UKC

Got more problems with some settings I think.

First my OE email stopped working, cannot send or recieve with it.
Tried to book flights online with Eazyjet yesterday but when it comes to the security part connection is refused.

Now my Avast AV will not update, and although Dominion said it was two days out of date the other week last night it said it was 47 days old.

Run a scan, checked on adaware and nothing serious is showing up.

Any ideas what is wrong?

In reply to sutty:


is your firewall playing up?

In reply to sutty:

I know you have to re-register Avast about every 18months or so...

Details here...

http://www.avast.com/i_kat_207.php?lang=ENG

In reply to sutty:

Try a web based antivirus /spyware program just to be on the safe side.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com

Jeff

In reply to satori:

It is windows firewall. The auto update of avast worked until a week ago yet it says it is over a month out of date.

Disconnected from the net and switched it off last night to see if there were any settings wrong but could not see anything obvious.
Looks like I will have to use the old computer for the time being, at least I know what is happening on there.

In reply to Dominion:

Aha, I did register it a while ago so it may not have worked.

sod it. I may remove all the security and reinstall it off disk then upgrade when it asks.

Having computers that go wrong is like having a Rolls Royce with no petrol, no bloody use.

In reply to sutty:

Hmm, cannot get MS update to work now either, sommats up

In reply to sutty: Try this:
Disconnect from phone line.
Deactivate virus scanner
Uninstall Avast
reconnect to phone line
restart
Go to grisoft.com & install free AVG antivirus
If that fails, do a system restore to a date when it worked.

In reply to Dave Stelmach:

Will try that, didn't want to have to do a sys restore if poss but looks like the best option if the other thing does not work.

In reply to sutty:

(Appologies if you have already discounted this elsewhere in the past)

If you get to the stage where you are looking at a system restore and you have another machine that will keep you running in the interim, then I would suggest looking at a switch to Linux. The kind of problem you have experienced, as do others on this forum, just don't happen in general on Linux. Plus you don't spend half your life downloading virus definitions.

Linux has built up, understandably I guess, a reputation for being a bit of a geek OS, but recent distro's have come on in leaps and bounds for those who just want a computer that works. The main fly in the ointment is support for old or unusual hardware, particularly Winmodems (linmodems.org).

If you have an evening free, and no specialist requirements for your PC, pick up a copy of Fedora, Unbuntu (plenty of Linux mags have full distro's on the cover CD) or SuSE (if you prefer a commercial offering) and give it a go. You can always revert to your original plan if it aint happening.

In reply to stoo:

They haven't happened to me either, in nearly 10 years of running my own Windows PC. I have a Linux PC and for what I use my Windows one for it's pants - though it's great as a server, when I can bear the noise it makes.

In reply to stoo:

Well I did a system restore and then firefox did not work.

Removed Avast and tried using AVG and that did not work so replaced Avast.

Avast would not update so undid the restore and firefox and OE seem to be working ok now.

MS update still does not work, need to sort that out.

Now to see if Avast will update with the unrestore done.

I think some of the problem is caused by that stupid Norton that was on and seems to have got corrupted so I cannot remove it.

Back later.

In reply to sutty: Where did you decide to go in the end?

In reply to Dave Stelmach:

"DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU WANT A VIRUS"
leaving youself unprotected and connecting to the www is bonkers.

Download AVG first and then disconnect and ininstall Avast

In reply to sutty:

maybe it will tomorrow

In reply to sutty:

SORTED. Removed Norton AV and the machine flies now as well as things working.

Symantec sucks.

In reply to sutty:


That it does Sutty. That it does.

D.

In reply to sutty:

Did you use that SymNRT remover prog you emailed me about?

ie this one?

http://tinyurl.com/6tzrv

In reply to Dominion:

Yes Dominic, it did what it said but hung just before doing the restart so after it doing that twice I said sod it and rebooted manually.
Avast works, updated, MSupdate works and it all seems hunky dory at the mome--

In reply to sutty: Sutty....NOW get a Mac?!

In reply to sutty:


No

How come no body helped with mine when I begged for help ?

I had to try all by myselve and now I have lost the internett explorer + my home screne is now FILLED with ikons of other things I have accidentaley down loaded that I dont want

+ my phone has gone capute

In reply to Chastity:


Gimme more details*...

(PS Not sure how you can accidently download things)

PS having a proper profile on this site might help, with some details - otherwise people might thinink you are a profile set up purely for trolling

* eg. which version of Windows, broadband or dialup, ISP (maybe), which anti-virus software you are running, which personal firewall, whether you are aware of the windowsupdate site etc etc

In reply to Dominion:

Thank u Dom

Its Xp
Broadband
Avast
personel firewall ??
as for the rest.........

ps I have a freind could help but he gets in a real temper when I mess things up

In reply to Dominion:

We should have a running thread called computer problems for all to join in. That way everything would be in one place.

In reply to Dominion:



its easy to xplore an press the OK button

that I can do

In reply to Chastity:

OK, first things first.

If Internet Explorer has stopped working, what web-browser are you using right now?

You can download IE to re-install it (or go to control panel, add/remove programs and select IE - should bring up a dialogue box and one optio is repair...

Try that first...

Otherwise download IE and re-install.

However, Internet Explorer should, in my opinion, only be used for connecting to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com for updating Windows with critical updates (usually to do with computer security)...

Personal Firewall?

http://www.zonelabs.com do a free for personal use firewall.

A "personal" firewall is every bit as important as anti-virus software. XP does have one built-in, but that only does half the job it is supposed to do. A firewall should not only alert you to attempts to gain access to your computer from the net, but also ask you when a program on your computer wants to connect to the net. And give you the opportunity to allow, or deny it access.

For example, if your email program suddenly wants to send thousands of emails then the builtin XP firewall will allow it as a matter of course. A proper firewall should ask if you want your email program to connect to the net - and you may think "well, I haven't just told it to send an email. Why is it doing that? What's going on?"

ZoneAlarm also puts a little icon in your system tray, which shows internet activity - both incoming and outgoing. If you have massive amounts of outgoing data, and you aren't uploading stuff to the net, you might wonderjust what is going on, for example...

In reply to Chastity:

>its easy to xplore an press the OK button

Ah, now we can fill in a bit of your profile.

Blond, bit dumb, tries hard but impulsive.;_)

Anything that has a little arrow on your desktop can be deleted if you do not want it. All shortcuts to programmes ON YOUR COMPUTER.

Right click on them, go to properties, see if it says shortcut and then note it down if you want rid.
Go to control panel, add/remove programmes and see which you do not want there.
Look in your recycle bin and see if there is anything in it, if you do not need it empty it.
Now you have an empty recycle bin you can start deleting other stuff from the add/remove programmes that you do not want.
If you find something does not work you can get it back from recycle bin so long as it is not set to empty automatically, check for that.

Internet explorer had a repair thing on old computers, not sure how it works in XP.

In reply to sutty:


Should still have it. It's likely been service packed anyway by SP2 (and if she/he doesn't know what SP2 is, then that will explain why the UK is riding high in the league table of people with zombie computers)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4369891.stm for info on that one

In reply to sutty:

Sorry to hear you have a problem. Computers are good when they work, eh? Hope it gets sorted quick.
What does a hijacker actually do? The auto adware/ spyware thing on my laptop just said it found one on the pooter, and has blocked it?

Cheers

davie

In reply to Dominion:

It is not shown in my control panel.

She should have windows update on her screen when she presses start and can work round with that, using it to start it to get other stuff.

How is she posting without it, unless she is using Firefox?

In reply to I am the God of Strathyre:

Err... depends on what one it is...

Some are keyboard loggers (ie they capture keystrokes, and send the logfiles back to the "cracker" so he can (potentially) get your bank account details and passwords (if you use online banking) - for example...

Or, your computer is used as part of a network to apply a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) to a web-site - eg an online bookie - so they pay a ransome, otherwise they can lose massive amounts of potential business...

Or simply your computer is used as an email relay by spammers, who are hiding their own tracks...

There are probably lots more potential ways, bu those are the most common...

In reply to I am the God of Strathyre:

hijacker will take over your machine and send out spoof emails, use your machine to route viruses etc.
Make sure you use that zone alarm that Dom mentioned instead of Windows one for the reasons he said then you will be able to see if it is being highjacked.

In reply to sutty:

I'm using McAfee virus checker/firewall and the AOL adware/ spyware checker which seem to spot and deal with things pretty well. This one has been blocked so I'm hoping it is dealt with. I've heard the windows inbuilt stuff is pants, aye.

Davie

In reply to I am the God of Strathyre:

The thing is, if your anti-virus software/firewall says there has been a hijack attempt, then it will have blocked it...

However, I always look it up - and I use the Virus Information Library at Network Associates for that, http://vil.nai.com . so I can make my own assessment of the risk. They give details of extra files that may be added to your computer (and so on) so you can do a search for these if you are particularly paranoid.

In reply to sutty:
>All shortcuts to programmes ON YOUR COMPUTER.

well I wasnt thinkin it was the telly and stop SHOUTING AT ME !!!!!

an for the rest I will look inside teh recycle(?) bin and thank u for the advice Sutty

and thanx to Dom for his compleet and v complecated advise to which I will check out soon when feeling less stresfull

xx

In reply to Chastity:

I meant to shout, to emphasise that removing short cuts does not remove the program from your computer,

In reply to sutty: I had mega problems with Norton software and XP, although it worked fine with Win ME. The AVG won't work if there is any trace of another antivirus program working in the background as it would prevent access to the files that any AV sofware needs to operate.
I have my HD partitioned so, when this crap happens, I can do the 'format C:' after uninstalling the antivirus and start from scratch, its usually a last resort though when system restore doesn't work.
Keep us informed, you have a variety of solutions to choose from!

In reply to Dave Stelmach:

I got things sorted this afternoon, sure it is on the thread somewhere.

Can you partition a disk that is already used or do you have to start from scratch? Never been in the position to do it before, 4gig does not need partitioning, 160 does.

I got NRT and that seems to have removed the problem, not done a 'find' for norton yet to see if it left anything on here.

So much to lurn, so lickle brain.

In reply to sutty:


Yes, but not with bog-standard Windows tools... You need something else, like Powerquest's Partition Magic - who are now owned by Symantec, I believe! (but don't let that put you off, Partition Magic was/is the best re-partitioning software you can buy, and the standard)

Or there are linux utils that will do the same, that run from boot CDs... But can't think what it's called, off the top of my head. Partly becausePartition Magic is the one I'd use through choice...

However, if you were to get a modern linux boot CD, and you were to boot your computer with it, it will offer to re-arrange the partitions on your hard disk, so it can install linux on a new partition...

ie it'll resize your main Windows partition (NTFS or FAT32) and create an extended partition to install itself on...

Now, you could let it do the first bit. You don't actually have to bother with installing linux on the other partition. You can abort the installation - it'll want a reboot after changing your partitions, anyway - and then use fdisk to reclaim the other partition for use under windows...

That should make sense, I think!

In reply to Dominion:

Found a copy of Paragon partition manager on a mag disk and wondered what would happen if I used it. Always careful with stuff like that.

In reply to sutty:


Fair enough. I've not heard of that one, so no comment. There are times to try those, and that's when your HDD is fubar anyway... (or you have a spare to play around with)

Partition Magic will - safely - re-partition your drive (assuming you don't have a powercut in the middle of it doing it's business), however.

Linux ones, on recent distributions, will also do it - most distros expect to have to re-partition your HDD to end up with a dual boot system, leaving Windows in the first primary partition (as Windows defaults to wanting to use the whole HDD as one partition anyway, regardless of whether that is sensible or not...) so they work as well.

As I say, you can alway use a linux boot CD to create a second partition, and even install if you want to (Ubuntu, or Kubuntu would be a suggestion) and then you can get rid of the linux partition, and format the partition for use under windows, if that's what you want...

In reply to sutty and Dom:

Yiippppeee its fixed !!!!

only got a SMALL tellin of when freind came round (felt soz 4 me I think) He fixdit in 5 minuts ad now my reclying bin is emptyed and siting nicely in corner of screne !

:0))

In reply to sutty:
You can get tools that will resize Windows partitions, but if your PC has one huge C: drive and lots of programs installed there you are really better off starting again, and then installing them onto D: - you would have to uninstall and reinstall them to get rid of them from C: and put them onto D: (or whatever). The problem with reinstalling is that a lot of PCs come with a system restore disk, so you can wipe them but you end up with one large C: again - then you have to resize it, create D: and start installing your extra software there.

The other thing about XP is that by default 'My Documents' and 'My Pictures' are in the C: drive, under 'Documents and Settings'. These can get large, so they need to go somewhere else. There is probably a proper way to do this for multi-user PCs with the group policy editor or something similar, but I just right-click 'My Documents' on the desktop and alter it's properties - it automatically moves any contents to the new place.

If you do reformat, keep a copy of 'Documents and Settings' on a CD as it also contains the mail & address book for Outlook Express (if you use it), your desktop icons (I keep a screen dump of that if reformating), the Favourites for IE and also the cookies, some of which are worth keeping.

In reply to Cats:

Thanks for that, it is thsi locating things elsewhere when you move to XP, or not be able to find Internet Explorer to repair it if you use it that annoys.

All that is needed are partitions to store photos, music emails etc away from the operating system so that you do not need to mess with them when you have problems and have to reformat a section due to corruption.
Microsoft should do this in the first place, load windows and operating systems on one partition and give you movable partitions to place things in but that would be too easy.

In reply to sutty:


Come on, it was only with Windows 95 that they defaulted to having a "Program Files" directory - before that you were supposed to be disciplined enough to make your own WinApps folder for installing progs into instead of just the root of the hard drive, and not accept the default directories that programs wanted to install into. Which is probably where I got into the habit of always selecting "custom" install, rather than the default...


You can do it, you just have to partition the disk how you want it before hand. The thing is, people largely just accept a computer as it is delivered with the OS all in one partition, and often don't get install disks, just customised "repair" disks that wipe the whole HDD and install in one partition again.

And usually do the default install for applications, rather than a Custom one...

If I were to buy a pre-installed computer now, the first thing I would do would be to wipe it, and re-install from scratch - and I'd make sure I had the install disks to do that supplied with the computer in the first place...

In reply to Dominion:

That giving you the repair disc and no manual is where things go pearshaped. Asked for the manual for this machine and told 'it is all on the disc, print it off if you want'.

Install discs? you are avin a larf. Very few places give you them now, you have to build your own it seems to get any documentation.

In reply to sutty:


In that case I say, OK, I'll buy a computer from somewhere that does supply htem with the computer. If more people did that, and were aware that they need to ask this, there'd be far fewer problems...


Thats what I would do, anyway...

In reply to Dominion:

>Thats what I would do, anyway

Ah, but would you do that with a car if that was the only way to get a handbook and decent documentation?

Someone buying a computer for the first time should not have to take it back all the time when some niggle occurs, if cars were computers they would be replaced as faulty all the time.

In reply to sutty:

But -with a car - people take driving lessons, and realise they need to top-up the windscreen washer levels, put fuel in it, and get it serviced regularly. And also lock it so thieves can't get in.

Same thing with computers: the locks are firewalls and anti-virus progs, topping up the fluids is defragging, running virus scans and ad-aware etc etc etc

In reply to sutty:

"Ah, but would you do that with a car if that was the only way to get a handbook and decent documentation? "

If computers were cars nobody would by Windows because with it's usability and accident records it would be akin to buying a 70's Skoda or Lada.

Balance would be restored and the world a happier place ....

In reply to stoo:

Yeah, I can just see all the lusers struggling to get to grips with Slackware back in 1992, instead of Windows 3.1



On the other hand, we'd have lots more people who knew how computers and OS's worked, nowadays...

||-)

In reply to Dominion:

Ok Dom, that IE explorer problem Charity had. I have not found out how to repair it or get it back on XP yet had no problems with 98se. That is like getting into a car that had a key and then buying one with a touchpad and not giving you the code.

I started with DOS, wordstar, supercald etc so did have an inkling of some things. Now things are supposed to do everything but you end up doing only small bits of things on machines.

Time for a quick walk I think as the sun is out.

In reply to Dominion:

"Yeah, I can just see all the lusers struggling to get to grips with Slackware back in 1992, instead of Windows 3.1"

Fair point. Although if we are going to bring history lets not forget that it was not Mr Bill who thought up and developed a usable desktop.

In reply to sutty:

Had a think about that, and you have to run the IE setup program - that gives you the Repair, install or remove option.

Now, you can do an online istall of IE straight from the MS site, or you can download it - again, not obvious how to do that, so...

You download the Setup prog - about 500kb, run that, and select the Install Minimum or Customise your browser. Now, the screen after that has an Advanced button on it, which gives you a "Download only for later install" option (and one that allows you to tell it not to make itself the default browser etc)

That's with the IE6 Service Pack 1 update, anyway...

In reply to sutty: Partition Magic is undoubtedly the best Partition manager around and the only Symantec programme worth having. There is a way to do it with XP, but it is a lot simpler with Partition Manager. Before doing anything else, if your computer is now working OK; go into system restore, set a new restore point and label it as OK1. Then do a disk clean up, scandisk (with 'automatically fix' on), then do a disk defrag and set another system restore point (OK2). Also, if you can, back up the registry (some AV software can do this for you).
If you did a full uninstall of Norton, it shouldn't give you any more problems; it will leave fragments around the computer, but a dedicated windows cleaner should remove those.

Well done and good luck!

In reply to stoo:

Indeed. I would have used Gem back in the days of the Amstrad 1640 (1988 or so), IBM's OS/2 was around just about in the early 1990s, but only ran on PS/2s (I think) until OS/2 Warp came out (94ish?)

First time I saw MS Windows was a "runtime" version (1) that came with a 5.25 floppy disk install of Aldus Pagemaker (as it was back then)

Mind you, I'm not sure when Slackware came out. I think I was playing with it in about 1994 or so, and I think that was release 4

||-)