I am staying, which has good mobile phone reception but not a wifi network.

The thing is, I need to save money by getting a secondhand laptop, and want to be sure I can just plug the dongle into the USB socket and the laptop should recognise it, so my question is, can I get a laptop with just any operating system (e.g. XP) or does it need a modern OS like Windows 7 or 8? In fact, does it have to be a special laptop or will any reasonably modern one work with dongles?

At 1024 × 768, the screen is full, but on changing to 800×600 and 640×480, the visible screen shrinks slightly and drastically in that order. Is it possible to get a lower resolution screen to completely fill the display area?

I've already got the BIOS to stretch text, but there is no setting to stretch graphics.

If someone has got this working, can they send me the name of the driver file, and I will hopefully find it somewhere to install it?

It has been argued that the person who removed the Banksy artwork and tried to sell it in the US had every right to do so. But as the work (and the wall it was on) was in a public space, shouldn't the owner have applied for planning permission before removing the artwork? And wouldn't the local council have refused such permission on cultural grounds?

When I bought the laptop, it was running Windows 95, and when starting, the Windows 95 logo was shown in colour, full screen. After upgrading to Windows 98SE, the startup logo is shown small; about a half of the full screen. Similarly, when I run an MS-DOS program from CD (Sim City), the game only shows in small screen.

I think there must be a screen driver present under 95 that is loaded much earlier than it is in 98, but where do I look for it, and how do I fix the problem? Sim City is unplayable in such a small area of the screen. Many thanks.

I have 2 hard drives so I could install Ubuntu or Mint in one while keeping XP on the other.

What are the advantages of this operating system?

Can I have fun sharing my experience with others? Is there a community sharing emails, or a web page where messages can be exchanged?

Is there software to buy, or free software to download?

Can I test software, and report on it?

Are there games?

I found an old SIM CITY that runs in MS-DOS, and it would be fun to have a go with it. It won't run in XP. An old Windows 98 laptop runs it, except that the picture is very small. Do I need to install the video drivers in a start-up file under MS-DOS, before Windows is loaded, and how do I do this? Many thanks!

I've tried downloading such programs as advertised, but they are often bigger than they say they are, and when run in my laptop, often try to download an installer or reconnect to the internet. I have an old laptop that cannot connect to the internet and is certainly too small in capacity to run Windows XP. So I use another PC to download the file onto a floppy. I don't mind if the software uses a manual process, but I need a stand alone file that will do the conversion.

I think that, since the monies invested in a private pension have already been subjected to income tax, we should not have to pay another round of tax on them. I am peeved that I am losing some of my meagre pension to this system.

I can't accept the idea that space is expanding and that the expansion is accelerating, and that some of the outer galaxies are travelling faster than light away from us. But if you imagine 2-dimensional galaxies stuck onto a 3-dimensional sphere, as the sphere is being inflated, you do get the effect that the furthest galaxies are travelling faster away from us than the nearer ones. So I think the observed acceleration is proof that our space is 4-dimensional, and that if you travelled further enough in one direction from Earth, you would come back on Earth from the opposite direction.

There are lots of Windows 7 discs on ebay (for example) but they are classed as "Used". So Microsoft will already have received the serial numbers from the original computer they were on, during the validation process. If I try to use them, will I get a refusal from Microsoft on the basis that they are already in use?

Now that B&B are no longer trading, how can I get my money back from having been mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance?

It does have a Music folder, which can only hold 128 albums (or other folders). But each folder can hold up to 999 files (or tracks). So is there any way I can load my 428 albums onto this device, given that my 32 gb micro SDHC card will easily hold them?

It would have made more sense if the device could hold 999 folders with each folder holding 128 tracks!

Maybe someone out there has a fix? I really like the design of the device. It can take 2 AAA batteries, for when I can't charge it, and the screen is visible in bright sunlight or can be backlit for low light.

The installation disk is for Windows 95 or 98 and despite having tried to use compatibility mode in Windows 7, the installation program on this disk will not run. Is there any way to use this disk or any of the files there to install working drivers? Alternatively, could I install it on a Windows XP computer using the drivers available on the Mustek site and then transfer them to the 7 PC? Where would I put them?

Lots of my music CD-R's have up to 400 megabytes space that could be used to hold pictures or documents. I would like a program that will write to, and recover files from, a recorded music CD without affecting the ability of the disk to play in a CD player. Nero shows such a CD as read-only, but there is unused space that could be burned with data. Obviously the program must ignore the read-only marker and examine the disk for available space, then create its own table of contents (which does not have to include the music part). I should add that I am not trying to hide anything illegal on the disks. I have hundreds of music CDs I've created from LPs and cassettes, and I hate the idea of all that potential memory capacity going to waste.