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Post by Dark Stranger on Sept 24, 2008 9:48:59 GMT
Since getting Sky Broadband into my girlfriend's house, the computer has been acting the utter bastard. We have a wireless router plugged into the phone socket, and plugged directly into the PC, just as the setup instructions indicated.
But the internet, while saying it's connected, works only every now and again. It's utterly frustrating, and I think perhaps our firewall is stopping us from getting online?
The signal is fine, "ping" and "ipconfig" prompts are all fine, and we have Norton security, but Windows Firewall turned off.
Before this computer gets drop kicked out the window, what the hell are we doing wrong?
It worked fine before with Virgin. I had a look through the hardware list and can't seem to find a modem connected. I tried adding one (picked the first one off the list that came up) and it seemed to work. But now it's fucked again, and I'm in my house on the laptop.
Any tips?
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chrisl
Empty
I still think its the 1990s - when I joined TMUK
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Post by chrisl on Sept 24, 2008 11:17:44 GMT
I can recommend this guy: www.pcrepairscroydon.comHe can sort most things out by remote support / is really good value for money. |
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Post by Dark Stranger on Sept 24, 2008 11:39:40 GMT
Thanks Chris. A cursory " Why does sky fuck up broadband?" into Google has revealed it could quite well be Norton antivirus causing an obstruction. Have to have a blast at uninstalling it later on.
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Stomski
Fusilateral Quintro Combiner
YOU INTERRUPTED MY SPEECH!! But don't worry. It won't happen again.
Posts: 5,945
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Post by Stomski on Sept 24, 2008 13:59:48 GMT
Yeah, Norton is hell.
AVG Free is a good free antivirus solution for home users and is relatively inobtrusive to your machine.
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Post by Philip Ayres on Sept 24, 2008 15:45:16 GMT
How do you get it off your machine these days ?
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Stomski
Fusilateral Quintro Combiner
YOU INTERRUPTED MY SPEECH!! But don't worry. It won't happen again.
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Post by Stomski on Sept 24, 2008 15:47:51 GMT
With some lube... Wait... I misread your question.
Erm, dunno. I've never had the misfortune of getting a PC with it preinstalled.
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Post by legios on Sept 24, 2008 18:10:12 GMT
There was a good removal tool for Norton AV on their website a while back, might well still be there. What I did was download that, uninstall Norton and then run the removal tool to clear out the remaining register entries and the like. Seemed to do the job quite nicely.
Karl
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Post by The Doctor on Sept 24, 2008 21:36:24 GMT
Norton is evil. I have known so many people who have had their computers fucked up by it. I never buy a machine that has it pre-installed as a result.
-Ralph
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Sept 24, 2008 21:37:31 GMT
Had it and took it off - sloooowws machines down to a crawl.
Andy
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Post by legios on Sept 24, 2008 21:57:00 GMT
I would agree that Norton is a pretty irritating package. It is far too resource intensive, and isn't even very good at what it does (the last major group test I read it had a detection rate of about 51% - which is far from impressive).
I put up with it for a while on the laptop because it had been preinstalled when I bought it. Soon lost my temper with it, removed and replaced it.
Karl
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2008 10:38:17 GMT
I have nothing good to say about Norton either. My sister brought Norton 360 for her laptop over a year ago and offered it to me to put on my PC. I couldn't however because the unneccassarily large amount of space it uses singled my computer out as being too small for it to be installed. My sister put it on her laptop and watched as it did bugger all other than let all kinds of Adware install themselves onto it. She then got rid of it and downloaded AVG free (which is what I use) and the moment she installed that and uninstalled Norton a message came up on screen telling her that a potentially malicious adware program was on her laptop and would she like to delete it. She did so and hasn't been plagued by anything else since. She is still gutted a little by the fact that a completly free program like AVG is much better than a program she paid about £30 for.
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Post by The Doctor on Oct 2, 2008 22:14:04 GMT
I have a problem of my own. When trying to watch youtube or iplayer vids at full screen, after around 30-40 seconds the screen goes black but the sound keeps going. After pressing escape I get a message that the display driver stopped working but has recovered. When playing, the size of the bar/text at bottom of screen playback is larger than it used to be.
Don't have any bother with full screen playback using media players.
This is really annoying when trying to watch the iplayer in particular.
I'm on Windows Vista Home Edition.
HELP!
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Oct 2, 2008 22:22:51 GMT
I take it you are using Firefox to browse? If so try it using Internet Explorer or Google Chrome or Safari and see how that works out for you just in case it's a compatibility issue with the browser and your display driver. If it's not then you may have to grin and bear it.
Also, are you on Service pack 1 of Vista?
Andy
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Post by The Doctor on Oct 2, 2008 22:32:10 GMT
I have no idea.
Tried IE, same problem. The resolution drops in full screen same as in Firefox and the picture goes. Trust the computer to develop a fault 2 days after the warranty ran out.
-Ralph
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Oct 2, 2008 23:06:51 GMT
I doubt it's an actual fault with the hardware. If it's a driver issue it's usually something that's been downloaded that's causing some issues.
What you might want to do if it's available is a system restore to a point before the problem occurred and that should sort you out.
Andy
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Post by The Doctor on Oct 2, 2008 23:23:55 GMT
How do I do system restore?
-Ralph
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Oct 3, 2008 8:32:55 GMT
On Vista I have no idea. Might be wise to google it
Andy
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Stomski
Fusilateral Quintro Combiner
YOU INTERRUPTED MY SPEECH!! But don't worry. It won't happen again.
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Post by Stomski on Oct 3, 2008 8:54:38 GMT
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Post by The Doctor on Oct 3, 2008 9:51:06 GMT
That could be it, but such terminology confuses me. Next time Nick is round, I'll ask him to do it. He knows computers better!
-Ralph
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kayevcee
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The Weather Wizard
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Post by kayevcee on Oct 3, 2008 11:57:44 GMT
Okie dokie.
-Nick
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Post by The Doctor on Oct 5, 2008 13:25:44 GMT
Good man.
-Ralph
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Post by The Doctor on Mar 23, 2009 21:40:12 GMT
I have a problem and I'm wondering if anyone can help.
Problems started with video being very juddery on youtube and BBC iplayer. I thought the problem might be Flash so took it off and re-installed. Problem remained. Then video became juddery in VLC, DIVX and Windows Media Player. I also noticed the computer in general was running very slow and often Windows would say 'not responding' when opening windows and when using Firefox. Booting up is taking longer too.
When I run Windows Task Manager it sometimes tells me the CPU usage is 100%.
Zonealarm does not show any threats. AVG was refusing to run but I took it off and installed the new version. Had the same problem with Spybot. When I reinstalled it, it found 37 bits of spyware and got rid of them.
But the problems persist. Is there some kind of check I can do for viruses or to make the computer run faster? Cheers. I'm clueless with computers.
I'm on Windows Vista Home Edition.
-Ralph
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2009 23:23:05 GMT
I suppose you could try using disk defragmenter that can sometimes help. Click on 'All Programs' on your start menu then select the Accessories folder and the System Tools folder within that. Disk Defragmenter is in there and after you've defragmented your drive it can sometimes run a little faster.
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Mar 23, 2009 23:29:43 GMT
What you want to do is get task manager up and running and google search every running process, chances are there are more than a few in there that shouldn't be.
ccleaner is a good program to get, dunno if it's xp compatible but it has an option for changing what runs when the computer boots up and it's a lot easier than changing the options on windows itself.
Andy
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Mar 24, 2009 11:50:22 GMT
My PC was getting slower and slower, taking about 5 minutes to boot up, and using the hard disk for memory for no particular reason at all. Kept getting 'increasing virtual memory' messages popping up. No viruses or anything like that.
I used Task Manager and found that Internet Explorer was using most of my RAM (which was less than 200 MB total). AVG used a fair bit as well.
I found the name of my PC (Packard Bell iMedia 1303), and Googled it together with the words 'memory upgrade', and learnt that the computer had two plug'n'play memory slots, only one was in use, and I could order another 1 GB of additional RAM to plug into the other slot.
Ordered it last Tuesday from aememory.co.uk (came to £36.78 inc. postage), it was delivered on Thursday (but it was recorded mail so I only got it today). Just opened up the PC, plugged it in, and now it has 1.18 GB of RAM and travels at warp speed. I'm running AVG's computer scanner now at the same time as using IE, which I couldn't do before because it would slow down to a crawl. Hopefully extend the life of my PC considerably.
Memory upgrades kick ass. But they do cost money.
Martin
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Post by blueshift on Mar 24, 2009 11:55:58 GMT
My computer is currently awful, maybe I will try that!
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2009 19:47:36 GMT
I used to have a Packard Bell computer before I got my new one recently. All of their computers seem to have poor speed as I've read before in a computer magazine that they are unreliable and also heard off someone that they aren't the best comps on the market.
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Post by The Doctor on Mar 25, 2009 21:04:30 GMT
I've run ccl cleaner, I've defragged the hard drive and windows task manager shows nothing other than what is running at the time. Problems persist. CPU still runs at 100% whenever it tries to do anything and video playback is choppy and unwatchable. Hard drive has 18gig free of memory. Computer remains slow.
Fecks sake.
-Ralph
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Mar 25, 2009 21:07:36 GMT
Does the Vista task manager not show the individual processes as opposed to the programs?
I use the processes when I think my machine is a bit slow and google to check they should be running.
Andy
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Mar 25, 2009 21:09:01 GMT
I've run ccl cleaner, I've defragged the hard drive and windows task manager shows nothing other than what is running at the time. Problems persist. CPU still runs at 100% whenever it tries to do anything and video playback is choppy and unwatchable. Hard drive has 18gig free of memory. Computer remains slow. Hard drive space isn't the same thing as memory. How much RAM have you got? (On Windows XP you find this out by right-clicking on 'My Computer' and clicking 'Properties'. Vista might be the same.) Martin |
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