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I need to replace a heated towel rail element that has failed. It's rated at 600W. However, there's another towel rail in the house which is probably at least 2/3 of the size, yet that one is only 250W. So, how do you select the correct rating? On the rail size, or the room size? I'm thinking...

I undid this ceiling rose in order to redecorate the room and found that the wiring appears to be wrong? This is on the end of a circuit, so only one circuit cable. The circuit cable is the one on the left of the pic, the switch cable is on the right (I did a continuity test to establish which...

A long shot I know, but can anyone advise how old this Baxi combi might be, and maybe the model no? I'm unable to get access to the property for a while and this is the only pic i have. All I know is that it's a combi and was installed before 2015. I don't even know if it's a condensing combi or...

I have a Viessmann Vitodens 100-W combi, installed in 2017, with a weather compensation module fitted. I am looking to make some gas economies by reducing the CH flow temp a bit to get the boiler running in condensing mode whenever possible. It is currently set to 32 (the range is 1-35). Can...

Our neighbours are proposing a rear single storey infill extension to their property: it's a terrace adjoining ours. The plans show the new side wall of the extension to be set back 6 inches from the property boundary line (our fence). The height will be 3 metres, brick built, flat roof. What is...

I've got to change the PSU on a Dell Precision Workstation 370. 350W, 24 pin, and the Dell P/N is G4265. Manufactured 2004. I believe the same PSU is also fitted to the Dell Dimension 8400. Can anyone please tell me if this is a a standard ATX PSU, or is it one of the ones that Dell made with...

I have a 6 spot ceiling track fixture in my kitchen that takes 63mm ES screw-in bulbs. It doesn't get much natural light. I changed from conventional R63 spots to CFL's, but found them rather weak, bulky, and the lifespan was disappointing. I then switched to Sylvania 50W Halogen Hi Spot 63's...

My wife wants the hall carpet replacing with encaustic tiles (house is late Victorian). The area is an L-shape about 3 metres long on each leg. The floor is a suspended one with floorboards, which are in reasonable condition. What base is required under this sort of tiling to allow for...

My mother had one of these installed in December. I was there when they commissioned it and it seemed OK at the time. I went to visit her again last week and noticed that there was a deep vibration when the fan starts up. This wasn't constant, only a momentary effect at a certain fan speed as it...

My mother had a new gas condensing conventional boiler fitted in mid-December (Worcester Greenstar), replacing an ancient Baxi. The pump (a Grundfos) was reused from the original system as it appeared to be in good condition and was only about 5 years old. Have just visited her and found that...

I seem to have a virus or malware infection that is proving resistant to all attempts to remove it and would welcome any advice on what it might be. When booted in Normal Mode the processor load is showing in Task Manager as 100% at all times, making it almost impossible to use the laptop...

I am going to look at an XP system tomorrow where the owner says it was running very slow. She was getting 'disk full' warnings (which she ignored), now she says it won't start up at all-no details beyond that, but she appears to be getting BSOD when she tries to start up, if I understand her...

I am looking at a system which is running slow but has plenty of disk space (disk is only about half full). When I try to defrag it, it refuses to do so and says ChkDsk has to be run first at start up. As I understand it, Chkdsk is looking for bad sectors on the disk? if so, why does it stop...

I have a customer with old files (file extension .LET) created in Print Shop 10 (they were on a Windows 98 system). He no longer has the software and I suspect it wouldn't run on his current XP system even if he had. We have tried every possible other program to open these files without...

I've been asked to look at a Dell Inspiron 1525 that won't boot into Vista. Only a couple of months old. Using F8 it will load as far as the Advanced Boot Options screen, but whatever I then choose (Safe Mode, Repair Your Computer, Command Line Window), it just brings up the scrolling green...

I have one of the above combi boilers, installed in 1999. CH side works fine, but when using the shower the water goes cold after 2/3 minutes as the burner cuts out. It always reignites after about 30 seconds, is OK for a couple of minutes more and then goes cold again. The water pressure is not...

I'm trying to clean up an XP laptop which has some viruses and spyware on it. It's slow and freezes, and has a pop up (aol.software.exe) that won't go away and asks me to run Chkdisk. Norton AV was installed but not updated. So far I have: Run Liveupdate and scanned with NAV. Reports all clean...

I have been asked to try and fix an old Celeron PC running Windows 98. It boots up OK, can hear one beep for the POST, but nothing on the monitor except 'no signal'. Have tested the monitor and VGA cable on another PC and they are working OK. Have also reseated the RAM and cleaned out a decade...

I'm trying to set up a BT Home Hub 1.5 for a friend. BT charged him £50 to 'install' it (i.e. to take it out of the box and plug it in). They got it connected to the net on the 'engineer's' laptop using the wireless link,, but couldn't get an internet connection via the network cable to the...

My mother has a 60's vintage Potterton Kingfisher gas boiler. She had it serviced this week and has been told that it finally needs replacing due to corrosion, it hasn't done badly as I reckon it is around 45 years old! However I think her rad system is a single pipe one (I think these were...