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A. I won’t take up valuable space listing all the things that can go wrong and prevent Flash Player from installing, but take my word for it, there’s plenty to choose from. The best thing you can do is work your way through the Flash Player Installation Troubleshooter on the Adobe website (http://tinyurl.com/yvoot5). If that doesn’t work, you could try installing an older version. I suggest v7 or v8, both of which are available from the excellent Oldversion.com website, you’ll also find a link to an uninstall utility which you should run first, to make sure all traces of previous installations have been removed.

Q. I own a guesthouse and would like to be able to offer visitors free wireless Internet access. A friend's D-link router has a network key, which has to be used by anyone who wants to connect to the network. Is there anything available, which will just give Internet access without the need for a key?

Carla Hawton, via email

A. The ‘key’ you are referring to is WEP or WPA encryption, which is absolutely vital and designed to protect the computers connected to the router from being hacked into, and to stop anyone from stealing your Internet connection, so it would be extremely unwise to set up a system with this feature switched off.

Ideally you should be using wireless hotspot management software, which will still allow you to provide your guests with free wi-fi, for the duration of their stay, but isolate them, and the other guest’s computers from each other, and more importantly, keep them out of your computers.

Basic systems like My Wi-FiZone (http://www.mywifizone.com/) and Antamedia (http://www.antamedia.com/), are specifically written for small-scale set-ups like yours, Internet café’s etc. They are not terribly expensive to set up or use – anywhere from £2 per month to £200 all-in -- which is a small price to pay for the protection and peace of mind it affords.

Q. When I start up my PC it displays the message 'Insert Boot Media', instead of starting from the hard disk. When I retry (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and go into set-up mode, the boot 'source' is the hard drive, as it should be, and this time it starts correctly. Sometimes, it takes two or three attempts if I don't go into the setup menu.

I've had the machine about eighteen months. It was fine for the first year then it started to happen and it is gradually getting worse. Any ideas?

Dave Jenner, via email

A. This sort of error message usually indicates a hardware failure of some kind. Basically your computer is saying that it cannot find the Primary Master hard drive, which contains the boot information needed to start Windows. However, since your fault seems to be intermittent in nature my first port of call would be the cable connecting the hard drive to the motherboard. This can work its way loose (at both ends), so whip off the lid and try reseating the plugs. I have also come across a similar case where it was caused by ‘jumpers’ on the hard drive being incorrectly set to Cable Select, rather than Master mode.

Otherwise there could be a problem with either the motherboard or the hard drive. If you fancy a challenge then you can find out which component is to blame by is swapping the hard drive for a known good one. If you use one from an old Windows PC it should detect its presence and try to boot from it (though you will see a number of error message). If you use a new or recently formatted drive, you can prove it is working by installing a copy of Linux or an old version of Windows.

Q. After using Disk Clean Up on my Windows XP SP2 computer, I deleted a few temporary files but next time I switched on, Windows refused to boot, except into Safe Mode. Dell advised that I should reinstall everything but to save my data first. I bought an external hard disk (Maxtor 320 USB) that came with no instructions other than ‘plug into electricity then into USB slot’.

I decided to use the Transfer files and Settings Wizard. The process did not take long and I finished with a folder on the external disc and three files of under 2Gb and 12 bytes. I have failed to find any information on how these files may be opened. Microsoft refused to deal with it, as my copy of Windows is OEM. Dell has not replied to my messages and a recovery service has also ignored me. Can you help, please?

John Pelton, France

A. As you have probably realised by now the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard is not a backup program but a means of copying data from one PC to another, via a cable or an external drive. The size of the files created on the external drive suggests that they are the ‘helper’ utilities, which are there to facilitate the transfer and do not contain your data files, so if you have carried out a full restoration I’m afraid to say that your data is probably lost.

It’s not unusual for external drives to lack proper instructions, but they are very easy to use and plug in and switch on really is all there is to it on XP and Vista PCs. A new drive icon show up in Windows Explorer and My Computer and although it probably too late for you now, for future reference just treat it like any other drive on your PC and copy or drag and drop the files and folders you want to backup from your main drive on to the new drive icon.

If you have a computer problem write to: fff@telegraph.co.uk

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