annesthreads

I know there have been several past posts about this sort of thing, and I'm mystified by a noise I've heard twice recently. The frst time was late Sunday night 3 weeks ago, and it continued until well into Monday. Last night - Sunday again- it was back, and has stopped within the past hour. I can best describe it as sounding as if someone is playing rock music some distance away, so you can hear a bass beat. That's what I assumed it was at first, but when I went out to try to locate it, I realised that I could only hear the noise in the house. I wondered if it was music a few doors down the terrace, but no-one had lights on - and surely they wouldn't continue till Monday lunchtime without someone sorting them out? After the first time I began to wonder if I'd imagined it, now I've heard it again at exactly the same time, I'm puzzled...and sleepless, as it was loud and persistent enough to keep me awake till the early hours. I wondered if the 2 Sunday nights correlate with roadworks anywhere in this area? ( Though if that's the answer, why couldn't I hear it outside?)

Seems to be sorted now - thanks for the help.

Thanks - have retuned to these. However, a couple of hours later, ITV 1 and 2, Channel 5 and all the Channel 4 channels still haven't loaded into the EPG. Is there anything else I can do to get them to load?

When I first bought the above, people on here gave me a lot of help with getting it tuned in to the correct transmitter. This week there was a retune and now I'm back to BBC Newcastle! I'm also having problems with the programme guide, which is mostly blank apart from BBC channels. I understand this may be because I'm tuned in to more than one transmitter? I live in Crookes and so have several strong signals available ( though I'm amazed to be getting Tyneside programmes even so!). Please could someone tell me which channel numbers to use for the 5 basic channels? Tuning those in manually resolved the problem last time. Any other advice welcome!

Is there anywhere not a million miles from Crookes that might be able to source and replace the screen on an Acer Aspire One laptop, please? I've cracked the screen on mine and the black area is slowly advancing....

Relieved to know I wasn't imagining things! I was walking up from Hunter's Bar towards Broomhill when I saw it go across the sky.

Well, the story continues...broadband is still at 0.3mbps, so I phoned BT again this evening. What a nightmare. I suspect that the person on the other end was a trainee - they were sticking grimly to the script and seemed unable to understand that the low speed probably relates to a fault on the phone line that has now been sorted. We had to go through all the tests that I've already run so often in the past few days - surprise, surprise, no change. THEN she started to tell me that she couldn't find a problem and I could use their chargeable service...that was when I said I wanted to speak to a manager in the UK tomorrow. At which point she suddenly discovered that there was a fault on the line that would be repaired within the next 24 hours. After over half an hour on the phone. Bizarre. Until now, the people I've spoken to have been excellent, but this was a textbook example of the downside of offshore call centres.

Thanks. The 0.3mbps has been about the only thing that's been stable for the past week or so, so you may be right. I'll wait and make sure that the phone's still OK in the morning, then give the broadband people a call.

I just said no, but in fact I think, yes, one of the 4 did have a beard. (My powers of observation are so brilliant...!) Broadband is still at 0.3mbps - but I'ved just thought that maybe I should have switched off the router and restarted it. I'll be holding my breath when I pick the phone up tomorrow morning, to see if the crackling is still there. But as the engineer also took all the extension wiring out of the master socket, as I now have cordless phones, hopefully if there are still problems they're unlikely to be in the house. We shall see!

I thought of your post as the engineer looked up at the house and said "Dropwire"! I'd never heard of a dropwire till a few days ago...

Well, I can't fault BT's response this morning. Of course, sod's law, the phone was fine today - no crackling for the engineer to listen to. But we ended up with 4 engineers, 2 vans and an access platform, as they replaced all the wiring from the telegraph pole to the house. I won't know till tomorrow whether it's fixed the problem, as it seems to have been more of an issue during the week than at weekend. Perhaps ominously, broadband speed is still only 0.3mpbs. But maybe it needs time to settle down - let's see what tomorrow brings!

Well, I've booked the engineer, with BT still insisting the line is OK, in spite of loud crackling when there's a dialling tone at all, and threatening a £130 call-out charge. I'm so stressed now that I feel like abandoning the land line all together! Thanks for all the help and advice.

Just catching up with the latest replies to my post - am very grateful for all the help. Being totally non-technical, I tend to get stressed by these things! Especially when I have to decide whether to risk a £130 call-out charge. Phone is still crackling, broadband unreliable - BUT having just plugged router into test socket, it hasn't gone down for the past half hour, which is a record compared to recent performance. Phone is no better though. However, I've just run a speed test (using an Ethernet cable), and it was a truly impressive 0.3mpbs, compared to the estimated 6.0. Whether it's a problem in the house or outside, I think I'm at the limits of what I can do to solve it, so I guess I'm going to have to gamble the £130. Just a bit worried that the fact that the broadband is staying up when router is plugged into the test socket COULD indicate an internal problem - but there's not a lot I can do about it without help anyway! I think I've run all possible tests - changing filters, unplugging everything and trying a non-cordless phone in the test socket. I did wonder about the weather affecting the wire into the house. Another odd thing is that there were no problems at all over the holiday weekend, Saturday-Monday - phone line clear, broadband working very fast - then on Tuesday morning it all started again. Thanks again - I really appreciate all the help and advice.

Thanks - interesting to know this, especially re switching without penalty. I switched from Sky to BT about 6 months ago, and the BT broadband has been extremely disappointing, even before the problems of the past week - much slower and less reliable than Sky, and the call centre, as you say, difficult to deal with. I'm tied into the BT contract for another year, but will be looking for a way out if things don't improve.

So this morning my broadband is working perfectly again. Just a shame that the phone is dead. Sigh. back to BT....

Yes, the person who phoned me back said they'd been able to hear the noise on the line, so had then called my mobile. They ran through the basic tests I could do (unplugging everything etc) and said they'd call me back when I'd had chance to try all that, but didn't. I'm now logging when the problems occur and what happens, particularly with the broadband, which keeps going down for a few minutes and then coming back, and will go back to BT with all the information. Thanks for your advice - I'm now feeling fairly confident that it's not going to be a fault on my property - unless the router is faulty, and that's BT's anyway!

Thanks Bill. Quite honestly, it would have been difficult to report the fault using the phone, because the noise was so bad! Yet they said there was nothing wrong with the line... So good idea - I'll do so next time to make the point. I think I'll run through all the basic checks again and then get back to BT. The trouble with these intermittent faults, though is that it's sod's law that if an engineer comes out, it'll all be working perfectly, just as it did over the weekend!

Thanks mediumfast - your advice is much appreciated. I thought it was particularly odd that over the bank holiday weekend everything went back to normal, then this morning all the problems started again. I've already done what you suggested re checking the main socket, using an old-style phone rather than the cordless, and it's still crackly. However, BT say they've tested the line and there's no problem with it (even though it was so crackly they had to phone me back on my mobile...!). I've also moved the router from an extension to the main socket and have tried a different filter, but nothing's made any difference. Guess you may be making a house call....!

Is anyone else in the Crookes area having problems with BT broadband? Since 23rd Dec mine keeps going down. Phone is crackly, too. Over this weekend, 31st-2nd, it was all suddenly OK again, but all the problems have started again today. BT haven't been much help -an engineer could come out, but it'll cost me £130 if the problem is on my property...!! A friend in Broomhill said she'd had some trouble too, so I'm wondering if it's not just me - anyone else?

I haven't had 3G at home for 3-4 weeks now. An email to Orange has been ignored.

None of this seems to explain why my TV is now OK (after a struggle) but on the Humax box the reception's bad and the electronic programme guide is only giving me details of the next 2 or 3 days instead of 8. It's infuriating, given that until switchover I had no problems, and had invested money in an aerial and good quality equipment that's now virtually useless.

I thought I'd seen something about 27th. Even the info about the dates has been confusing and contradictory. I don't think this process has been at all well organised, especially considering that we're practically the last region to go. I'm leaving well alone now till after 27th, then we'll see what's happening then. In the meantime, I've got plenty of books to read!

Do you actually let the auto tune run, or stop as soon as it gets going? And do you now get the 8-day programme guide? I've already tried a factory reset and a manual tune but will try again! The strange thing on mine is that some of the Emley Moor stations, especially BBC1, are very poor - but BBC Newcastle is perfect. And it's not the aerial, because BBC Leeds is fine on the TV.

Max - you have found this already, and it doesn't solve the problem of the missing programme guide (most channels on mine are only up to Tuesday at the moment: Humax said it should show the next 8 days), but I've just discovered, by reading the manual as an absolute last resort (!), that if you press Menu/Record/recording schedule/yellow button you can set up a recording by inputting the time and channel details, just like in the good old days of video recorders...

...hasn't worked for me - still very poor reception on channels that were perfect before the switchover, and very few programmes on the programme guide.