OT Has w7 slowed down recently

On Fri, 11 May 2012 09:23:57 +0100, David Woolley
wrote:

Gary wrote:
On 10/05/2012 11:53, J G Miller wrote:

I did think of that and I can say it is not doing that. I have the
protection needed to prevent that. It is possible my computer has a

Not many people have the luxury of an air gap between Windows PCs and
the internet.

Sadly, in these days of WiFi, an "air gap" doesn't always cut the
mustard as an impenetrable firewall. :-(

Im assuming your point was that only total isolation from the
internet could guarantee the truth of the statement: " I have the
protection needed to prevent that."

I did consider questioning that statement but decided ICBA to get
into a pointless discussion of the relative merits of whatever AV
security suite happened to be his poison of choice.

If he has taken a more considered approach than simply splashing the
cash on any one single brand named security solution, the need to
discuss the relative merits more or less disappears anyway.
--
Regards, J B Good

On Fri, 11 May 2012 14:36:31 +0000 (UTC), J G Miller
wrote:

On Friday, May 11th, 2012, at 14:03:11h +0100, Roderick Stewart wrote:

Microsoft have evidently recognised the simple fact that if you want to
sell something successfully you have to make it easy for the people you
hope will buy it

By coercing PC manufacturers to pre-install it, and only it, on the
PC product being sold.

But who would buy a PC with anything else pre-installed? The few
people who don't like Windows probably want nothing pre-installed. The
last time I was buying a PC it cost extra for nothing!

Steve

--
Neural Network Software. http://www.npsl1.com
EasyNN-plus. Neural Networks plus. http://www.easynn.com
SwingNN. Forecast with Neural Networks. http://www.swingnn.com
JustNN. Just Neural Networks. http://www.justnn.com

On Fri, 11 May 2012 14:59:27 +0200, Martin wrote:

Some years ago Norton was completely rewritten.

They had to do something to survive.

Steve

--
Neural Network Software. http://www.npsl1.com
EasyNN-plus. Neural Networks plus. http://www.easynn.com
SwingNN. Forecast with Neural Networks. http://www.swingnn.com
JustNN. Just Neural Networks. http://www.justnn.com

On Thu, 10 May 2012 16:41:29 +0100, madge
wrote:

On Thu, 10 May 2012 13:39:05 +0100, Graham. wrote:

On Thu, 10 May 2012 11:49:40 +0100, Gary
wrote:

Just wondering. My w7 32 bit has got really slow over the last few
weeks . Anybody else having this problem?


I doubt that I would even suspect that such an experience might be
shared by others.

Perhaps I am incapable of thinking outside the box.


Those of us outside the box think that you are a Cat named Schroedinger
who may or may not be dead.

Actually, I don't the cat was named. It was simply referred to as
"Schroedinger's cat".


ALSO ... Virus software upgrades have been known to slow PCs up and may be

ITYMTS, "slow PCs _down_" (you can speed things up but you slow
things down) ;-)

carrying out deep scanning checks as well. I keep wishing avast would keep
a hash listing of all the files it has previously checked so it wouldn't
want to scan all files every time.
--
Regards, J B Good

On Fri, 11 May 2012 14:59:27 +0200, Martin wrote:

On Fri, 11 May 2012 12:15:57 +0100, charles
wrote:

In article ,
Martin wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 09:13:12 +0000 (UTC), David Taylor
wrote:

On 2012-05-11, Martin wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 09:53:43 +0100, Alan
wrote:

On Thu, 10 May 2012 11:49:40 +0100, Gary
wrote:

Just wondering. My w7 32 bit has got really slow over the last few
weeks .

Get rid of Norton or Mcafee.

Norton takes less than 2% of resources and runs in the background.

Less than 2% of what resources? How on earth can you assert that?

Memory and performance. Others have measured it in tests.

but it depends on waht teh resources are to start with. I dare say it
might be true with lots of system memory, but on my laptop some years ago,
the machine crawled - before I got rid of Norton

Some years ago Norton was completely rewritten.

And, there you have it, the reason why I CBA to question Gary's
statement "I have all the protection I need". ;-)
--
Regards, J B Good

On 11/05/2012 16:15, Johny B Good wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 14:59:27 +0200, wrote:

On Fri, 11 May 2012 12:15:57 +0100, charles
wrote:

In ,
wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 09:13:12 +0000 (UTC), David Taylor
wrote:
On 2012-05-11, wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 09:53:43 +0100, Alan
wrote:

On Thu, 10 May 2012 11:49:40 +0100,
wrote:

Just wondering. My w7 32 bit has got really slow over the last few
weeks .
Get rid of Norton or Mcafee.
Norton takes less than 2% of resources and runs in the background.
Less than 2% of what resources? How on earth can you assert that?
Memory and performance. Others have measured it in tests.
but it depends on waht teh resources are to start with. I dare say it
might be true with lots of system memory, but on my laptop some years ago,
the machine crawled - before I got rid of Norton
Some years ago Norton was completely rewritten.
And, there you have it, the reason why I CBA to question Gary's
statement "I have all the protection I need". ;-)
If you are going to quote me get it right. I did not say

"I have all the protection I need".

Gary

"I have all the protection I need"

On Fri, 11 May 2012 16:06:56 +0100, Johny B Good
wrote:

On Thu, 10 May 2012 16:41:29 +0100, madge
wrote:

On Thu, 10 May 2012 13:39:05 +0100, Graham. wrote:

On Thu, 10 May 2012 11:49:40 +0100, Gary
wrote:

Just wondering. My w7 32 bit has got really slow over the last few
weeks . Anybody else having this problem?


I doubt that I would even suspect that such an experience might be
shared by others.

Perhaps I am incapable of thinking outside the box.


Those of us outside the box think that you are a Cat named Schroedinger
who may or may not be dead.

Actually, I don't the cat was named. It was simply referred to as
"Schroedinger's cat".

Oops! I meant to type " Actually, I don't _THINK_ the cat was named.
It was simply referred to as "Schroedinger's cat".
--
Regards, J B Good

On 11/05/2012 16:43, Gary wrote:
On 11/05/2012 16:15, Johny B Good wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 14:59:27 +0200, wrote:

On Fri, 11 May 2012 12:15:57 +0100, charles
wrote:

In ,
wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 09:13:12 +0000 (UTC), David Taylor
wrote:
On 2012-05-11, wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 09:53:43 +0100, Alan
wrote:

On Thu, 10 May 2012 11:49:40 +0100,
wrote:

Just wondering. My w7 32 bit has got really slow over the
last few
weeks .
Get rid of Norton or Mcafee.
Norton takes less than 2% of resources and runs in the background.
Less than 2% of what resources? How on earth can you assert that?
Memory and performance. Others have measured it in tests.
but it depends on waht teh resources are to start with. I dare say it
might be true with lots of system memory, but on my laptop some
years ago,
the machine crawled - before I got rid of Norton
Some years ago Norton was completely rewritten.
And, there you have it, the reason why I CBA to question Gary's
statement "I have all the protection I need". ;-)
If you are going to quote me get it right. I did not say

"I have all the protection I need".

Gary

"I have all the protection I need"

Anyway I got on to Macafee and they did a remote access and it would
appear they have done something to get the speed back.

it involved resetting all the IE internet settings amount others.

On Fri, 11 May 2012 16:43:27 +0100, Gary
wrote:

On 11/05/2012 16:15, Johny B Good wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 14:59:27 +0200, wrote:

On Fri, 11 May 2012 12:15:57 +0100, charles
wrote:

In ,
wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 09:13:12 +0000 (UTC), David Taylor
wrote:
On 2012-05-11, wrote:
On Fri, 11 May 2012 09:53:43 +0100, Alan
wrote:

On Thu, 10 May 2012 11:49:40 +0100,
wrote:

Just wondering. My w7 32 bit has got really slow over the last few
weeks .
Get rid of Norton or Mcafee.
Norton takes less than 2% of resources and runs in the background.
Less than 2% of what resources? How on earth can you assert that?
Memory and performance. Others have measured it in tests.
but it depends on waht teh resources are to start with. I dare say it
might be true with lots of system memory, but on my laptop some years ago,
the machine crawled - before I got rid of Norton
Some years ago Norton was completely rewritten.


And, there you have it, the reason why I CBA to question Gary's
statement "I have all the protection I need". ;-)


If you are going to quote me get it right. I did not say

"I have all the protection I need".

Oops! My bad. You're right, that wasn't an actual quote, just a
paraphrasing of what you actually typed: "I have the
protection needed".

I'm not sure in what sense this makes any difference but, when I'm
claiming to be quoting, it's best to _actually_ quote by means of a
copy 'n' paste than do it off the top of one's head.

Regarding your choice of McAfee, from what I've seen of it on a vic
^H^H^H, er customer's PC, I can't say I'm much impressed. To be fair,
it was inflicted on an elderly single core CPU PC with only a mere
512MB of ram running winXP Pro so its resource hoggery would be
greatly exaggerated compared to the more commonplace Vista/ win7 dual
core 4GB setup where the OS's own hoggery puts that of any AV into a
better looking perspective.

I have a rather jaundiced view of _all_ AV software. All of it
greatly oversells its virtues as a method of protection and it's only
the fact that the vastly increased system resources demanded by Vista
and win7 reduces the impact of such AV software to more acceptable
levels.

Unfortunately, in this interconnected world on a monoculture OS, such
AV protection is a necessary evil. For myself, I use Avast Free
(Robin) with SpyBot S&D (Batman) in a "Dynamic Duo" configuration of
protection. For good measure, I also keep a current version of
MalwareByte's Anti-Malware on-demand scanner as a further 'sanity
check' mechanism (it only takes about 30 odd seconds to complete a
quick scan on this win2k system).

I don't want to get into a protracted arguement over the pros and
cons of "This AV product over That AV product". IMHO, it's all
woefully outclassed by the quality of malware currently in
circulation. Spending money on a full version that is going to cripple
your machine even more than the free version does just doesn't make
any sense to me.

I used to use AVG Free until they bloated it to the point where I was
forced to ask "If this is the level of disruption I have to suffer,
for free, why on earth should I spend money on an even more bloated
version?"

I then turned to Avira (needs a hack to disable the Fake-a-like AV
stylee pop-up advertising window whenever you update it) but this
eventually lost its win2k support and, in winXP, it screwed up
SpyBot's immunisation check feature thus earning its own Darwin Award
afaiwc.

Avast is the only remaining contender in the freeby AV stakes that
offers active protection. Its impact on system performance is
acceptable (all such protection impacts system performance, it cannot
be otherwise) and it provides an effective control interface, unlike
most of its competitors who seem to have looked to Sony for their
inspiration.

Having stated my position, I suspect your problem could just as
easily be a hardware issue, notably, the hard disk drive. I recommend
you run a diagnostic utility, if you haven't done so already, at your
earliest opportunity before delving any further.

You might be (unpleasantly) surprised to find your hard disk is
riddled with bad sectors and close to failure. The sooner you're aware
of any hard disk problems, the more likely you'll be in successfully
recovering or backing up your priceless data (assuming, of course,
that you don't already have such backups - many people don't).

--
Regards, J B Good

On 10/05/2012 23:31, Martin wrote:
On Thu, 10 May 2012 19:57:09 +0000 (UTC), J G
wrote:

On Thursday, May 10th, 2012, at 14:34:26h +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:

You might just as well say, "No, because I don't have a computer"!

But are you refusing to accept that my suggestion that there is
a possibility that the computer could be part of a Botnet is
unrealistic?

Estimated 4 million infected PCs part of TDL-4, 25% of which
ie 1 million are in the UK of GB&NI

http://www.computerworld.COM/s/article/9218034/Massive_botnet_indestructible_say_researchers

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20075725-17/tdl-4-the-indestructible-botnet/

According to Wikipedia, when Bredolab was in operation, it controlled 30 million
infected hosts, and Mariposa had 8 - 12 million infected hosts.

Conficker which is still in operation is estimated to control about 10 million
infected hosts.

At one point even the English Royal Navy and the French Navy were infected.

Even a PC belonging to somebody in the ***British*** Royal Navy

Or even in just "The Royal Navy"