Computer Problems

Just to let everyone know, I am going to be incommunicado for an unknown amount of time. My computer is "completely hosed" as my husband calls it.

There are a few folks here who email me regularly and I just wanted to let those people know I am ok physically but not electonically. LOL

Until we meet again.....

Leslie,

When you return, please tell me what happened to your computer. You know I'm interested. See you soon, I hope.

Chris

OH NO!!! I will miss you ... get back online soon!!!

Leslie, please don't go....please don't....please........ . . . . .

Husband solved my problem......with Office Depot and a credit card!

Yay Leslie, so glad we dont have to lose you.
I was off-line all day, the internet just died.
The ISP people said it was my router not them.

I fixed it. I dont know how, but just kept resetting and 9pm tonight it came on.
Quite chuffed with myself....

Welcome back...

Leslie,

What was wrong with old one?

Chris

Hi Leslie,

I read that you were able to resolve the problem, but in case it happens again, feel free to contact me and I would be happy to help if possible. I've worked on computers all my life, and been a tech in a couple different companies so I would be more then happy to help. I do it as a hobby these days to help me feel constructive with the little time I have between migraines and my very lenient, real job. So you would be helping me too

Same goes for anyone here. Means even more to me if I can help others that know our suffering.

Thank you everyone, for your concern.

My husband bought me a new computer last night. It was very inexpensive. I believe I contracted a virus or something. The computer was going slower and slower over time to the point where I would have to turn it on at last a ½ hour before I attempted to use it.

Then, all of a sudden it stopped working. I couldn't even move a file from one folder to another.

My husband has removed the hard drive and is going to make it a slave on his computer in order to retrieve some important stuff I don't want to lose.

Thank you for the offers of help. I will certainly keep that in mind for the future as I know it will happen again eventually.

£eslie

Charish that is a nice offer thank you.
I have learned a lot by just playing around and so far so good.
But I a no tech head.

My BIL just lost everything in this McAfee "virus" thing.
Trying to download patch when you dont have internet....hmmm

Thanks

Oh gosh....what McAfee thingy?

I had McAfee on my computer. This new one has a 60 day Norton trial.

Does anyone know which one is better? I am leaning toward Norton since it is already loaded (I did start the free trial before going online).

On another note, does anyone know why people make these malware/virus/worm things? Is it to drum up business for their "fixes" or what?

I just cannot believe people do this to screw up other people's computers especially since they won't get the "pleasure" of watching people like me get upset about it. I guess they can read posts about people's problems and be proud of their handiwork.

There's a special place in hell for people who do this stuff!

Leslie,

I have Norton on my computer and it seems to work ok. You need to make sure you buy it so you don't loose it when the trial is up. You should do a full scan once a week at least. I'll bet if your hubby cleans up your hard drive, your old computer will work like new. The Internet saves all kinds of junk files on your computer. You need to delete all of this with something like Norton. It can clog up your computer to the point that it wont work. It sounds as if this is what has happened. A very easy fix.

Hal

I've heard better things about McAfee Antivirus because it doesn't seem to slow down the computer as much as Norton. Both use a reasonable amount of computer resources to constantly monitor everything opened and saved to your computer for viruses, which is a good thing. But depends on how slow your computer is running because of it. If you are fine with its performance after installing Norton, then I think that company is the better choice, although better performance and a little less effectiveness is more associated with McAfee.

I personally use a free antivirus called AVG that can be downloaded/installed from download.com, but one of the reasons I don't use Norton/McAfee is because I've only had a virus once in my 20+ or so years working on computers. I also know what to look for and how to quickly disconnect and clean my computer of something without the virus software so I haven't been to concerned about it. AVG seems to monitor very effectively, only using about 1/4 of the resources that Norton or McAfee uses. So for my purposes, it's ideal.

Hal gives important advice too that whichever virus program you use, they are useless if you don't have buy the program and subscribe to updates on a regular basis. I make sure AVG checks for updates daily because a lot of viruses appear and evolve that quickly.

It also could be just a lot of accumulated junk as Hal also mentioned. There are a lot of programs for that, with a well known brand like Norton being the better choices by far. For example, on the site I mentioned above, download.com, there are a lot of freeware programs that claim to clean your computer of junk but they can just as easily pick up pieces of programs you use and corrupt them by deleting files it didn't properly recognize. Until you are familiar enough with computers and software to look at a list of random files and know which program each file is associated with, you want to stick with popular brand name junk cleaners, and Norton really stays on top of things.

Cherish - being the techie you are can you help me?

I have a desktop that is getting a bit old (5-7 years or so) and it runs really slow. I've run spyware checks and there is nothing there. I've checked for odd things running (ie viruses, background crap) and everything is fine there. All things load just fine, it just takes forever.

Any ideas on getting it to run a bit quicker? I suppose I ought to mention that when I was with my ex, we had a network running through the house and I've never eliminated that stuff.

Becky

I use the free download of AVG. I love it, it has never let me down (touching wood here).

I had Norton and yes, it slows the whole system down.

Had Mcafee and that is better, but sticking with AVG.
I scan every single day.
One day it caught 17 Trojans.....

The Mcafee thingy was on Wednesday, they issued an update which presented itself to windows (XP mainly I think) as a virus.
This shut the whole PC down. Just helped my BIL get a patch and he is up and running again now.
Bit much when the virus system sends you a virus, even if it is mistaken identity
But hey, they apologised...

P

HeelerLady wrote:Cherish - being the techie you are can you help me?

I have a desktop that is getting a bit old (5-7 years or so) and it runs really slow. I've run spyware checks and there is nothing there. I've checked for odd things running (ie viruses, background crap) and everything is fine there. All things load just fine, it just takes forever.

Any ideas on getting it to run a bit quicker? I suppose I ought to mention that when I was with my ex, we had a network running through the house and I've never eliminated that stuff.

Becky

Hi Becky,

Often times a computer will slow down progressively over it's lifespan because of all the programs that have been installed and not fully removed when you uninstalled or changed anything. I've had a pretty reliable experience with another free program called Advanced SystemCare by IOBit. You can download it here.

The biggest thing to be aware of with that software is if anything starts to go wrong or you receive errors after the scan it provides, it saves every change it made and they can be reversed in case it removed the wrong thing. It's always best to completely reboot your system after it finishes the scan to make sure windows loads normally before you use anything else, and you'll want to make sure all other programs are closed during the scan.

It's a very easy program to use though. There is one button in the main window that says "Care!", and it does the rest after that with a lot of various scans to clean up/optimize your system. The restore function is also in the main window in case you get any errors after using it. Then if there are errors, they have to be researched separetely by a tech or me to resolve those more carefully.

Let me know how it goes, and hope that helps!
Patrick

Just so you know.....my head is spinning!

You are all so smart about computers. I am just an operator....not a behind the scenes person.

I know you think it is easy stuff but for folks like me, it's rocket science.

I know this sounds like getting rid of your old car because the ashtrays are full but I now have a new computer. With prices as low as this, it was silly to be offline for the length of time it would take to fix the old one.

lesherb wrote:Just so you know.....my head is spinning!

You are all so smart about computers. I am just an operator....not a behind the scenes person.

I know you think it is easy stuff but for folks like me, it's rocket science.

I know this sounds like getting rid of your old car because the ashtrays are full but I now have a new computer. With prices as low as this, it was silly to be offline for the length of time it would take to fix the old one.

I think was very lucky to grow up with a Dad that built and sold computers for a living. From as young as I can remember, I helped him on some projects or played around with the very first PCs in the 80s, and got really comfortable fixing and getting inside one like the hood of a car for a mechanic. Another reason I keep it as a hobby is because I don't like what is going on with the profession, how techs that find easy solutions charge a minimum $50-100/hour fee for something that took them 2 minutes to change/fix. Every company I ever worked as a tech for handles it that way. What people are really paying for is $100 per 5 minutes and the rest goes to the tech putting his feet up and listening to his ipod or something. I can't do that kind of work.

You're right about computer prices being really low right now though. I believe the gaming industry has pushed technology well beyond what other programs/business software requires, so that computers that run everything but games fall in price for lack of demand. You can still easily spend $2,000 on a good gaming computer, but it's a complete waste for anything else unless you need a server for an entire building of users. Even then, some of the pieces of it are wasted. I'm about to get a better computer myself for $400 that I can upgrade over the next several years as I have the money. I don't remember prices for full systems ever being that low, not even counting inflation.