to reinstall or not to reinstall windows, that is the question!

[chesters1]

not sure about 1 big drive ,if windows goes tits up on one partition then you lose that partition and all it contains ,i would do 3 or 4 partitions so if i have to format the windows one everything is left behind on the rest.

the only problem is you lose the associations windows uses to use the programs on them but it certainly makes backups or system restore easier as you point both to another partition.

anything really important should be backed up elsewhere anyway far from a hard drive

in microsoft options the administrator option bit will let you download specific updates or scan for missing ones

Edited December 7, 2010 by chesters1

[ColinW]

Before you start, buy a Western Digital My Passport flash drive, only £49 for 500Gig from PCWorld, and copy all your files to it.

[Riley]

not sure about 1 big drive ,if windows goes tits up on one partition then you lose that partition and all it contains ,i would do 3 or 4 partitions so if i have to format the windows one everything is left behind on the rest.

the only problem is you lose the associations windows uses to use the programs on them but it certainly makes backups or system restore easier as you point both to another partition.

anything really important should be backed up elsewhere anyway far from a hard drive

in microsoft options the administrator option bit will let you download specific updates or scan for missing ones

 

Yes this is why my drive was partitioned in the first place, but this business of C not being big enough is a pain! Cant think i would go more than two. Back up?! D#$% must do it again! I'm not as reliable as I should be...

Thanks for guidance guys.. hope you all had a great Christmas and New year!

[Riley]

Before you start, buy a Western Digital My Passport flash drive, only £49 for 500Gig from PCWorld, and copy all your files to it.

 

Bah! had one of those and it crashed in a very short space of time...now have a Trekstore external hard drive only 160gb... cant remember what it cost but more than that! I'm in Greece.. everything electronic is much more than in Uk and of course we have that wonderful currency the Euro!

It works.. I have about 3 full back ups and I just delete the oldest to make room for a new one!

New years resolution... remember to back up more often!!

[Riley]

question deleted...silly question... found answer... sorry!

Edited January 3, 2011 by Riley

[Dan]

question deleted...silly question... found answer... sorry!

 

 

I've popped back after hanging out on a bit too much on motorcycle forums and see that not only is my Sis back but she posted a useful thread (except the last post!!)

 

Might try a clean install myself.

 

Dan

[Riley]

I've popped back after hanging out on a bit too much on motorcycle forums and see that not only is my Sis back but she posted a useful thread (except the last post!!)

 

Might try a clean install myself.

 

Dan

, I wondered where you had been bro, thought you had fallen out of love with fishing!

Still havent done my clean re install, typically its behaving ok at the moment so seems silly to push my luck.

My Norton Internet security came with Norton Utilities this year which I have installed, wouldnt it be nice if its sorted things out?! Somehow doubt it.

 

When the day comes that I take the plunge beware this thread will become red hot!!

[kirisute]

, I wondered where you had been bro, thought you had fallen out of love with fishing!

Still havent done my clean re install, typically its behaving ok at the moment so seems silly to push my luck.

My Norton Internet security came with Norton Utilities this year which I have installed, wouldnt it be nice if its sorted things out?! Somehow doubt it.

 

When the day comes that I take the plunge beware this thread will become red hot!!

you want it to run well?

take off ANYTHING to do with Norton!! its awful software!! from personal and professional experience it causes the most problems on systems of any of the anti virus software stuff out there!

and you can get better and faster for FREE anyway!!

Grisofts AVG and AVAST are both superb anti virus packages and they are FREE..totally and utterly! back them up with Malwarebytes anti malware and Ccleaner and you have all you will ever need in the way of system protection. With an XP machine i would reccomend Zonealarm firewall instead of the XP one..but with Vista or Windows 7 the internal firewall is actually very good and will suffice for 90% of the population!

if you have some cash to float about then consider the AVG pc Tune up software. it will scan your system and allow you automatically fix quite a few of the things we technicians would usually charge you a fortune to do!! it will tell you if you need to defrag, clean your registry and also check startup items and various system tweaks to keep things running smooth.

if you dont want to spend the cash then running Ccleaner once a month will keep your registry playing happy tunes and also stop your internet temporary files building up and clogging your internet speed!

why does it slow your internet down? any given website will store temporary versions of images etc on your pc..the next time you visit that website the pc will check whether its faster to download the temporary file or redownload the one off the website....the more temp files you accumulate the more data the pc has to search, the slower things get!! in todays fast broadband its 99% of the time faster to download the files again! so running Ccleaner will get rid of all your temp files for you!

next get rid of all your internet toolbars!!! you know the ones..the google bar, the Skype bar, the yahho bar, the multi search bar....they are all rubbish and in most browsers the functions they give you are already in place!! Internet explorer 8 has built in search at the top right hand corner by defaults it BING! Firefox has similar and google chrome does as well! All browsers have built in Pop Up blockers under their options! you DONT NEED another toolbar to give you that function!

if you dont know what you need; in internet explorer goto TOOLS>OPTION then ADVANCED; now click restore advanced settings, and restore! that will disbale any extra browser toolbars you might be using, and it will restore IE back to its default settings!

you will be surpised how much faster it will go without the toolbars!

 

check your hard drives!! open my computer and right click the C drive...goto PROPERITES and TOOLS and ERROR CHECKING. choose to check the disk and select automatically fix errors and check for bad sectors! you might get a warning saying that you cant do the check when windows is running...click ok and the disk check will run next time you restart! it might take a few hours but it will scan your drive, repair any odd files its finds and corrupt data and also lock out any bad sectors on your drive that cause crashes etc!

[Dan]

Interesting !! I had heard reports that Norton had sorted itself out? but from personal experience I have used AVG tune up, you got one free go with the last upgrade, but I noticed no difference - but the worse thing was that the new AVG just ground everything down to almost a halt (after I managed to get reconnected to the net after the upgrade) so Ive dumped it after about 7 or so years and am using Microsofts free anti virus thingy which restored speed to an acceptable level.

 

Dan

Edited January 27, 2011 by Dan

[kirisute]

Interesting !! I had heard reports that Norton had sorted itself out? but from personal experience I have used AVG tune up, you got one free go with the last upgrade, but I noticed no difference - but the worse thing was that the new AVG just ground everything down to almost a halt (after I managed to get reconnected to the net after the upgrade) so Ive dumped it after about 7 or so years and am using Microsofts free anti virus thingy which restored speed to an acceptable level.

 

Dan

Security Essentials isnt too bad (microsoft) though it can be a bugger if you have some "cracked" software of use a keygen for exemplar.though to be fair most anti virus stuff will pick up a keygen these days.

I tend to swap between Avast and AVG; AVG went a bit fubar with version 9 thru 10 but the new 2011 suite isnt too bad at all. Avast is regularly in the top 10 of the best AV systems out there, even amongst the paid apps.

just be careful not to run security essentials alongside AVG because they are known to be incompatible and cause headaches.