Re: School me on Vista, XP, and 7

[Nathan]

I wouldn't be surprised if I am. I got this laptop in 2007

Do you run windows update?

[sportsfan882]

have you downloaded any windows updates lately?

[PANatsFan]

Do you run windows update?

I had to install SP1 and SP2 by hand. No idea why, but boy they made a big difference.

[The Chief]

You just said you assumed he had 2 1GB sticks in

Point taken, but my original assertion was based on the assumption that if you were going to bother upgrading, might as well go all the way and get 2x2.

Regardless, I really don't think upgrading the RAM would solve anything.

[cmdterps44]

Do you run windows update?

have you downloaded any windows updates lately?

I set it to automatic or whatever so it usually installs updates. The weird thing is on my brothers computer I use windows update everytime he says he has a problem... but for mine I forget to... as you have seen the past years

[The Chief]

Chief, doesn't the build number indicate he's still running the first vista?  Build 6000 as opposed to 6001 for sp1 and 6002 for sp2?

Good catch.  And yes, installing SP2 would probably be a good move.  Going to take a while though cmd, so make sure you don't need the comp for anything for up to a couple hours.

cmd, try doing this:

click start, type "msconfig" in the search field, and run the msconfig app (if it shows up in the search results).  Once you get in there, check the startup tab and give us a list of what's in there.

[PANatsFan]

Point taken, but my original assertion was based on the assumption that if you were going to bother upgrading, might as well go all the way and get 2x2.

Regardless, I really don't think upgrading the RAM would solve anything.

Depends on the usage. You don't think it would speed up WOW?

[The Chief]

Depends on the usage. You don't think it would speed up WOW?

I guess it depends on how much of his 2GB is being sucked up by junk at the moment.  I can't claim to be very familiar with WoW's memory footprint.

[cmdterps44]

Good catch.  And yes, installing SP2 would probably be a good move.  Going to take a while though cmd, so make sure you don't need the comp for anything for up to a couple hours.

cmd, try doing this:

click start, type "msconfig" in the search field, and run the msconfig app (if it shows up in the search results).  Once you get in there, check the startup tab and give us a list of what's in there.

I will download SP2 tonight... but question: I checked my update history and found this
Security Update for Microsoft XML Core Services 4.0 Service Pack 2 (KB954430)

Is this assuming I have it or what was that for?



Startup:

All Checked:

Windows Defender
Synaptics Pointing Device Driver
HD Audio Control Panel
NVIDIA Driver Helper Service, Version 101.19
NVIDIA Compatible Windows 2000 Display Driver
NVIDIA Media Center Library
eDataSecurity
Acer eAudio
Symantec Security Technologies
Symantec Shared Component
InstallUtil (unknown Manufacturer)
RAID Event Monitor (intel)
SetPanel (unknown)
Launch Manager
CyberLink PlayMovie
Power Reg
Acer Assist Launcher
Acer Tour Reminder
Java Platform SE 6
Adobe CS4 Service Manager
PowerISO Virtual Drive Manager
Quicktime
Itunes
avast! Antivirus
LiveUpdate Notice
Microsoft Windows OS
AOL Service Libraries
DNA (bittorrent)
Curse Client (a wow thing)
Steam
Octoshape Streamign Services
Spybot
Google Update
Video Conference Manager
Adobe Acrobat
Acer eAP Launch Tool

[The Chief]

I will download SP2 tonight... but question: I checked my update history and found this
Security Update for Microsoft XML Core Services 4.0 Service Pack 2 (KB954430)

Is this assuming I have it or what was that for?

Nah, that's something else.

Startup:

All Checked:

Windows Defender
Synaptics Pointing Device Driver
HD Audio Control Panel
NVIDIA Driver Helper Service, Version 101.19
NVIDIA Compatible Windows 2000 Display Driver
NVIDIA Media Center Library
eDataSecurity
Acer eAudio
Symantec Security Technologies
Symantec Shared Component
InstallUtil (unknown Manufacturer)
RAID Event Monitor (intel)
SetPanel (unknown)
Launch Manager
CyberLink PlayMovie
Power Reg
Acer Assist Launcher
Acer Tour Reminder
Java Platform SE 6
Adobe CS4 Service Manager
PowerISO Virtual Drive Manager
Quicktime
Itunes
avast! Antivirus
LiveUpdate Notice
Microsoft Windows OS
AOL Service Libraries
DNA (bittorrent)
Curse Client (a wow thing)
Steam
Octoshape Streamign Services
Spybot
Google Update
Video Conference Manager
Adobe Acrobat
Acer eAP Launch Tool

I've highlighted the things I think you should try disabling.  If there are things you actually need to run on startup/all the time, we can re-enable them individually later.

Also, which antivirus do you actually use?  It looks like you've got two installed at the moment.  My recommendation would be to install Microsoft Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/) and then disable Symantec and Avast, but we can get to that after you try disabling the first set of stuff highlighted above.

[Nathan]

"Microsoft Windows OS"?!

That sounds fishy, no?

[PANatsFan]

CEO of Avast hates on Security Essentials:

http://blog.avast.com/2009/10/02/and-what-about-microsoft-security-essentials%E2%80%94mse/

But he links to a PCMag review to back it up.

[The Chief]

"Microsoft Windows OS"?!

That sounds fishy, no?

A little bit

CEO of Avast hates on Security Essentials:

http://blog.avast.com/2009/10/02/and-what-about-microsoft-security-essentials%E2%80%94mse/

But he links to a PCMag review to back it up.

I'm not here to get into a debate over whose AV is best, but I've seen MSSE completely clean up things that no other suite could handle, including avast and symantec.  That said, avast is a good product as well.  The point is that he probably shouldn't be running more than one AV suite at the same time.

As a personal aside:

So should you rely on Microsoft Security Essentials for free protection? I’d say no, unless you strongly value the Microsoft name. My own testing suggests that you’ll do better with one of the other free anti-malware solutions such as AVG Anti-Virus Free or  avast! antivirus Home Edition.

The fact that he recommends AVG blows any credibility for me.  AVG has been bloated crapware since v8, and has a very high ratio of false positives compared to most of it's competitors.

[PANatsFan]

A little bit

WTF is Steam?

Nm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_%28content_delivery%29

[The Chief]

WTF is Steam?

Nm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_%28content_delivery%29

It's like iTunes for games, more or less.  He might actually want to leave that one enabled if he plays games he bought through Steam a lot.

[cmdterps44]

my bad. It says Microsoft Windows Operating System. I just made it shorter.

Ill disable those for now. I got virus' like a month ago and decided to install Avast and Spybot along with running Symantec.

I like Spybot. Avast is annoying though and I will get rid of that.

[The Chief]

my bad. It says Microsoft Windows Operating System. I just made it shorter.

Ill disable those for now. I got virus' like a month ago and decided to install Avast and Spybot along with running Symantec.

I like Spybot. Avast is annoying though and I will get rid of that.

That spybot entry is probably just a post-scan cleaup script, not active protection, unless you have enabled their "tea timer" registry protection or whatever it's called.  IMO it's more annoying than anything, but if you are having a lot of problems with malware then it can be useful.  Avast's default config with all the popups and the creepy synthetic voice is pretty annoying, but I would still take it over Symantec.  You can configure it not to be so annoying, but it's up to you.  Just so long as you're running something.

[Obed_Marsh]

Has Avira AntiVir Free kept pace? I used to use it a lot. At the time it rocked and gave away for free what a lot of others were asking to be paid for.

[The Chief]

Has Avira AntiVir Free kept pace? I used to use it a lot. At the time it rocked and gave away for free what a lot of others were asking to be paid for.

It seemed decent the last time I used it, but I've seen it miss things that MSSE and Avast both picked up, and of course there's that giant annoying "buy the pro version!" nag screen that pops up every time it updates itself.  I'd still put it ahead of Symantec though

[cmdterps44]

Well I did something wrong. I tried installing SP 1 last night. I just let it install over night and on one of the restarts the system looked like it was loading all the important files form SP 1. There was about 98k of them in the startup. It froze twice on like the 10k file and I couldn't get past it so I had to restart my computer back to factory defaults because the windows repair wasn't working.

Anyone mind helping me out with a link to the SP 1 and 2?

[The Chief]

This is the standalone installer for SP2 for 32-bit.  You don't need to install SP1 first:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a4dd31d5-f907-4406-9012-a5c3199ea2b3&displaylang=en