First the laptop decided to throw in the towel, it is knocking on a bit and has several keys missing off the keyboard…BUT holds loadsa photo’s!! Then the charger to the iPad got a kink in it … Amazing how much I rely on these gadgets, my daughter was beside herself yesterday without all this technology…‘.I’m bored’ play out? fresh air?Not a chance…needless to say she became the holder of the tv controls and HAD to have her techno fix in the form of her Nintendo DS (of which she has two) I couldn’t check my emails…SHOCK, HORROR (I know), nor could I look up a phone number I needed! So I managed to get a new lead for the iPad charger … Any new emails? Yep Dominos Pizza,there’s a message in there somewhere literally! Where am I going with all this? Well am not entirely sure but it has made me take stock on all the other gadgets we have in the house…there are QUITE a lot… And how the eck did I afford them all? Do you have any gadgets you just cannot live without? Michelle 
michelle
the best gadget ever is my carer! cooks, cleans, sews, write,s anything i ask to be honest EXCEPT cutting my nails!
ellie
Michelle, just to let u know our laptop broke last wk , holding our sons gcse course work he needed the next day. Couldnt get Nyone to look at it but was advised to get the drive out the back of the computer and put it in a portable harddrive which was 15 quid. All photos and wk saved and installed on new computer. Might be worth a go xx
Completely dependant on the computer for everything…shopping, my calendar, banking, email, everything! The kids are worse with their tablets, trying to find entertainment elsewhere is always a challenge!
Zoe & Manoon Manoon,
I don’t suppose either of you have ever done a ‘backup’ before?
(A backup should be taken regularly so you always have a ‘spare’ copy of all your photos/docs/music files …in case the worst ever happens to your PC/Laptop/Tablet. If you prefer a much less formal process - which may be more appropriate for your requirements - you could simply copy your files to an external hard-drive ?!)
Dom
I bought a ‘re-furbished’ laptop from Comet last year and I found out that ‘refurbished’ are ones that some-one bought but then took back within 14 days for a return.
They make sure that the laptop works and that nothing has been saved on it but since they can’t sell it as a new one it gets called refurbished. I got £50 off it. Something to remember if you are looking to replace any gadgets!!
JBK xx
Choc Orange whenever I read your username I really could tap and unwrap a chocolate orange, but on this occasion the toe nails put me right off having one Zoe bet your son was relieved about his course work being retrieved I’ll see about the hard drive…there is so much stuff on the laptop I spent ages putting photos onto discs a while ago but then it started saying there wasn’t enough disc space to even take photos off…so Dom it won’t let me back up under normal circumstances , I have been known to defrag it in the past…at the minute it will switch on but only gets as far as showing our three user name icons so am stumped! JBK that’s a really good option and worth looking into ta for that Hazie Babie dependant is the right word isn’t it when I was writing this thread the news was on the T.V and they were talking about the effect mobile phones have on children weird that was on at the same time! Am thinking of cancelling my tv,phone,internet package to try save a bit of money…most probably be a short lived attempt, we’ll see eh? Mich
Manoon Manoon,
It sounds like (…and I’m only saying ‘sounds like’ as I’m not able to examine your laptop/PC myself) your Operating System needs to be repaired before any backup can be initiated.
By the sound of it, the best thing to do to resolve this would be to get a local IT Specialist to pay a visit and fix your machine. (If you had a ‘repair disk’ with your machine, that’d be great, but you’d have to be comfortable with starting-up your PC, interrupting startup and going into the BIOS to change the start-up order making CD drive first !!)
Best of luck,
Dom
…of course, this is an ‘MS Forum’, not an IT one, so my post above is not really suitable for this forum.
My apologies - I’m sure we all have much more important things to think about !!
Dom
but Dom - we all have lives outside of those two dreaded letters so keep posting useful info like above
JBK xx
I agree with JBK , Dom we are multi faceted, knowledge is power and your IT info and everyones input is much appreciated…it’d definitely be cheaper to have the laptop looked at before buying a new one Thank you v.muchly Mich
Always say my laptop would be the first thing to save if we had a fire…like others do everything on it, shopping for food banking tax the car etc etc. Now because of problems with my hands I can type a bit but it is way more painful to try to write with a pen, even a thick one for arthritis.
Ell