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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...

A friend has asked me to set up his new BT router-the catch is that it's at his holiday home which is 2 hours from where I live. I don't really fancy 4 hours driving just to do probably one hours set up. Would it be possible to set up the router configuration on his main home ADSL line using...

I just had a look at the phone socket in my lounge and it is wired as follows: 2: Blue with white hoops. 5: Orange with white hoops. Should it not be: 2: blue with white hoops. 3: orange with white hoops. 5: white with blue hoops. The white with orange hoops and white with blue hoops are...

I have been given a friend's old laptop to fix. It's a Compaq Presario 900 running Windows XP. It was full of spyware and viruses. I have cleaned out everything I can find and installed proper antivirus and anti-spyware. There is a fault remaining with the display, it has a vertical band from...