David Computer Guy

Had a Maxtor One-Touch II external hard drive but now both Windows and Linux can not read any data on the drive and ask for it to be formatted.

As this was a backup hard drive I really don't want to reformat although a low level format and data recovery I know is possible.

My main question, does anyone know of any freeware or linux software that can recover these files?

PS. I have tried taking the drive out of the USB casing and as it is only a normal Max10 ATA drive was able to plug it in as slave to check if the casings circuit board was damaged.

PPS. The device manager in all OS's recognises the drive correctly but simply sees it as unformatted.

Any ideas anyone

I have just installed a new Belkin Modem Router in a friends house, they have 2 PCs and laptop, all have wireless connections. Having easily installed the 1st PC and ensuring it was connected to the net it should only have been a matter of getting the others to check for networks and connecting (they had all been connected before the previous router died).

The other 2 machines see the router, you can get on it's browser page but on each it says it is "not connected" to the net while the first most definitely says "connected". The laptop even says under "Network Settings" "Connected to the Internet" but it will simply not access the web.

I have tried changing firewall settings, ensuring the LAN and Internet options are correct, even tried running new connection and network wizards. Thought of infections so tried a Linux disk, still nothing, tried ethernet - nothing.

Anyone help?

The account name and password is correct, have tried logging into accounts but it wont accept the secret answer either. As I have used different PCs and Linux it can not be virus or spyware, MSN is reporting all services working ok so has anyone any ideas?

Does anyone know of a program that can automatically reduce the size of a batch photo/picture to a desired size into centimetres or inches so that they can be printed out on a sheet of A4. I have tried the printers own software, Irfan, and downloaded several from the net but they only work in pixels. The nearest I can get is Open Office where you have to deal with each picture in turn and a s there are 100s it will take for ever.

Can someone answer me this.......

I have re-installed XP on an emachine from their Restore Disk, booted up - no problems then turned the machine off and get the message "Load needed DLL's for Kernel". Press Cntrl-Alt-Del and XP starts and runs fine. Loaded SP2, restarted, same problem, same solution. I really don't want to try another reinstall but is it the only way?

Does anyone know of a Linux programme that can not just read but also write,alter and even delete files that are on the XP NTFS drive.

There is no problem reading any data but as I am increasingly using Linux (Suse10.1 at the moment) but a lot of my data is on Windows it would be helpful to be able to not just access but alter as well

All measurements are written in a specific order such as hours, minutes and seconds, or, hundreds tens and units so why in the American dating system do they insist on putting the date and the month in a totally illogical order?