Calling Wizer..calling Wizer...

[woody67]

Sorry Tom but you are the man when it comes to PC's et al!

Firstly my laptop after restarting opens with a setup page with a heading "American Megatrends".....press F1 to commence etc,etc. Where the flip did this come from?? :shock:. It's not a huge problem to press the F1 key in itself, BUT when it does start, the date and time resume to Nov 2007!! It doesn't appear to affect any other programmes as yet. Any ideas what it is fella or how I can get rid of it?

Secondly, and this is probably easier to answer How do we install Microsoft Works 9 on a notebook without a CD drive? My wife got one for Chrimbo with the installation disc included, but obviously there is no CD drive on the netbook. The 90 day Microsoft Office Home trial has expired and she needs to do some worky stuff.

Many Thanks in advance.

Mark

 

[oddsocks]

I'm not Tom but I'll have a first stab...

re the first one, fear not, it looks like your internal battery has died (it keeps the time etc running). When this dies the computer boots in default (hence the splash screen), set the time to its default and asks you to press F1. No idea where the battery is on a laptop though!

re the second one, it may be better (and cheaper) to download and install Openoffice (its free). This is more powerful than works and is very close to Word in functionality (but doesn't have the new microsoft ribbon toolbars).

Dave

 

[woody67]

Thanks Dave - To both answers Makes sense about the battery dying, take it that means a new one??

We'll try Openoffice

Thank you

Mark

 

[oddsocks]

yes, google your pc type for BIOS battery or CMOS battery, hopefully you'll find instructions on how to change it. In a desktop pc they are normally the flat button CR3032.

If you install openoffice there are options that you can set that automatically save any docs in word, xls etc so if you need to email them to others at work they open correctly (you can also select to 'save as' and poick office format)

 

[chingerspy]

Totally agree about the bios battery dying. They are readily avaliable, hopefully it's not a big job to get access to it. Laptops can be a pain to work inside. If standard it will be a 10pence piece sized "hearing aid" type battery CR2332?

Second, if you have a large enough USB drive you could use a computer with a CD drive to copy the files to it and then plug into your laptop and try to install it from there. Works most of the time unless it really really wants the CD. Open Office is better than Works In my opinion, I use it on this PC rather than Office which I could have free from work.

Edit: Oddsocks types faster and best to check the battery yourself, there are a few different ones.

 

[wizer]

Sorry Mark. I need to give you my mobile number so you can wake me up at 8:27am with your tech support queries (I'm joking of course, unless you want to pay me )

 

[Lons]

if you have a large enough USB drive you could use a computer with a CD drive to copy the files to it and then plug into your laptop and try to install it from there.

This works every time and you can buy a 4gb flash drive from ASDA for about £8.

I put all the progs on my wifes' net book, including full MS Office suite and photoshop C3 using this method.

Bob

 

[woody67]

Thanks all - Including you Tom, you lazy bu**er ! :wink:

Has anyone changed a CMOS battery on a laptop? Mines a Toshiba Satellite Pro PSL4BE. Trawling the net doesn't make it look easy! Never mind, a trip to PC World will relieve my wallet of God knows how many notes! :wink:

Thanks

Mark

 

[Racers]

Hi, woody67

Have you tried setting the date and time etc and saving it? just incase the BIOS has lost its settings for some reason, last time I looked for a CMOS battery on laptop I couldn't find it and we scraped the laptop :shock: I hate laptops fiddly little blighters with more screws than you shake a stick at :wink:

Pete

 

[DeepBlue]

I'm coming to this a little late, but another alternative if you don't have a memory stick handy is to find another machine with cd drive and share it over the network. That way you can just access it from the netbook as though the remote one was it's own.

 

[wizer]

Mark. I've worked on Toshiba laptops for the past 12yrs and am a fully accredited Toshiba Engineer. I've never worked on your specific machine, only the business models. But if you want to send the laptop to me and pay for it to be sent back, I will install the battery for you. Although it might work out cheaper to find a local PC Repair service\shop to do it for you. PC World will take your pants down, don't go there!! Let me know if I can help.

I also concur with my fellow woodies, openoffice is the future. I now use it on all my home PC\Laptops. It's pretty much as good as word and 2000% better than Works. Why on earth do MS make these terrible applications?? Works is simply a ploy to get you to buy Office. Although I suspect recently they're starting to shoot their self in the foot with that idea. OpenOffice has been about for yonks, but only recently has it started to become a proper contender for MS Office. I had the fortune to meet someone who tried to develop a website in FrontPage recently. You would not beleive how badly that programme makes websites!!! I say fortune because he's now a client

 

[big soft moose]

I also concur with my fellow woodies, openoffice is the future. I now use it on all my home PC\Laptops. It's pretty much as good as word and 2000% better than Works. Why on earth do MS make these terrible applications?? Works is simply a ploy to get you to buy Office. Although I suspect recently they're starting to shoot their self in the foot with that idea. OpenOffice has been about for yonks, but only recently has it started to become a proper contender for MS Office. I had the fortune to meet someone who tried to develop a website in FrontPage recently. You would not beleive how badly that programme makes websites!!! I say fortune because he's now a client

can it open MS files - and save files compatible with MS ? ( I need my home system to be compatible with the work computers)

 

[wizer]

Yep.

It much less bloated than Office too. That's the main reason I took it off my laptop. I think OO is about 400MB and MSO was about 1gig!

 

[oddsocks]

can it open MS files - and save files compatible with MS ? ( I need my home system to be compatible with the work computers)

Yes it can. If you want that to be the default save option for any docs etc you create then (found this from a post i made last year)... .to save them in MS format (the default is the odt standard which I think only the latest MS Office versions recognise). You can force OpenOffice to save in Microsoft format by default - go to tools>options>load/save>general and set 'always save as' to what you want (for word use 97/2000/XP)...similar options exist for spreadsheets and powerpoint if you change the 'document type'.