dragging my tail behind me....
Apr. 9th, 2006 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavandarlizard2I am having a tech problem and you all know how tech-challenged I am... =p I've gotten extremely helpful advice from several adorable souls who are on my short list for sainthood, but I wanted to ask if anyone else might have worked through the same set of circumstances...
...my paranoia is showing again, I think.
I had AOL. Still have it, technically, since I haven't pulled their plug yet. I also have Norton. Little dust-up between Norton and AOL last month; I couldn't get logged into AOL. This gave me the push I needed to ditch AOL and go for cable.
Unfortunately, I am now mired in molasses. I know that if a lot of people are using cable in my area, it could cause it to be slow, but I'm talking slow everywhere, even off-line. Five minutes to get Word to open. O.O Even longer for some of my games; simple crap like solitaire. I've done the Ad-Aware and the Spybot and that helped quite a bit, but not enough. I'm at the point of uninstalling all the AOL stuff and doing a defrag, but I'm not sure if that will help or just screw something up worse.
Has anyone else had to get rid of AOL? Does it get evil when you leave it? And since I'm pretty well stuck with Norton (I always hear about the evil stuff *after* I've already got it), is there any way of getting it to do what it should without totally screwing me up? I mean worse than I already am. >.<
And I really am hopeless when it comes to technical stuff; I came to computers relatively late in life and will always panic first, before reading the instructions. Then I panic again after reading the instructions, when I find I understand not one word. =p I really should have an IT pro on retainer.
On a positive note, I can now actually watch video online. ^__^ And it doesn't take an hour to load. Ah, Squirrely! ~^__^~
Anyway, if anyone has any other suggestions, horror stories or reassurances, I would be most grateful. I'd offer fics, but I am totally incapable of fic-to-ordering. How about a hat? Or a scarf? O.O Saint S and Saint J can order both. ^__^
...my paranoia is showing again, I think.
I had AOL. Still have it, technically, since I haven't pulled their plug yet. I also have Norton. Little dust-up between Norton and AOL last month; I couldn't get logged into AOL. This gave me the push I needed to ditch AOL and go for cable.
Unfortunately, I am now mired in molasses. I know that if a lot of people are using cable in my area, it could cause it to be slow, but I'm talking slow everywhere, even off-line. Five minutes to get Word to open. O.O Even longer for some of my games; simple crap like solitaire. I've done the Ad-Aware and the Spybot and that helped quite a bit, but not enough. I'm at the point of uninstalling all the AOL stuff and doing a defrag, but I'm not sure if that will help or just screw something up worse.
Has anyone else had to get rid of AOL? Does it get evil when you leave it? And since I'm pretty well stuck with Norton (I always hear about the evil stuff *after* I've already got it), is there any way of getting it to do what it should without totally screwing me up? I mean worse than I already am. >.<
And I really am hopeless when it comes to technical stuff; I came to computers relatively late in life and will always panic first, before reading the instructions. Then I panic again after reading the instructions, when I find I understand not one word. =p I really should have an IT pro on retainer.
On a positive note, I can now actually watch video online. ^__^ And it doesn't take an hour to load. Ah, Squirrely! ~^__^~
Anyway, if anyone has any other suggestions, horror stories or reassurances, I would be most grateful. I'd offer fics, but I am totally incapable of fic-to-ordering. How about a hat? Or a scarf? O.O Saint S and Saint J can order both. ^__^
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 06:18 pm (UTC)What is your OS? and, hit cntrl-alt-del and take a look at the processes during slowdown to see what (if any) programs are being resource hogs. Ie, sucking 80% of CPU, eating all your available memory, etc.
This may help you ID the culprit, since it sounds more like a computer issue than a web connection issue. You may simply find that Norton is sucking everything you've got expecially if it is an older system - the slowdowns can be horrible.
I think with AOL & Norton you may have one of the deadliest combos known, and they do fight like tigers, expecially if it's a more recent version of Norton. AOL is like Kudzu and Norton is aggressive.
AOL is invasive and can be difficult to remove entirely; It does sometimes leave messes behind in your connectivity settings. See here for tips on fixing that if it comes up
http://www.komando.com/tips_show.asp?showID=2730
There will still possibly be AOL junk left, but this process should get rid of most of it for you, and you'll probably be OK. If you know any local geeks, maybe you can bribe one to go through your registry and hard drive and scrub out the remainders if you are not comfortable doing so yourself. The Safety & security center especially has been known to leave stuff behind.
If icky little bits of AOL still keep popping up when you boot, reamtry this : Start -> Run, then type msconfig (and press Enter), then go to the Startup tab, and un-check any remaining entries containing "AOL" in the name.
Best of luck.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 02:48 am (UTC)*deep breath* Okay. Gonna print this out, then psyche myself up and... and... go look...
*can't I just zap it with a cattle prod?*
Yes, the dragon is a total wuss when it comes to electronic blood... =p
Thanks! ^__^
no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 03:07 am (UTC)um, the cattle prod would probably be a more permanent 'fix' than you had in mind...
no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 11:56 pm (UTC)I feel like I'm harboring an alien life form... >.<;
no subject
Date: 2006-04-11 12:35 am (UTC)Possibly it may boot up relatively slowly if it's still picking its way through any undeleted remnants at startup. Once that's out of the way, it may speed up somewhat. (Dumping any junk left in the startup using the msconfig thing above may help with that)
If it variably picks up and slows down, look at the task manager and see if any processes are suddenly sucking resources. Recent versions of Norton will want to scan all files that you open, etc, & can choke you off a bit. So you'll see slowdowns, then it will get done checking and whoosh, you're back up to speed again. Can't be helped unless you tell it "NEVER EVER check my Word files" for example. (and of course viruses can do this, but sounds like you've already checked for that with Ad-Aware and Spybot & NAV.) You might also find extra resident processes you don't need; for example iTunes likes to always load stuff, Quicktime likes to load up, etc. They just run there in the background taking up space and occasionally bugging you. Sometimes a determined cleaning job can help you out with that.
I would check if you need to defrag too, I think you mentioned that though.
Last - use task manager again and look at performance tab. Look at physical memory (RAM) and available memory. A general threshold is at least 20 percent available memory left with whatever you are running, or you're overloaded. The memory is in KB so if you have 512 MB of RAM, it will show as 524,000 KB and available memory (in this case) should not be consistently dropping below 104,800 KB. Other than that, it will constantly be reading/writing to your hard drive as virtual memory which will both really slow things down and beat on your hard drive, shortening its life. oh yeah, you should have at least 20% open space on the HD too, for the swap file when the system uses virtual memory.
That's about all I can think of for general slowdown 'fixits'.
Glad to hear you are seeing some improvements, anyway!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-12 01:15 am (UTC)I've heard that paranoia used to be a survival instinct... I wonder if the computer knows that?
^__^ Thank you...
no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 11:53 pm (UTC)You're sure? O.o I can't zap it just a little? Right in its little green light?
Well, crap. =p
no subject
Date: 2006-04-11 01:42 am (UTC)Though it would be nice sometimes to have something to threaten the beasts with...
no subject
Date: 2006-04-12 01:16 am (UTC)