Setting up a TalkTalk Huawei SmartAX 882 in a home LAN

I've been having problems with my old broadband modem.  It is a TalkTalk branded Thomson SpeedTouch 330, and when I plug it into my USB2.0 it requests 75% of it's bandwidth (that's 360Mbps) even though the most data it could hope to send down it is 10Mbps!  This was causing problems for my USB sound card (see Dell T105 below) since it could not allocate enough bandwidth for the sound card to operate correctly.

Anyways, after speaking to Thomson who claim their not going to change the drivers on such an old modem, I spoke to TalkTalk who agreed to send me a new ADSL modem that could connect directly to the network (the SmartAX 882).  This is great for me because beforehand, if any computer in the house needed Internet access, my central server which had direct connection to the Internet needed to be on.  If I was able to connect to the Internet without turning the server on it would save loads of energy.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the new ADSL modem / router to work using the setup software that TalkTalk provide (Connect and Go V5.1).  So this is how I eventually solved the problem.

1. turn off my server which is trying to 'control' of the LAN
   
2. turn on my new ADSL modem/router and connect it the filter, and to my Ethernet switch using a normal (straight through) Ethernet cable.  Note that the modem came with a red cable which I suspect may be a cross over cable.
   
3. Using another one of my PCs which usually connect to the Internet through the server, bring up a brower.
4. Following the instructions given for an Apple in the guide.  Put the IP address for the router into the browser (192.168.1.1) and up pops some security asking for a username and password.  You're now communicating with the SmartAX882!
5. Enter the default username & password for the SmartAX 882 (if you haven't changed these yet).  Note this is not your details for connecting to your ISP.
6. Using the navigation on the left go to Basic/WAN settings.
7. Click on the pencil icon to edit the settings.
8. Now enter your username and password that you use to connect to your ISP without changing any other settings.
9. Submit
10. Save all
11. Now you should be able to browse the Internet from all computers except for the old server.
12. Turn the server on, assuming it's running XP or similar (otherwise I don't know what to do!)
13. Run the Network Setup Wizard (in the control panel) selecting that this computer now connects to the Internet via the network (the same as the other computers in the network).
14. Now the old server should now be able to connect to the Internet.

Nice.

OOo Calc Removing a Background Image

I was very pleased with myself when I managed to put a background image onto an OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet. However I was not so pleased when I realised I'd put it in slightly the wrong place. So how do you remove or modify an OOo background image?

1. Open the navigator: Edit / Navigator (or simply press F5)
2. Select the graphics you want to delete / move / resize within the Navigator: it select your image so that you can do this

I knew it would be simple, but it took me ages to work out exactly what to do.

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To put a background image onto OOo:

1. Insert / Picture / from file
   
2. Select image & resize
3. right click / Arrange / to background