Phil's Sick Laptop

[Philip Ayres]

I have a poorly laptop.

It's connecting to the net ok, but when you activate a web browser (same symptoms ie and firefox) It'll display the first page youlook at and then no more without repeated attempts top refresh the screen/paste the address into the browser. Similarly outlook express will send & recieve at start up.

I suspected firewall problems - I run Zone alarm on this machine and have done for years. Uninstall - all works fine. Reinstall - all goes TU again. So it's not the firewall being corrupted as it des the samething on a fresh install. And it's been running fine for ages.

I reset the dns cache. I virus scan the computer. I clean the registry out with ccleaner. I run AdAware,Malawarebytes & Spybot all with no threats found.

I look at the memory on the system tab in the control panel. It says 896mb of ram availible which looks a little odd to me as I know for sure there's a 1gb chip in the pc (1024mb) So I'm guessing that one of the individual chips on the memory strip has failed and this is leading to system resource problems manifesting themselves with the internet.

New 2gb chip en route. Let's see if I'm right.....

[Stomski]

To test your ram, burn off a MemTest disk and set your BIOS to boot from DVD.
www.memtest86.com/

edit- It's probably worth upgrading to 2GB anyway.

Given that the only problems seem to be with net access, could be your network drivers have got themselves in a tiz or that the hardware is screwed.

Have you tried another USB WiFi dongle or USB LAN adapter?

Or it could be your router. Have you tried restarting it? A lot of routers run on Linux with a webserver front end, no reason why the software on there couldn't have problems.

edit- Or have you tried with someone elses connection, or can other people connect through your router ok?

[Philip Ayres]

I have now had other memory issues when opening and closing documents so I'm reasonably confident I've got it. Further comment after the chip arrives.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Strange. Since last night my computer has gone a bit poorly in a way not unlike Phil's. When I try to load a new web page, Firefox says "Waiting for [whatever the site is]" and gets no further without repeated attempts. Similar problem with IE.

I have plenty of memory.

Hopefully it'll sort itself out.

Phil - are you using AVG? My problem started just after an AVG update.

Who is your web provider?

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

AHHHHH... solved my problem by uninstalling AVG, then re-installing it, without LinkScanner installed at all rather than with it installed but disabled. Perversely, not only was it interfering with my web-browsing, it was also preventing updates for itself from being downloaded.

Have you managed to solve your problem, Phil?

Martin

[Philip Ayres]

No. But now you mention it there was an AVG update just before the problen started....

[Deleted]

I actually have had no problem with AVG. I don't use it now (I switched to Avast when I suffered from that awful trojan business a few weeks back) but I still recommend it as a decent free anti-virus program.

[Philip Ayres]

SORTED ! Thanks Martin !

[Andy Turnbull]

I recommend Avast as well as opposed to AVG. I had some grumbly issues a while back with it.

Andy

[Deleted]

Apparently, the German government has advised people to not use Firefox
networkedblogs.com/1wQaL

[Stomski]

I recently moved to Avast too, was getting fed up with the pop ups so just did a search...

www.ghacks.net/2009/12/26/block-avira-antivir-popup-and-update-window/

Need to stop avnotify.exe from running, best way is to change the execute permissions.

[Deleted]

I've never heard of that Avira anti virus program.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Changing software so often throws up bigger problems than the ones you're trying to find a solution to that I am reluctant to do so unless forced. So now that AVG is working perfectly again, I'll keep it.

It's nice that IE and FireFox don't interfere with one another though, so that when one has a security alert announced I can use the other until it is patched.

Though I still think PCs could and should be available that are 100% un-hackable from the get-go.

Martin

[Stomski]

All software has bugs in it. Don't blame the software, blame the people who are exploiting the bugs, they're the ones who mean you have to have anti-virus and malware protection.

[Cullen]

Mar 22, 2010 18:25:04 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

Though I still think PCs could and should be available that are 100% un-hackable from the get-go.

Martin

I found that moon-on-a-stick you where looking for Martin.