Me whining about computer

[mdmc]

Doggon it, for the last 2 months my computer has been limping along, most annoying was not being able to upload phtos to e-mail, and very weird happennings when i got on the net. Any way i tried every thing i could think of to no avail. 2 20 hour long sessions of thourough scandisc and many hours of fiddlin with this and that... So finally I reformatted hard drive and it seems fixed. Now there is much work to do reloading all software.
Oh well I'm just relieved things seem to be right again.
It took me 5 attemts to upload a pic here yesterday. the puter would freeze and i had to shutdown with the power button. What a pain!
Whaaaaa!!!!
Mark.

[another view]

I like the reformat/re-install approach - you know you got the problem out... Remember when people were telling us how much more productive computers would make us?

[Michael Fanelli]

Doggon it, for the last 2 months my computer has been limping along, most annoying was not being able to upload phtos to e-mail, and very weird happennings when i got on the net. Any way i tried every thing i could think of to no avail. 2 20 hour long sessions of thourough scandisc and many hours of fiddlin with this and that... So finally I reformatted hard drive and it seems fixed. Now there is much work to do reloading all software.
Oh well I'm just relieved things seem to be right again.
It took me 5 attemts to upload a pic here yesterday. the puter would freeze and i had to shutdown with the power button. What a pain!
Whaaaaa!!!!
Mark.

The most common reasons for problems such as you describe is adware and spyware. I use three adware/spyware tools and run them overnight every other day. At the school where I work, one computer was barely working: turns out it had 76 malware programs running at the same time! I cleaned them up and, voila! Everything worked fine again. Windows XP seldom, if ever, has to be reinstalled.

[dmm96452]

Also, after you have finished reloading and configuring all of your software you might consider a program such as Norton Ghost or similar software to create an image of your hard drive.

Being able to completely restore all of the software on the pc in less than an hour makes it much easier to make the decision to wipe the drive.

[Lionheart]

99.9% chance that you're PC was swamped with spyware/adware/nuisanceware. All my PC's at home and at the office run with Spysweeper (as well as McAffee ASAP or BitDefender). If you're not running a spyware program on your PC now that you've painstakingly re-installed everything, it won't be long before you're PC slows to a crawl.
Defrag your drives once a month too-really helps depending on how full your drives are.
Just my two bits of course.

[Peter_AUS]

And don't forget we actually have official Computer forums as well that you might like to visit sometime.

[JSPhoto]

Get Spybot S&D - it's Free and VERY good.... stay away from anything NORTON! Norton is the worst waste of money I have ever seen.... use McAfee for virus protection. After working on computers since 1983 I have found that Noron is nothing but a scam, yeah, they work for some things, but McAfee is way ahead, and keeps up with new threats much better than Nortons. I fixed a computer last month that had Norton on it and it failed to deal with a two year old virus, yet it was "up to date"... Nortons site even claims to clean this particular bug yet, it didn't. I sometimes think the protection companies are the ones actually starting these things, just so they can stay in business, and keep you buying more garbage.... nature of the beast though.

JS

[Asylum Steve]

stay away from anything NORTON! Noron is nothing but a scam, yeah, they work for some things...but McAfee is way ahead, and keeps up with new threats much better than Nortons.

Funny, my computer guy, whom I would trust my life with (my computer's life, anyway, heh heh) is exactly the opposite. Swears by Norton, will not let me touch anything McAfee, and says NORTON's software is consistantly a year or so ahead of them. And he's been doing this for a very very long time, too...

My guess is this is one of those Ford-Chevy arguments that can't be won...

In any event, I would never trust Norton by itself. I too, use several overlapping programs, including Spy-Bot, which I agree is very good...

[Photo-John]

I've been using Trend Micro's antivirus software on my laptop for over a year now. I've used both Norton and McAfee in the past. I am liking Trend Micro better. I couldn't say that it's actually better. But I feel better about it.

By the way, I just spent 4-5 hours trying to get my DSL reconnected. During my Interbike tradeshow trip my phone and DSL got disconnected (whoops!). I finally had a chance to spend some time on it today. After a bluescreen, tons of Safe Mode restarts, and some careful registry and driver editing, I'm back online at home. However, my belief that computers are out to get me has grown stronger.

[masdog]

This is a Ford-Chevy argument, but the best part about it is that all the basic Anti-Spyware tools are free. Spybot, Ad-Aware, and if you're using a legal version of Windows, MS Anti-Spyware, are all freely available to the public.

There is also a free anti-virus that is good. I use AVG Anti-virus, which comes in a free edition. It works very well, and so far, no one who I know that uses it has had any problems.

[mdmc]

Also, after you have finished reloading and configuring all of your software you might consider a program such as Norton Ghost or similar software to create an image of your hard drive.

Being able to completely restore all of the software on the pc in less than an hour makes it much easier to make the decision to wipe the drive.

Thanks for posting, I'll look into this ghost stuff.

[almo]

Doggon it, for the last 2 months my computer has been limping along, most annoying was not being able to upload phtos to e-mail, and very weird happennings when i got on the net. Any way i tried every thing i could think of to no avail. 2 20 hour long sessions of thourough scandisc and many hours of fiddlin with this and that... So finally I reformatted hard drive and it seems fixed. Now there is much work to do reloading all software.
Oh well I'm just relieved things seem to be right again.
It took me 5 attemts to upload a pic here yesterday. the puter would freeze and i had to shutdown with the power button. What a pain!
Whaaaaa!!!!
Mark.

LOL...Windows problems are so funny!


At least now they are... ;)

[mdmc]

Ford? Chevy? Seems like I'm back in my '81Plymouth Horizon With the carpet covering Flintstone floorboards! I'd like to find a Toyota or Honda at a reasonable price. (an Apple perhaps).
Anyway an update since I posted this thread. By the way, thanks for all of the replies.
I've reformatted twice since then, trying to correct some minor probs but they always come back.
I have found that the free version of Spybot S&D is almost worthless, although I will credit it with keeping my cpmputer running during its most difficult times as long as I stayed offline.
I have plunked down $35 for Noadware 4.0. The first time I ran it it found 17 spyware adware progs, including 3 keylogg programs.
At this point I'm happy with the results, however if problems continue I might buy a cheap computer to put online and keep this one just for editing images. Right now things are going well.
thanks for the input'
Mark.

[mdmc]

LOL...Windows problems are so funny!


At least now they are... ;)

ToytAppleHondApple?

[almo]

Ford? Chevy? Seems like I'm back in my '81Plymouth Horizon With the carpet covering Flintstone floorboards! I'd like to find a Toyota or Honda at a reasonable price. (an Apple perhaps).
Anyway an update since I posted this thread. By the way, thanks for all of the replies.
I've reformatted twice since then, trying to correct some minor probs but they always come back.
I have found that the free version of Spybot S&D is almost worthless, although I will credit it with keeping my cpmputer running during its most difficult times as long as I stayed offline.
I have plunked down $35 for Noadware 4.0. The first time I ran it it found 17 spyware adware progs, including 3 keylogg programs.
At this point I'm happy with the results, however if problems continue I might buy a cheap computer to put online and keep this one just for editing images. Right now things are going well.
thanks for the input'
Mark.

The best adware/spyware program on the market is OS X. Give it a try...
;) ;) ;)

[mdmc]

The most common reasons for problems such as you describe is adware and spyware. I use three adware/spyware tools and run them overnight every other day. At the school where I work, one computer was barely working: turns out it had 76 malware programs running at the same time! I cleaned them up and, voila! Everything worked fine again. Windows XP seldom, if ever, has to be reinstalled.

I'm sure you were right about the adware spyware causing the problems.
So now I have 1 good prgram to help me, but what are the 3 that you use and what do you reccommend?
Mark.

[almo]

ToytAppleHondApple?

Ummm... well... no. it's more like a fine Italian sports car.

[mdmc]

Ummm... well... no. it's more like a fine Italian sports car.

I might jist havta go git me ona those, a red one with black trim.

[mdmc]

The best adware/spyware program on the market is OS X. Give it a try...
;) ;) ;)

Seriously Almo, I'd love to have an apple, but at the moment Its not in the cards(CREDIT).
Mark.

[almo]

I might jist havta go git me ona those, a red one with black trim.

For me my PC's were, and are as I still have 4 of them, just a buncha' parts I threw together. I've never owned one that I didn't put together myself from spare and third party parts, aside from my 2 laptops. But my Mac.... That was an investment. What I got was more than well worth it for what I payed, and the next one will be even better.

They say that, "New York Life is the company you keep", well Apple-Mac is the computer you keep. With a little upkeep they work great for years, and years, and years and they retain their value well past the packing container they are shipped in. With the typical Windows machine it's worth about as much as a paperwieght as soon as your warranty is gone. Not so with Apples. It is a hobby of mine to dirve the nearby neighborhoods on trash day to do "computer shopping". I have found countless perfectly functioning Windows computers over the years. I have found exactly 1 Apple. They are collectors items when they have out lived their usefullness. An IBM machine is scrap.

You do the math.

[almo]

Seriously Almo, I'd love to have an apple, but at the moment Its not in the cards(CREDIT).
Mark.

I spent under $200 for my iMac G3. It's not the fastest thing in the world, but it would beat any comparable windows machine you put up against it. My windows machine with a much faster AMD Athlon XP processor and almost 800megs of ram just barely beats out my G# 500mhz. Dubble my budget and you could be looking at a reseaonably fast G4. My next will be a G4 Tower that I don't think will run me more than $400.00. And you better be damn sure it will be well worth it.

[dmm96452]

Ummm... well... no. it's more like a fine Italian sports car.

That only runs on 5% of the worlds roads!

[almo]

That only runs on 5% of the worlds roads!

That is a very ignorant statement. Obviously you are not experienced with Mac.

[Michael Fanelli]

I'm sure you were right about the adware spyware causing the problems.
So now I have 1 good prgram to help me, but what are the 3 that you use and what do you reccommend?
Mark.

For spyware, I use Ad-Aware, Search and Destroy, and Microsoft AntiVirus. All are free. Actually, I'm just paranoid, they all see the same things. I've never been hit with a virus or spyware in all the years I've used Windows.

I am also smart enough not to do stupid things (most of the time!), such as giving out personal info to any web site that asks, believing that hundreds of people "love" me via email, using Zone Alarm (a free firewall), or frequenting porn sites, a major source of infections, etc..

Although it may cause a few flames, I don't use IE anymore either, choosing Firefox or Opera. Neither is safer than the latest IE but, again, the market share is too small to matter to hackers.

Windows is the most widely used OS in the world. That's why so many people try to attack it. If someone attacks Macs, who really cares? It's such a small market, smaller than Linux these days. Notice that Linux attacks are going up as more people try it out.

[Michael Fanelli]

It is a hobby of mine to dirve the nearby neighborhoods on trash day to do "computer shopping". I have found countless perfectly functioning Windows computers over the years. I have found exactly 1 Apple. They are collectors items when they have out lived their usefullness. An IBM machine is scrap.

You do the math.

LOL! OK, lets do the math. Macs own less than 3% of the US market, less than 2% of the worldwide market. That means, with equal depreciation, there should be 97 windows machines for, at most, every 3 Macs. Did you really expect to find lots of used Macs at yard sales and trash heaps?