Doctor meeting, Internet Explorer 8 and McAfee Security Center/BT NetProtect Plus, Earth Hour

We met with the Doctor on Friday. Good news (of a sort) he is going to schedule surgery to fix the problem and he has confirmed that it isn't cancer either. We now have to wait for the hospital to get back to us with the date of surgery.

Yesterday I installed Internet Explorer 8. I had been putting it off as the McAfee website says that it does not support IE 8 as it is beta software. When I DID try the Beta version of IE 8 I got a blank screen in McAfee Security Center which made it impossible to use, so I had to uninstall the Beta version. Recently however I downloaded BT Netprotect Plus which is the BT branded version of McAfee Security Center (without the Spam filter). BT's website also said that IE 8 is not supported with NetProtect Plus. This is despite the fact that BT/Yahoo are promoting IE 8 on their home page. When I checked on Friday on McAfee's website they said there was a problem with Microsoft's software and they would not support IE 8 until it is fixed.

I raised a support query with Microsoft. They came back to me saying they could not comment on third party software but suggested I installed the software in "safe mode".

I thought "huh?" and "why?" but I went along with the instructions provided. However after downloading the install package and trying to run it in "safe" mode I was given an error and told the installation could not proceed.

After restarting in normal mode I ran the install package again. It took only a few seconds to complete.

I checked BT NetProtect Plus/McAfee Security Center and it is working just fine. IE 8 is working fine too. It still doesn't load as fast as Google Chrome or Opera but the extra functionality is on par with these two if not better in some places.

When I checked BT's website and links today it appears that they have removed the warnings now! You can download IE 8 from Microsoft by clicking here.


I cooked (shop bought) crispy duck with pancakes, and an apple and blackberry crumble (home made). All seemed to go down well. The cats liked the left over duck!


Crumble Recipe
7 oz plain flour
1 oz whole wheat plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 oz unsalted butter at room temperature
5 oz dark brown (molasses) sugar
4 bramley (cooking) apples (about 2 lbs)
4 oz blackberries (NOT blackcurrants)
1/2 oz caster sugar


Cut the butter into cubes and rub it into the flour and baking powder until it looks like breadcrumbs. Then mix in the dark brown sugar.
Peel and slide the apples, add the caster sugar, stir and microwave until slightly soft.
Mix in the blackberries.
Cover with the crumble topping.
Bake in the over at gas mark 5 for 40-50 minutes

serve with custard

Last night was "Earth Hour" - we dutifully sat in near darkness for over an hour. Luckily we were only watching TV! We watched Housesitter with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn and then part of Brokeback Mountain. We gave up on Brokeback Mountain as it was too difficult - they kept mumbling and had strong "southern" accents too.

Lexmark 4650 Printer

A few months ago we bought a Lexmark 4650 printer/copier/scanner. It works wirelessly so we can keep it on the other side of the room to the computer, using a different power socket and helping to reduce clutter. I had some problems getting it to work at first but after a few hours of re-installing the software and re-booting I got it working and it has been printing, scanning to network and so on without any problem.

However.... yesterday it stopped working. The printer / scanner / copier was fine in itself but wasn't talking to the PC. The night before last we'd had some power "brown outs", when the power drops but not enough to shut down the TV and PC. So I guess that was when it lost the connection.

It was doing my head in. I sent it a print job and it ignored it. I asked it to scan to a network attached PC and it reported that it was "trying to connect to network". So, as the first IT fix of choice is always to "reboot it". I tried that, it still didn't want to play. So then I re-set the wireless router (BT Home Hub 2) and rebooted the printer again. It was STILL sulking. So then I connected it to the PC via USB 2 and started the wireless configuration utility. It scanned for networks and found my neighbour's WLAN and not mine. I re-set the wireless router again and scanned again. It still failed to find it.

I went through the settings on the router for the Wireless LAN. While doing this I noticed that the router was using channel 11 with an option to re-set to use a different channel. I remembered that last time I looked it was on channel 6. I clicked on "reset" for the channel number and it moved on to channel 1. I then told the Lexmark Wireless Configuration Utility to re-scan for networks. It found my LAN in seconds, I entered the password and as if by magic it started working!

The nightmares I had when I first got the printer were a similar issue that seemed to fix itself. With hindsight, it probably fixed itself when I re-started the router and hence reset the channel. It seems that pressing the reset button doesn't change the channel number used and it looks like the printer cannot "see" the higher channel numbers. I can set the BT Home Hub to use a particular channel if I want, but part of me is thinking I want to find out what the issue REALLY is. Does it limit to single digits perhaps, so does the channel number have to be below 10 perhaps? Maybe it's worse than that - it may have to be 8 or below. I may do some more tests :-)

Broadband Update

I had another chat with BT's customer service people this afternoon :)

Fairly quick this time, I only had to wait a couple of minutes for an agent and was only put on hold for about 2 - 3 minutes during the call.

My residential broadband will now be activated by 6 pm on Monday 22nd September - apparently. Good thing my old service is still active or I'd be really irritated!