Thetownend.com

right i got my laptop in about august time, think its got 512 ram and not a bad memory, but for some reason its got really really slow.

i cant even play songs on itunes without them sortve juddering, its an absolute load of wank.

any ideas what could be causing this? i downloaded spyware doctor or something and it said i had 104 infections and i had to purchase it to delete them so they could well be blagging.

is it some sort of anti-spyware i need? if so where can i get it from?

any serious ideas how to sort it?

You got a virus checker? Do a virus scan!

Try this too: http://www.trendmicro.com/spyware-scan/ ( think this is free)

Go to your Task Manager also, and look at what processes you have running.
That usually gives a good idea of whats running in the background, see if there's anything strange there.

Download Ad-Aware

http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html

It's free and it'll remove everything.

Oh, and stop downloading dodgy porn  :D

cheers boys.

i had norton but im on my uni network and its a load of gash; they give you their own anti virus (sophos) and the auto updates are unreliable.

i'll see what that adaware throws up, my task manager processes seem pretty normal and the cpu usage is never that high.

download ccleaner, crap cleaner, it cleans out your history etc as well!

IMO the best anti-virus program is NOD32 (http://www.eset.com/), though it's not free. You get what you pay for I guess.

CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/) is also a very handy tool.

my nod32 was very free.  :D

should i run or save that ccleaner malarky?

see that's what is baffling i used to download shed loads of porn but havent really on this baby.


oh and a little bubble just popped up about virtual memory minimum being too low whatever the fuck that means.

Run it Strood

It will park it self on your desktop anyway mate

Get spybot, ad-aware and AVG anti-virus (free). You can get them all free, run them all, Bob's your uncle. Go to download.com to get 'em.

apparently according to my anti-virus there's a virus in that ad aware programme.

big trouble in little computer

Throw the laptop out of the window and go and buy another one   8)




That's what I did !

i downloaded spybot and then "run" it, and it's been creating a registry backup for the past 10 minutes, does it normally take that long or have i managed to fuck up the simplest of tasks?

Make sure you run a spyware and virus check once a week. I think spybot is also one of the better anti-spyware programs available:
Spybot Search & Destroy (http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html)

Make sure you have a firewall as well. XP has a built in one but it's gash because it only monitors incoming traffic. If something in your computer triggers off and tries to contact someone/something else outside it could lead to big problems. If you don't have a decent firewall already get one. I would recommend zonealarm because it's free and it's one of the best out there:
ZoneAlarm (http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp)

The more stuff you have running in the background of your pc, the slower it will become. You might have loads of programs running in the background, especially from the time you boot. Without going into a hugely technical (and geeky) way of checking every program, for now go to start>all programs>startup. If there are programs in that menu location you do not need to run from the start, delete them from that menu. This will prevent them from running when you switch on your machine but you can still use them whenever you need to anyway.

Don't forget that if you have little free space on your hard drive, performance will also deteriorate. So clean up your hard drive! A simple way to delete all temp files/temp internet files is to right click on your hard drive and then select properties. In the next window (the one with the pie chart) click on disk cleanup. It'll take a while to run it's calculations, but basically tick temp files, internet files and recycle bin. Then ok to clean it up. You should also uninstall all programs you don't need by going to the add/remove programs tool in control panel.

Finally if you haven't done so already I would recommend defragmenting your hard drive. Do this by right clicking on it and selectign properties again. In the pie chart window select the 'tools' tab at the top and run the disk defragmenting tool. You want to select 'defragment' to do the job. This will take some time so I recommend you roll a doob (or whatever you students do) and mong out while it does it's business.

My registry backup I did the other month took ages. It was nearly 100mb in size.

i knew you'd come to the rescue arr kid.

i'll do all that shight soon.

what does that deframent do? will i lose anything? if it takes ages i'll just wank myself into  coma while i wait.

Nope, ad-aware will quarantine that item, so your virus scan gets tricked, but the item has been quarantined (can't work). Nothing to worry about.

Um best way to explain it is that files become broken up - so one part of a file might be at one 'end' of your hard drive and the other part might be at the other. This means it takes longer to read. The defraggler puts the parts next to each other (as best it can) to make the reading process more efficient. You won't lose anything.

what the fuck are you on about now?


wowza 75 critical thingys on my firsty ad-aware scan aready. feels like im squeezing a big spot on my bellend  8)

Sorry strooood, that was in reply to Lebowski.

Typical geek, bragging about the size of his registry!

Au contraire, less would be more in this case.

Avast is the best and for free...
and for spyware a-squared free

...but although I have some problems with mine pc too...
 :|  When I turn it on to the current it hisses , but when I turn on pc it stops . The same if there is a current failure outside...it hisses again...

Sounds like a cockroach problem

Nah..................sounds like "snakes on a plane" to me



Toooooo much hissing !

I've never experienced buggery, so can't comment whether the speed is ok or not.

Liar !

 :wink:

Aswell as going for the classic ad aware jobbys you can also go to run in the start menu and run msconfig.

Check the startup tab, anything in there which you don't wan't loading up on startup tick off or uninstall

Check the services tab, anything which looks a bit sketchy, no manufactor etc. do an internet search for to find out what it is and if it's needed.

There's a facility in spybot also in the tools that tells you what the processes are, if you're still unsure.

Sophos is one of the most respected anti-virus softwares around, you should be fine with that strooood. I wouldn't get more than one anti-virus program because it would further slow the the machine down as you would have both running at once and also they might conflict with each other.

yea i'm sure it's really good but not when the updates fail everyday.

it's just got some queer red cross over it. how bent. defrag worked a treat though it's all much quicker, thanks.

That will be the network admin's fault - I don't think Sophos auto updates itself - rather, it is patched and 'updated' through the administrator. That's what I've heard before anyway.

I'd talk to your uni about it if they're responsible, otherwise get yourself some new anti-virus shizzle and uninstalll Sophos.

Looks liek I heard wrong. Bottom of page:

http://www.le.ac.uk/cc/cchelp/sophos.html

I'd still get in touch with IT at your uni and if they are being queer about it uninstall and get some new anti-virus software.

Sophos should automatically update from the server. We use sophos and have no problems whatsoever. Easy to manage.

likewise i have sophos, occasionally it fails to auto-update but you can manually do it by right clicking on the icon in the system tray... However, it sounds like you have Sophos v4 - I noticed a while ago that Sophos are getting rid of this in Feb I think, and you need to update to a newer version 5 or 6. if you are at a Uni this should be easy to do from your uni's IT department website

i have windows defender and it does the job,it is free aswell

right, i did all the above last night and everything was fine. now i've turned my computer back on today and literally everything is in hiyoglyphics (apart from what's inside this screen), we're talking everything on the desktop (icons are fine but the writing is a series of shapes) and everything on the start menu - help.

haha! can you post a picture?

hey, do i sound like i know what i'm doing?

Sounds like a system font has been deleted. Can you do a system restore?

Anyone used one of these Registry Mechanic tools to clean up your Windows Registry? Any advice on any free tools out there, as most require you to register.

Coxernator - I think I use RegScrub and it's free. Will give you details later. I've also used registry mechanic and other ones but this one has given me the best results and least problems.

Always backup your registry before you change anything though!

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Registry-Tweak/RegScrubXP.shtml

Forgot about this. Above is the link to regscrubxp. It's the most stable one I've come accross and it's freeware.

Thanks pieman, will take a look laters.