I think my computer might be dying, is there a cure?

nimbo

hi,

i have been here beofre and you have in the past given me some great advice.

my computer is old and knackered, it's very slow to start, and i think it might have lots of spy ware on it...

toady when writing an essay i copied and pasted something from another word document (to save me typing some references again) any way i think that having Word open twice caused it some problems and it lost the essay i had just added 1000 or so words to...

i cried lots and restarted. Yay for auto recovery it had saved about 700 words of the just typed stuff which actually made my day.

my question is, is there any thing i can do to help my little 'puter work just a bit better? i have Avast anti virus but was wondering if i can de bug somehow for free to maybe help it out...

i have ne probelms with it being slow, just want it to live that bit longer...

many many thanks if you guys can help.

Sput2001

If you haven't already done so, download Ad-Aware (it's free) and run it. It could take a while!

Ccleaner is a handy utility, as is Defraggler which are both freebies, too.

nimbo

loaner wrote: »

how much memory (ram) does it have

what makes you think you have spyware, have you installed a spyware scanner to check?

http://www.superantispyware.com/

how do i find this out? (sorry i am a bit of a luddite)

nimbo

loaner wrote: »

how much memory (ram) does it have

what makes you think you have spyware, have you installed a spyware scanner to check?

http://www.superantispyware.com/

240MB of ram...

is that bad?

all i do on my pc is play solitaire type up essaies and come on here...

nimbo

ok i'm now panicking as Avast has just popped up and told me i have a trojan horse...

and i can't even shut my compurter down... fnuck!

vyseyboy

nimbo wrote: »

240MB of ram...

is that bad?

all i do on my pc is play solitaire type up essaies and come on here...

If you are running windows XP, you would absolutely notice a speed increase with any kind of RAM upgrade. I'd look into increasing to 512Mb or 1024Mb if you wanted to keep this machine running. Older RAM is getting harder to find, but you'd probably be looking at SDRAM or DDR modules. Crucial.co.uk is usually a good starting point to find out what kind of upgrades are available to you, as they have an automated system checker, but it isn't always the best place to buy from.

If you posted any other specs. you have / computer manufacturer and model, maybe others could offer more advice.

For now, the previous advice of downloading and running Ad-Aware and C-Cleaner is good. Run CCleaner, and make sure Avast and Ad-Aware have the latest updates / definitions updates, and fully run those too.

It might be an idea to do all this in safe mode (keep tapping f8 at startup and select from the menu): you might find the whole process is a bit quicker, and it might help with removal of any problems found by the programs.