It sounds like the issue with your Dell Inspiron 1750 laptop could be due to a loose or faulty connection between the display cable and the screen. Over time, the repeated opening and closing of the lid might have caused this connection to weaken, or become intermittent. It's recommended to have a technician check and possibly reseat or replace the display cable to resolve the flickering or blank screen issue you're experiencing. This maintenance should help alleviate the frustration caused by having to adjust the lid position constantly.

I think some of you guys missed the question - OP is ripping audio book CDs and experiences long rip times with SOME disks. OP, I've ripped a lot of CDs (large music collection) and have encountered this from time to time. You're right, sometimes it's because of scratches. Sometimes it's because a PC has limited memory and prior actions in the current on/off session have used too much of the limited space. Sometimes, the ripping software just doesn't like the CD. Sometimes, nothing seems to work. My suggestion is to turn your PC off, turn it on again, and try using a different program to rip the disk that seems stalled. Try Windows Media player. If no better, download and try Media Monkey for the rip. If no better, then I'd guess it's either a difficult disk or a drive problem.

You either have to change the input select on the dvd recorder to s-video (and you may find there is a set of audio inputs separate for the s-video) or you may have to enable the s-video output on the laptop - there may be a control panel or something in your settings for that. Your HP handbook should tell you how. Good luck with it.

I'm going to try Bugspop1's suggestions. I have Xfinity1 and ATT routers, so it may be perilous and require calling them again for help. Also both routers have been replaced in the past 2 weeks because of other problems: The ATT router suddenly and mysteriously stopped allowing any telephone caller ID and calling features...the technician who replaced the router said he didn't know why this happened or what caused it. ATT provides 3 mbps speed, which is (from my experience) not fast enough for Amazon video, so we use ATT mainly when Xfinity isn't working. We have just one phone connected to ATT. The Xfinity/Comcast router was replaced last week because of tv issues. I got fed up with the poor service on the last cable boxes. All channels not HD were stretched to fit the format of our HD tvs. So all the people on tv look like they weigh 500 lbs. Comcast refused for months to provide info to change this in the setup menu of the cable box. So after hours on the phone to them and several trips to their store, we now have tv that shows HD and SD in the proper formats. I also had to accept yet another phone line from Comcast, their bundle, to save money. Their internet/tv bill was $270. The new bill including phone is now supposed to be $190. The stupid downside to this is the Comcast rep said I have to call Comcast on the phone number they provide, otherwise they won't provide any support. I already have 4 phone numbers so this is very annoying to me. After the cable boxes were replaced the internet router was reset by Comcast when they set up the cable boxes. That evening I logged in to the xfinity web site and saw that some videos would play and others wouldn't. CNN wouldn't play anything at all (though accessing the site outside of the xfinity portal allows some videos to play). So I called up Xfinity support who weren't helpful at all. They actually said they don't support video playback help issues on their own site! So their support is less than adequate imho. I tried the suggestions about changing video quality...Amazon works ok in SD. In HD videos start off in very poor quality and gradually get better. I don't use amazon streaming when I'm out of town because the site only streams in HD and would quickly use up my data allowance. Windows Defender is up to date. Nvidia has automatically updated it's drivers several times since I got the MSI laptop. The MSI also did the update where it installed a new version of Win10 (It took about 17 hours). There isn't any software in common on the two laptops. I tried a system restore on the MSI. It didn't help, but it didn't hurt. I uninstalled and reinstalled Adobe flash several times. If I can get inside the router setup menus is it easy to figure out if the routers are allowing adobe flash video? I'll keep working on this....