Computer gektoids, my girlfriend needs you!

[TCO]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
if you're willing to shell out $30 or so, drive over to the best buy or circuit city in the burbs and buy norton av or mcafee av. i use norton, haven't had problems with it.

deep virusscans take a while, though. tell her to start it up when she goes to bed, and then when she wakes up, it'll be done with the check.

Ok, I will have her do that.

[TCO]

Originally posted by paiktis22


Sure

* paiktis22 gives GP a GR.

it was a referance to that peacenick who you met in a coffee shop and commented at the article you were reading at the washington post and was wearing a funny hat.

Nah. That was a different one. Haven't seen her around.

What is a GR?

[TCO]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
does she have an always-on inet connection? if that's the case, she ought to put up a firewall of sorts to stop people from hacking in; honestly, though, i doubt she's really being hacked.

Yes. She has a cable modem and I suspect that may be part of the problem. It does come with a Firewall, though. (The ISP provides it.) For the last week, she has been getting messages to add a new person to her network, which she cancels. And asking for her Firewall password. (which she doesn't remember and so she cancels that screen.) I had her disconnect from the modem. But to use the computer, she needs to eventually be connected up.

[TCO]

Paiktis, behave yourself. I may need to show her this thread.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by GP
Paiktis, behave yourself. I may need to show her this thread.

OK.

GR is a brand of cigaretes.

[Q Classic]

hm... she might want to raise her privacy settings a bit more, so she doesn't get messages from strangers.

hm...

how much HD space does she have left? have her clean out all the temp files, all the temp inet files, everthing she doesn't need. while you're at it, try springing for the version of norton that accompanies systemworks, because that way you get a program (speed disk) which helps defrag your HD. that too takes forever, so plan on doing that overnight--not at the same time as the av scanning. (actually, for both cases, doesn't have to be overnight. you could start it up in the morning and come back after work, usw.)

you can clear out a lot of unneeded files by right clicking on the hd icon in "my computer", and looking for a button that says "clean hard disk".

hm. so here's the order of operation that i'd suggest:
1. raise security
2. virusscan
3. defrag
4. save the important files (all her bookmarks are in a folder labelled "favorites"--she can drag this folder somewhere, copy it, and thus save it. all she has to do to bring it back is to place everything in the old favorites folder into the new one, iirc.), format the HD, and reinstall windows and the basic applications she needs/wants.

ah, and if she does #4, definitely make sure all of that data is off the computer, on a cd or something. do a full format, too.

[Sten Sture]

hey Seawolf -

check out www.zonelabs.com for a better firewall - the Pro version is a pain, but the freebee Zone Alarm is fine. It does have some spyware attached, but so do most things anyway.

Norton Anti-virus is available on as a free trial version at www.symantec.com under 'downloads'. (she can download the full version if she wants - would save a trip to the store if the pc is working at all)

I don't know much about this stuff (or anything else) but a tech friend that does testing at PCWorld recommended these two for basic stuff.


Take the con.

(Nice white bell-bottoms btw)

[Combat Ingrid]

Free online virus check here:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Free antivirus software here:

http://www.grisoft.com/

Free firewall here:

http://www.zonelabs.com

Can't give much help on the Kernel issue, though. Maybe try to reinstall Word? Hopefully, it's just a small error in the Word program. However, the Kernel is the windows core and I was told once that when you start getting Kernel errors on a regular basis, it's time to consider reinstalling everything

[TCO]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
hm... she might want to raise her privacy settings a bit more, so she doesn't get messages from strangers.

hm...

how much HD space does she have left? have her clean out all the temp files, all the temp inet files, everthing she doesn't need. while you're at it, try springing for the version of norton that accompanies systemworks, because that way you get a program (speed disk) which helps defrag your HD. that too takes forever, so plan on doing that overnight--not at the same time as the av scanning. (actually, for both cases, doesn't have to be overnight. you could start it up in the morning and come back after work, usw.)

you can clear out a lot of unneeded files by right clicking on the hd icon in "my computer", and looking for a button that says "clean hard disk".

hm. so here's the order of operation that i'd suggest:
1. raise security
2. virusscan
3. defrag
4. save the important files (all her bookmarks are in a folder labelled "favorites"--she can drag this folder somewhere, copy it, and thus save it. all she has to do to bring it back is to place everything in the old favorites folder into the new one, iirc.), format the HD, and reinstall windows and the basic applications she needs/wants.

ah, and if she does #4, definitely make sure all of that data is off the computer, on a cd or something. do a full format, too.

This was a great post. And I will take action. A few questions:

1. How does she "raise security" or "prevent people from sending her messages"?

2. Should I just get regular Norton or that other one that you talked about with systemworks. How much extra is the fancier one?

3. Ok. I assume that I can just do that with the normal computer stuff. Not with Norton.



4. I had her look on the C drive and in the directory. She had 4 folders: FILES (35 MB), MY DOCUMENTS (15 MB), PROGRAM FILES (880MB), and WINDOWS (450 MB). Because of the space limits of the CD, I just had her copy the Files and My Documents folders. I will add the FAvorites folder as well. The only other thing that she would want is her Outlook messages and address book.*


*There is a problem here though. She lost her old messages and adress book a while ago. She had a folder on her desktop with her (soon to be) ex-husband's name on it. I mentioned it and she changed it. But that made Outlook lose all its old info. She tried messing around with it. Including changing the name back. But couldn't fix the problem. So she just has a new Outlook database, I guess.

--------

[Combat Ingrid]

What error message does she get? (example: " caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL at 0137:BFF9A5D0")

If she gets the error message above this article might help:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q182/4/75.ASP

Be very very careful though, the solution includes editing the Windows registry which is a good way of creating new (and worse) problems, unless you are very careful and back it up properly.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Sten Sture
hey Seawolf -

check out www.zonelabs.com for a better firewall - the Pro version is a pain, but the freebee Zone Alarm is fine. It does have some spyware attached, but so do most things anyway.

Norton Anti-virus is available on as a free trial version at www.symantec.com under 'downloads'. (she can download the full version if she wants - would save a trip to the store if the pc is working at all)

I don't know much about this stuff (or anything else) but a tech friend that does testing at PCWorld recommended these two for basic stuff.


Take the con.

(Nice white bell-bottoms btw)

Thanks I will check those out.

P.s. It's "conn". And khakis don't have bellbottoms.

P.s.s She is a soccer-player.

p.s.s.s. bond-weenie (couldn't think of anything snappy to tag you with...)

p.s.s.s.s. Oh yes. I remember. you are the fertility-monster.

[Q Classic]

1. if she's using messaging software like aim, icq, yahoo, or msn, there's an option which goes along the lines of "allow only people on my buddy list to contact me".
then, if she doesn't know whoever the other person is, it'll block them.

2. the fancier one is i think 20 bucks more. that's kinda unnecessary, but it's there as an option if you want it.

3. defrag you can do with normal computer stuff, but that's why i suggested the fancier norton; the one that comes with windows is slower and runs off of code that norton/symantec provided microsoft years ago. it works just fine, though.

4. hm... i must confess i don't use outlook or outlook express for my email, so without doing research i can't think of how to rescue that old info. however, there is an export messages and export address book option in both programs that she can use to save what she has now. as for the vast majority of program files, she can reinstall those later. she should, however, remember which programs she needs that she doesn't have the discs for and try to download them off the internet: i.e, if your isp has newer version of the software you're using, download that and put it on cd. if you want to use a custom browser, download that and put it on cd. all that, within reason: downloading office 97 wouldn't work at all--and be rather illegal.
as for windows, there's a good deal of settings saved there, but it's a rats nest, and not worth trying to sort everything out or find everything.

[Sten Sture]

Originally posted by GP


bond-weenie & fertility-monster.

Fear Me!


Out of work as of May 31, will be in Buckhead this summer for sweet tea. Stay tuned.

[Q Classic]

buckhead's nice. wish marta actually was useful, don't want to drive.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Combat Ingrid
What error message does she get? (example: " caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL at 0137:BFF9A5D0")

If she gets the error message above this article might help:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q182/4/75.ASP

Be very very careful though, the solution includes editing the Windows registry which is a good way of creating new (and worse) problems, unless you are very careful and back it up properly.

I don't know exactly. She is 500 miles away. I will try to get more info though.