Samsung N140 software help please

Hippygirl

Apologies in advance - I am not very techie and operate only in very basic non-technical language!
I have a Samsung N140 and love it. But...the free software trial just ended. My hus band has now installed ancient (2005) Microsoft works - now my netbook, which took seconds to start up takes....6 minutes! It has loads of stuff on which I will never use and worse, I can't open any of the documents created using the old software. He has uninstalled that, completely, so I can't even remembr what it was - XP I presume as all the documents are DOCX ?
So, I now need to get rid of the stuff he has put on and replace it with something else.
I don't need a lot - basically, just the capability to run simple spread sheets and Word documents.
Please can someone advise me on what I need? And what I need to do?

Thank you!

davb

What you had would have been a trial of Microsoft Office, either the 2007 or 2010 version, which is what creates the docx files. As you have found, Works won't read these.
There are a couple of free open source programs that should do what you want, OpenOffice is the most common, but there is a spinoff LibreOffice which is becoming more popular.

Hippygirl

Thank you! - so do I uninstall everything that starts 'microsoft' first and then install openoffice? (although at the moment openoffice doesn't seem to be working)

davb

The link to OpenOffice is good, but their site seems to be down at the moment.

Don't uninstall all the MS stuff, but certainly anthing related to Office or Works - if in doubt, post the details here.

As for the speed issue, that could be a number of things - what Antivirus are you using, and is that an expired trial.
A good thing to try would be to follow this forum guide by Closed, which should cover most things, but just post back any issues.

Hippygirl

Thank you very much for your help.
I didn't ever activate the free trial antivirus - I am using Microsoft security essentials - I have been using this for about a year, with no problems or slowing down.

davb

Hippygirl wrote: »

Thank you very much for your help.
I didn't ever activate the free trial antivirus - I am using Microsoft security essentials - I have been using this for about a year, with no problems or slowing down.

Microsoft security essentials is passable, but just to clarify - you say you didn't activate the free trial antivirus. Does that mean the free trial is still installed, because that wouldn't be good.

Hippygirl

No, it came with a free trial of Mcafee, but I uninstalled that - I have just checked and I can't see any sign of it left anywhere.

ChiefGrasscutter

I've got a N140
As I recall......
It came with McAfee antivirus
I uninstalled it AND most importantly also ran the McAfee total removal tool which I found on the web somewhere. (Google MCPR.EXE)
As others will tell you it is important to remove ALL traces of a previous anti-virus program before adding in another.

I've just checked for you and my N140 with Norton internet security 2011 on it takes 45 seconds till the main desktop has appeared and then probably about another 60 seconds as it loads up the various background services (eg bluetooth etc), connects to the wireless internet etc. So that's a total boot time of 1 minute 45 seconds.

It also came with a trial version of MS office 2007 which indeed produces .docx files (as does Office 2010) and are not readable by MS works or indeed earlier versions of MS office (thanks MS) - unless you download an extra patch.......

The netbook would have come with 1Gb ram

Hippygirl

Thank you
I don't think it can be AV that is causing the slowdown, as all was fine until my OH installed works.
I think the new programmes are:
Microsoft Encarta
Microsoft autoroute
Microsoft Office tools
Microsoft Picture it!
Microsoft Works
Microsoft powerpoint viewer
Microsoft Word
Microsoft tasklauncher

None of these look familiar, so I don't think they were on previously.
Could they be the cause of it taking so long to boot - I presume there is significantly more there for it to think about!

debitcardmayhem

My N140 came with Norton too, when it expired I retired it and use AVAST but MSE is ok too. Best bet is to down load and run HijackThis from here and run it (right click on the icon and run as administrator) the paste the log on here we can see what is slowing startup.
You can also download compatibilty for the docx files but I will find that in a bit.

Hippygirl

Thank you - I have done that.
I just wanted to doublecheck that its OK to post the log - it won't show anything that might compromise my security will it?