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Must haves!!

Uninstal your crap!!

With Revo

Clear all your crap

WithCcleaner

Firefox 3.5

If you HATE IE then be free!!!!

For Further Help

Contact: mike@vistamike.co.uk

UK call +448445857171

Mobile +447500876039

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Funny things can happen to your laptop!

My new laptop under test!

Special offer, I'll clean your monitor for free........click HERE

A website dedicated to resolving your PC problems, eventually!

The site comes with a bit of humour and nuttery

I'm a nut anyway

Some scenarios; you may have come close to

You could try M$ Tech support!!

My thanks to Steve and others at the willoughby arms for their input

And all the other inputs, outputs, reininstals and generally just ejecting the machine(s) out the double glazed window; or just defenestration in general.

Your computer is a tool and you must treat it as such!! My intention is to help you resolve your PC problems, offer advice and try a resolve via email or;

REMOTE CONNECTION via CROSSLOOP

Please contact me for this service

I also offer a repair service within my home area ( Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey ), laptop / PC upgrades, virus removal, data recovery and software installation, printer and wireless connection etc. I can visit in your home/office environment. Please email me with your problems.

For others, outside my location, I recommend the How-to-Geek site; 24/7 professional help where you will find HowTo's and tutorials. There are forums for all OS, MS Office etc where you can post questions

I use Crossloop remote connection to connect to your PC for one to one repair (assuming you have a connection to the internet!!). If you have a LogMeIn account then a remote connection can be made by this mode.

Your computer is a tool! So let me make it work like it should from under the hood.

I hope, from here, you will find tips and tweakts to make your system run faster, find help with hardware, software and virus problems.

Froml this: To this: Oh well, it is A mac Air, we live in hope!

You don't want this.....like the old days do you??

Concerning Viruses, 'malware' 'spyware' andscareware. I discuss this issue and show you how to prevent and cure software, should you encounter this vile stuff. Your 'normal' paid for program does not always provide you with quality: but there is good freely available software that will spot infections and rid you of them. If in the UK and you are on the Virgin Media Network you have a very good AV system to download, it is free, and will cover up to 3 computers in the same household, if not you can now download MSE from Microsoft. See below......

Other Products are:

Anti-Virus: FREE

Microsoft Security Essentials:

and about time; M$ should supply a working AV program since it is their Operating System and Office Software that is attacked: Works very well, little processor time and quick. I am using this as my main Anti Virus at the moment. NOTE: You must be running a legal OS (XP / VISTA and WIN7) to download as validation is required. It is free for a change, it's about time M$ played a fair game. MSE will disable Windows Defender by default (not required with MSE). Get MSE HERE

AVG:

Originally free but gearing up for a 2 year paid for version; now tiresomely slow. Obnoxious popup drop box wants you to upgrade all the time. Pity, this used to be the best free antivirus but all hail to the engine writers. If you purchase the full version then all well and good.....but

COMODO:

Free; quite good but the firewall is a little bugger to play with. It requires 'learning' but if you are fairly patient might be an option. The Antivirus is brilliant without doubt but the firewall is very difficult to 'educate'. A point, disable the Windows firewall. (two firewalls don't work well together!!).

AVAST:

Does now what it says; difficult to uninstall. Bloody slow but then...get rid of it, trust me I'm a doctor!!

AVIRA:

Works for some, never liked it myself. Notoriously difficult to uninstall!!

In case of difficulty with uninstalls: use REVOuninstaller :another piece of brilliant software. Again, you will be surprised what is left behind; REVO will take it out. Uninstalls can be a problem with certain software because the uninstaller supplied, does not work brilliantly and can leave unnecessary files in the registry. If the supplied uninstall has caused a problem, reinstall the program and use this program to completely get rid of it.

Anti-spyware / Malware / Scareware: Getting rid of it. The following software MIGHT just get you sorted

MBAM (Malwarebytes) which I think has become an industry standard for a malware scanner and does the BIZ. There is a Pro version available as well. This will find crapona very quickly; download the free version, run an update and scan. You will be surprised what it finds but most importantly, cleans after reboot. The paid for version updates and scans automatically. It runs in safe mode as well however there are reports that this will not run on all systems.
Superantispyware: Excellent: if you are in the shit run this; run it in safe mode and this should help to cure your problems.
HIJACKTHIS ( from filehippo a trusted site) This will take a snapshot of your problem, you can then upload the results to the site and you will get a step-by-step instruction to clear the problem.

IN ADDITION; ADD CCLEANER TO YOUR TOOL KIT

Ccleaner (formally known as Crap Cleaner) a useful disk cleanup utility and clears all the rubbish from you PC; run it at start up and often, it's quick! Included is a registry cleaner and one I find works very well. Be careful with registry cleaners but if you use them make make a backup to enable a restore if all goes pear shaped. In fact, give a wide birth to so called registry cleaners especially in vista!

I research and test OS's and software in Win Vista and Win7 and intend to publish and recommend the results. At present I triboot my main laptop, Vista, Win 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 via wubi install ( within windows and thus allows an uninstall, does not require a separate partition ) and all is well. It installs a bootloader that gives you the option to start in either operating systems. If you can't get on with it just uninstall ( win vista and 7 ).

Ubuntu/Linux is a serious consideration for those you who might want to play with free source OS and free to download, update and generally amuse. The most recent version of Ubuntu is The Lucid Lynx 10.04 LTS, it is completely free, comes complete with all the software you could possibly want ( OpenOffice, Firefox, Image editing software et al and games ). The update manager will give you all the options to run linux and after a few days you might question WHY you NEED to run M$ WIndows at all!!

My History

Microsoft Windows:

Windows for Workgroups: how I started:

My background in the IT industry started with Windows for Workgroups!! (Windows 3.1) Remember file manager? Good old days and it worked.

((I also had a GEM OS on an old Amstrad, a completely useless computer and a converted Golf Ball typewriter as the printer and this 'worked' but never could get ANY other retail dot matrix printer to work, ever!!))

Windows 95/98/98SE/ME

Then Dos based Windows 95 with a new GUI and Windows 98 followed, followed by Windows 98SE. Crikey, I went bonkers trying to keep up with all this!

I then decided my box just wasn't up to it anymore, went out and bought a FS with M$ ME (Millennium Edition). Oh dear, another heap of rubish, old software would not work, it could not find my camera, scanner or printer. Obtaining drivers was a nightmare. M$ again released a new OS and the communication with hardware and software manufactures just did not happen. The less said about this OS the better.

I then worked with the following, (migration) Win NT 3.5 /4.0 (my old business environment OS) and then into XP and Vista operating systems.

Then Vista came along!! Probably the worst M$ OS ever foisted on the public and business after ME!!

So my old lappy grew grey at the edges and I decided to go for a new one, ended up with a FS 17" Vista enabled. BIG mistake, I had not fully researched; got it home and then turned the box on: What a surprise I got! MS Vista Basic. The spec looked good at the time. A learning curve missed by my previous knowledge with M$ was upsetting to say the least. With 1gig of RAM I thought this was the business. I found the loading from boot was appallingly slow and realised that Vista Basic really required 1gig of RAM just to run. I now run Vista Home Premium (3gig RAM) and Ultimate (4gig RAM), both on SP2. There have been problems with SP2 and although I have had success on both my laptops there are reports that there are bugs with some manufacturers PC and laptop models. Simply uninstall until another M$ update requires you to bloat your harddrive even more!!

A little research and experimentation brought rewards and they both now run reasonably well, but how does the average user do this? I have compiled a list of tricks and tweaks to ensure your rig will perform better without shelling out more money on unnecessary upgrades.

ANY tricks and tweaks have been tested.

Windows 7

Hmmmmmmmmm!!!

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Free wifi and sometimes onsite technical help (alcohol intake prevailing)!!