Subscriber Ross wrote about his computer slowing down:
Help please. My computer loads up from visited sites. I clear history and all other things but still loaded up, very much. I deal with geneology. I save everything to external media. Help. Ross
I had to responsd to Ross that I didn’t understand his problem. I asked him to describe more clearly what was happening — "loaded up" is not an adequate description of a problem.
Ross wrote back to explain
It gets slower and slower progressively. I just bought a desk top because the other one was so overloaded, but it was old too and did not have enough memory anyway. I had unloaded that one of everything but basic and it still said "not enough memory" to do what ever. I think the geneology program leaves stuff on the computer that I cannot find to remove?
That triggered more questions from me, to understand what he was doing and the capabilities of his computer:
what antivirus program are you using?
what firewall program are you using?
what antispyware program are you using?What computer,
what speed,
how much RAM,
what operating system
how big is the hard drive ,
how much empty space on the hard drive?Slower and slower does not imply that you are filling up your hard drive and need to remove stuff — it implies a different problem.
Ross responded with the kind of answer that I half expected:
Using AVG anti vir, I will have to go and write down the other, mostly. We have a Toshiba, lap top. As soon as I get the other I will send it to you. Thank you very much. Ross
I wrote back to Ross to tell him that I strongly recommend that he download and try Sunbelt VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware.
VIPRE is fully-functional and free for 15 days. Let it solve your problems – then, if you want to, you can go back to your free antivirus program.
http://terryscomputertips.com/VIPRE
His answer was what I expected, although I didn’t know which antivirus you were going to say.
I believe that you get what you pay for with free antivirus programs.
If you don’t have a firewall – and as I write occasionally, I do not consider the Windows Firewall to be adequate, I recommend the Sunbelt Personal Firewall. It’s for Windows XP and 32-bit Vista, but not 64-bit Vista. As with some other commercial firewalls, it has a fully-functional free trial and then throttles back to a lesser-function free version, if you don’t purchase a license.
http://terryscomputertips.com/SPF
For Windows 7, and 64-bit versions of XP, Vista and 7, you need the firewall that’s part of VIPRE Antivirus Premium, which is what I use on all my computers.
The above are affiliate links. If you want to try these, please use my link. VIPRE and Sunbelt Personal Firewall are the antivirus/antispyware and firewall programs that I use and that my family uses.
I also pointed Ross to my my article in last week’s online newsletter about WinPatrol and WinPatrol Plus. WinPatrol will help you get control of all the junk that came on the laptop and all the junk that installs with other programs.
WinPatrol Plus will give you access to the information to do that more easily — with WinPatrol (and other such programs) you will have to do your own Internet searching to figure out what can be stopped from running and what needs to be running.
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