Go to control panel and open System Icon - Hardware Tab - Device Manager - Click the + Plus sign for Sounds.......... - Right click Realtek AC 97 (Or whatever Sound you have) - Left click - Update Driver. To update you will need the CD that came with your computer. First right click your speaker Icon and open Volume control and make sure your sound is not muted. Located on your lower right. If you don't have a speaker Icon go to the Control Panel and check your sound. Windows XP See if your sound has been stopped in Services Under Windows Audio. Start - Control Panel - Open Administrative Tools - Open Component Services - Click Services (Local) and Scrowl down the list to Windows Audio to see if it says - Started. If stopped Left click Windows Audio and click restart. - Or Right click Windows Audio - left click Properties - Left click Start If still no sound next try this But be careful because your in the Registry and you can harm your computer. You should make a Registry Backup first. Go to Start>Run, type in regedit and hit ok. Navagate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Sound "Beep" and "ExtendedSounds" should both be set to "yes" in order for the speakers to work. Before changing the Registry you need to make a Backup. You can download ERUNT and make a backup. This is best but it has a feature named Optimize. Don't use it. After using it, it took me 2 days to get my computer back to normal. Start - Run Type regedit - My Computer should be highlighted Go to File - Left top - Left click Export - The word Backup - Save. When time to use it don't go to were it's saved, go back to regedit. Start - Run - regedit - OK - File - Import - Right click Backup - Left click Merge. Anyway that's the way I do it.

I just bought an external drive this week and love it. Apart from being able to free up space on C:\, it is good for arranging automatic backups. I have it set to back up all of my documents, music, and pictures 4 days a week at a time when I am not going to be using the computer. Until now, I had been putting these backups on CDs and DVDs, but it is too easy to forget to make those backups, and it is also a nuisance saving and keeping track of the disks I saved them on. I like the way I can just drag things to the icon for the external drive, too. Easier than burning a CD or DVD, and it has the advantage that you can erase things and use that space again, the way you might on a floppy or a zip disk. My external drive is a 500GB Maxtor that I found on sale Mon. at Fry's in San Diego, for only $99.99. (They seem to change the products on sale from day-to-day, so I don't guarantee anyone will find the same thing at the same price another day. DH paid the same there the day before I did, but he only got a 300GB Maxtor external hard drive) Today a friend who has a business servicing other companies' computers told me he considers Western Digital's hard drives to be among the best, so you got a good one. However, I was happy when he also said I had gotten a bargain. Guess this is the time of year to look for bargains in computer stuff! I probably should mention that since my FireFox browser's "Bookmarks" (=Favorites in I.E.) and things I have saved in its "Scrapbook" add-on, or extension, are not located in My Documents and thus do not come under the automatic backing up, I am going to take care to back them up to the external drive manually every few days.

Hi gma_j The link I'm providing should help you, Joe Here is a link that might be useful: move files to mac

Typically the slightly fancier (read expensive) external hard drives come with more comprehensive software. That's not to say, you couldn't back-up manually, use Window's back-up software, or find some freeware that will accomplish the same thing. I would suggest sticking to drives made by Western Digital or Seagate. They seem to have the best track record for reliability. A second, off-site, backup plan is a better plan. While an external drive will be helpful in case of a hardware it won't help in the of something like a fire. There are online options or you could, depending on the size of your back-up, burn DVDs and put them in a safety deposit box or send them to a trusted relative or friend.