Greetings and Salutations...
On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 01:30:39 GMT, "Mark L." wrote:
As other folks have mentioned, if you have not done it already, download AdAware
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and Spybot Search and Destroy
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They are both excellent programs, but seem to find a SLIGHTLY different set of adware and spyware items. Install, run the online update, and let them go to town. Quarantine anything the programs find. If you don't have a good anti-virus program, either buy one, or download it. AVG
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is an excellent and inexpensive option. (Before doing the following, make a backup of any important data on your system. While these steps should not destroy anything, there is always that joyous chance of disaster.) Also, go into your system and clear off ALL cookies, history files, and temp files (delete all files in C:\windows\temp or whatever is on your system). Track down any other work files you can and delete them. IF YOU ARE NOT SURE ABOUT A FILE DO *NOT* DELETE IT. If you use Internet Exploder to cruise the net, shut it down, and find the "Temporary Internet Files" folder. Delete everything in it. Empty the recycle bin. Run a GOOD defrag on the system (one that will actually optimize things, as opposed to simply shuffling things around a bit). I prefer Norton Utilities myself, but others work too. After all this, reboot the system, and see if the speed has improved. I suspect that it might well have helped. The next step is to bring up the task manager (ctl-alt-del once) and see what programs are running. Systray and explorer NEED to be running...almost anything else may not. Find out what each of the listed programs do, and decide if you want to allocate system resources to that job. If not, bring up the "run" command (START button->RUN) and run "MSCONFIG". Use it to turn off anything extra. Finally...Find and treasure the name and contact number for your local computer geek. If you screw up the system you will NEED such a person to clean up the mess without losing everything. Many support places will simply format your hard drive and re-install a clean copy of windows...which will get you back to running, but, will likely lose all your data. You probably don't want that. Did I mention...make a good backup before randomly deleting things? Regards Dave Mundt