Ahh....nice to have a fresh install of XP!!

[raingirl]

I just spent all of yesterday afternoon, evening, and this evening backing up, formatting, and reinstalling XP. Now everything is so fast and organized!!

If anyone needs any tips or tools to refresh their systems, just let me know!!

[Prin]

ooo one day...

[Writing4Fun]

I need a new computer. My poor ol' laptop just isn't heafty enough to handle both XP and Norton (which is an absolute must because this is my business computer). Ah, well. One day...

[rainbow]

Raingirl, I just may take you up on that one day.

[jawert1]

W4F, if you hit outlet.dell.com they have unreal deals. I've ordered 4 laptops and one desktop from there for various family members and myself, and am about to walk my dad through ordering a new one for my mom. The discounts are fabulous to say the least

[BMDLuver]

I had XP but my computer ate it somehow and now I don't have it.. sigh

[raingirl]

Originally Posted by Writing4Fun

I need a new computer. My poor ol' laptop just isn't heafty enough to handle both XP and Norton (which is an absolute must because this is my business computer). Ah, well. One day...

Being that I work in IT now (which I LOVE) I have learned that norton is crap. Get rid of it and your laptop will be fine. My laptop is almost 6 years old and runs great. The best antivirus/firwall combo out there is AVG (which has a free version that many businesses use) and Zone Alarm. Get those two for free, ditch Norton, and you should be fine.

[happycats]

OMG my home PC is soooooooo slow now, but I think thats because I have about 5000 pics and lots of music downloads as well
I have no idea how to save the important pics,because they are all over the place, (thanks to the DH ) I would love to save them and then clean out the PC, so any advise would be greatly appreciated

[jawert1]

Originally Posted by raingirl

Being that I work in IT now (which I LOVE) I have learned that norton is crap. The best antivirus/firwall combo out there is AVG (which has a free version that many businesses use) and Zone Alarm. Get those two for free, ditch Norton, and you should be fine.

Actually raingirl, that's not entirely true. For machines that have lower RAM/processors, Norton will get slow and chuggy and so no, it's not ideal for the end user. Protection wise, they are among the best when it comes to updating their virus DATs and pushing fixes to endusers. That being said, AVG is just ok for a free product, it doesn't have the same development cycles and update timelines but it'll run on ANY machine (probably why it's popular). Zone Alarm has gotten better over time, but there's no need to pay for a product when Windows has a perfectly great firewall built in (and that's free). The best anti-virus out there that will run on any machine is Kaspersky, also what the US government uses, as well as many private companies, like my own - though we do use McAfee as well (makes sense since we supply it free with the AOL client software).

[HunterXHunter]

Yeah, Norton sucks, McAfee is much better and uses less resources. Norton is very pretty to look at and seem to include a lot of neat and useful features, but none of them will save you from a virus. There are actually forums and web pages dedicated to bashing Norton!! LOL

Windows in general isn't that great either. While I use it for some gaming, I mostly use Linux.

Below is the HunterXHunter guide to computer performance:

---------

Speed up your system by doing the following (only need to do them once):

- set your "Paging File Size" to be 2x your RAM
(right-click on "My Computer" -> Properties -> Advanced -> Settings [Performance] -> Advanced -> Change [Virtual memory] -> Custom Size, set both Initial and Maximum size to be 2x the RAM you have
by default Windows sets it to a ranged value (i.e. approx. 300 - 1200 if you have 512MB of RAM), which is dumb, but I won't get into why as it would long
- if you know what you're doing, disable some useless services under Admin Tools

--------

Tips for maintaining a healthy system (perform monthly or every couple of months depending on your usage):

- run "Disk Cleanup" (found in Start -> Accessories -> System Tools)
- followed by "Disk Defragmenter" (usually the one under "Disk Cleanup")

---------

For your next desktop, buy a custom built one or build one yourself as oppose to buying commercial ones:

- pick a fast HDD (7200RPM + 8M cache, or SATA drives), because your harddrive is your "limiting reagent" (for you chemistry people on the forum)
- whatever RAM you operating system recommends, double it (or just get 1GB+)
- processors...for Intel, as long as you don't buy a "Celeron", it's fine. Celeron is the name given to processors that didn't meet the standards Intel set for their processors, but don't want it to go to waste so they market it as something new. The high-end ones are called Xeons, usually reserved for servers, so you don't really have to worry about that. As for dual core technology, it really depends on what you want to do with your PC. If you constantly run a lot of resource-demanding applications, go for it! But if your'e just using it for internet, e-mail, music and things like that, just get a regular Pentium 4 CPU.
- I recommend AMD processors as they give you the best "bang for your buck"
- invest in a more expensive motherboard (Asus is usually a good one for Intel CPUs)

-------

EDIT: while MDG maybe seem to provide amazing deals on their systems, they use low-end, no-name brand internals for their systems (except for the CPU which they can't cheat you on), so don't get suckered into buying one of those as more often than not, you will run into technical problems (my uncle didn't heed my warnings and now he's suffering for it)

[Writing4Fun]

Originally Posted by raingirl

Being that I work in IT now (which I LOVE) I have learned that norton is crap. Get rid of it and your laptop will be fine. My laptop is almost 6 years old and runs great. The best antivirus/firwall combo out there is AVG (which has a free version that many businesses use) and Zone Alarm. Get those two for free, ditch Norton, and you should be fine.

Well, I'm going on personal experience here. I've had Norton for quite some time and I've never had a problem (other than my poor ol' machine slowing down 'cause Norton's a pig - but my laptop is only a P3 with 128Mb of RAM, so what can I expect from it? ). My dad had AVG on his computer and he had nothing but problems. I can't count the number of times I had to format his computer because he had oodles of viruses on it. I used to run McAfee when I worked for the 'big company', but they switched to Norton and I had to follow suit. I've stuck with Norton ever since.

Jawert, I heard Dell pc's are ok, but impossible if you want to upgrade stuff because it's all integrated into the motherboard? And I also heard that their tech support is a joke. Is that true? I know Future Shop has a nice machine on sale - web only, I think - dual core processor and flat-screen monitor and HP all-in-one for $900. Too bad I don't have an extra $900 kicking around.

Happycats, that was another issue with my poor ol' laptop. I have a bazillion pictures and now hubby is using it to run his iTunes as well ('cause he can't get XP to run properly on his machine ). I've since picked up an external drive to help with my storage issues.

[Bullykai]

Ya sounds like the typical Xp to me. Reinstalling that is. I now consider myself a pro at reinstalling windows.