Don't you hate having to reformat your computer?

[The Craw]

i was thinking of getting windows 98. is it better than windows 95? cuz that's what i'm using now.

 

[The Ween]

i was thinking of getting windows 98. is it better than windows 95? cuz that's what i'm using now.

I have no idea about '95, but I don't care what others think, '98 was a good operating system for me. I was on dialup then though.

 

[Skiman]

A woman how lives two floors above me asked if I could hook up her new pc monitor and she was using 98. Her old monitor apparently set on fire when she turned it on.
I didn't have a clue how to do a few things on 98 , I'd never used it before.

U should look at old school Novel and NT operating systems of Windows... I was young whenever Windows came out with their first OS but came accustomed to it before my friends because my father was also a Software guru like myself today.

 

[Skiman]

i just did this too over the last day or so, installing over the windows 7 rc to the retail version, but i used the "windows easy transfer" function. it saves all your stuff, including program settings from your old computer, then you can reinstate it all once you've reinstalled. it saved my custom themes, all my data, and even my program settings. it also prints out a nice report telling you which software you need to reinstall. made things A LOT easier. it was so nice to open up firefox on the reinstallation and have all my bookmarks and saved passwords etc. all ready for me.

you probably already know about this, but if any of you are uni students in the US, you can get windows 7 for cheeeeeeeeaaap here:
https://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx
uk peeps here:
https://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-uk/default.aspx

i'm not a microsof rep by the way. i was a student rep for them a couple years ago and hated almost EVERYTHING they did. vista was a stain on god's green earth. xp was just so much better. but i've been using 7 for about 8 or 9 months now and it hasn't given me any problems at all to be honest, and some of the new features are great. i still want to get a macbook but can't afford it right now. i idn't have to reformat once in the last 9 months. my computer was more stable than i've ever had it with no drop in performance at all.

Been running 7 since Sept, got a RC Developer license, so far so good, loving it much better than Vista... Such a memory hog

 

[Skiman]

i was thinking of getting windows 98. is it better than windows 95? cuz that's what i'm using now.

2000 was the major upgrade for that era, just because of the much better file system of NTSF from Fat(95) and Fat32(98)

All depends on what hardware you have to actually utilize certain operating systems though.

 

[Bamboota]

Technology sux

 

[Adoptedscot]

Technology sux

when it goes wrong it certainly does.
x

 

[eighthsamurai]

Technology sux

Yes, I love technology
But not as much as you, you see
But I still love technology
Always and forever

 

[Mesa]

Try this program and use full scan before you reformat. All of the spyware programs you brought up suck.

https://www.malwarebytes.org/

malwarebytes is great, but so is Spybot, which he did mention. I use both at work and we have an Enterprise version of Trend Micro. But the free ones find more stuff.

download this malwarebytes program and ran a full scan. Zero items detected. I'm pretty good about running spybot and adaware every month, so I'm not surprised it didn't pick anything up.

also ccleaner is great to clear off junk on your drives and also the registry.

www.ccleaner.com

I need to look into using this again. The last time I played with the registry, using the regedit command line on a windows '98 or 95 machine, I disabled the entire system and it wouldn't boot at all, so I've never attempted to play with the registry since then.


These are the problems I'm having.

When I boot, it literally takes about 5 minutes. I know when I had reformatted this computer a coupel of years ago, it took like a minute to boot and be ready to go. Now it takes a good 5 minutes and I have to walk away. Even when I click on a program after I think the boot is completed, it still takes a few minutes for any activity. If I click it again, when whatever program I'm trying to start them loads up twice.


I switched to firefox not to long ago. Again, on a fresh boot, it takes forever to come up. Also, and this is my biggest problem, certain webpages are not loading. This really hurt durign spooktacular. I will rightclick on a link to open it in a new tab, and that tab just "spins" and spins and page never loads. However, if I go to some other tab, say yahoo, and click on a news link, it loads up just fine and quickly. On the tab that won't load, I usually have to hit the "X" to stop the load, and then hit reload a couple of times and it evenutally comes up. This happens for SSF links, Ebay links, SStoys links. I've called up my cable internet provider, got some arrogant IT jerk, you know the type, on the phone who said everything from their end looked good as far as signal levels, etc.


I think I will uninstall and reinstall firefox for starters. I also added some firefox java update and know I get a red audible "X" everytime I click on a picture.


My computer has about 20 icons in the systray, and I can't disable them through rightclicking in the systray. I want that crap out of there.


All I know is this, I've reformatted this computer at least 5 or 6 times. It's a great computer. On a clean install, it runs like a champ. But after a year or two of use, it starts acting slow. So I've usually just reformatted and reinstalled the OS and I'm happy. But if there is a way around that, I'm certainly willing to try something new.

I think my computer just needs a good enema.

Are there any things to be careful of when using ccleaner?

 

[Skiman]

Yes, I love technology
But not as much as you, you see
But I still love technology
Always and forever

, u need more pauses in there still funny

 

[Mesa]

also ccleaner is great to clear off junk on your drives and also the registry.

www.ccleaner.com

This was the advice I needed, thanks. I just ran ccleaner and cleaned up a bunch of crap. What a great application. I removed over 2 GB in "temporary" files and then disabled a bunch of stuff in the registry that was starting up after a reboot. Only 8 icons in my systray now. I must have disabled at least 20 junk programs that were starting up that I could care less about whether they started up or were permanently deleted.

Really has helped a lot.

And I just uninstalled and reinstalled firefox, so we'll see if that fixes the problem with the links that never load.



Edit: Holy crap, it's like I have a brand new PC. web browsing is flying along. No I really wish I had done this before spooktacular.

 

[The Ween]

I've always cleaned out my own files, like in IE, etc. I also delete my cookies, history, recyle bin. I also run a defrag and disc cleanup from time to time.

Does ccleaner do more than that?

 

[Skiman]

download this malwarebytes program and ran a full scan. Zero items detected. I'm pretty good about running spybot and adaware every month, so I'm not surprised it didn't pick anything up.




I need to look into using this again. The last time I played with the registry, using the regedit command line on a windows '98 or 95 machine, I disabled the entire system and it wouldn't boot at all, so I've never attempted to play with the registry since then.


These are the problems I'm having.

When I boot, it literally takes about 5 minutes. I know when I had reformatted this computer a coupel of years ago, it took like a minute to boot and be ready to go. Now it takes a good 5 minutes and I have to walk away. Even when I click on a program after I think the boot is completed, it still takes a few minutes for any activity. If I click it again, when whatever program I'm trying to start them loads up twice.


I switched to firefox not to long ago. Again, on a fresh boot, it takes forever to come up. Also, and this is my biggest problem, certain webpages are not loading. This really hurt durign spooktacular. I will rightclick on a link to open it in a new tab, and that tab just "spins" and spins and page never loads. However, if I go to some other tab, say yahoo, and click on a news link, it loads up just fine and quickly. On the tab that won't load, I usually have to hit the "X" to stop the load, and then hit reload a couple of times and it evenutally comes up. This happens for SSF links, Ebay links, SStoys links. I've called up my cable internet provider, got some arrogant IT jerk, you know the type, on the phone who said everything from their end looked good as far as signal levels, etc.


I think I will uninstall and reinstall firefox for starters. I also added some firefox java update and know I get a red audible "X" everytime I click on a picture.


My computer has about 20 icons in the systray, and I can't disable them through rightclicking in the systray. I want that crap out of there.


All I know is this, I've reformatted this computer at least 5 or 6 times. It's a great computer. On a clean install, it runs like a champ. But after a year or two of use, it starts acting slow. So I've usually just reformatted and reinstalled the OS and I'm happy. But if there is a way around that, I'm certainly willing to try something new.

I think my computer just needs a good enema.

Are there any things to be careful of when using ccleaner?

Mesa, I'm sure you know this but have you tried MSCONFIG command to clear system icons from the tray and getting those processes off from running in the background while starting at bootup?

Ski

 

[Skiman]

This was the advice I needed, thanks. I just ran ccleaner and cleaned up a bunch of crap. What a great application. I removed over 2 GB in "temporary" files and then disabled a bunch of stuff in the registry that was starting up after a reboot. Only 8 icons in my systray now. I must have disabled at least 20 junk programs that were starting up that I could care less about whether they started up or were permanently deleted.

Really has helped a lot.

And I just uninstalled and reinstalled firefox, so we'll see if that fixes the problem with the links that never load.



Edit: Holy crap, it's like I have a brand new PC. web browsing is flying along. No I really wish I had done this before spooktacular.

CCleaner allows you to remove from startup tab and bootup loader, I wish I would of caught that detailed post at the end of this thread and I would of been able to save you some time plus your CPU.

I would still give MSCONFIG command a try to further clean up stuff from the system tray and boot up loader.

Ski

 

[Skiman]

I've always cleaned out my own files, like in IE, etc. I also delete my cookies, history, recyle bin. I also run a defrag and disc cleanup from time to time.

Does ccleaner do more than that?

It does some more but it's a basic gui interface to clean/delete/recover/remove history etc... on the fly instead of finding it yourself and having the maintenance done by you finding the folders and going through the browser as well for deleting temp files, cookies, old compression files, etc...

 

[Bonehead15]

I had to reformat my computer earlier this year after getting attacked from a rootkit. It sucked but after the reformat, my system worked like it was brand new. In fact, it runs so much better now that I plan on doing it every year just to clean up my system.

The worst part for me was actually doing it. I'm far from computer savvy. I was so afraid that I was going to ruin my system but in the end it wasn't too difficult.

malwarebytes is great, but so is Spybot, which he did mention. I use both at work and we have an Enterprise version of Trend Micro. But the free ones find more stuff.

I have a paid Norton account and will admit it sucks. Thank god my renewal is coming up in January.

I also recommend Malwarebytes. If I run Norton and than Malwarebytes, it'll find stuff all the time that Norton misses.

CCleaner and ATF Cleaner both work great for deleting junk.

 

[Skiman]

Oh Superantispyware is another good one to keep updated and running from malicious spyware.

 

[The Ween]

I'm always afraid of freeware.

 

[gabberjawa]

*hugs imac*

 

[Eli26]

really but it's so........ old...

And so crappy!