More computer problems... time for a MAC...

[TritonGlenn]

Came home yesterday evening to a new computer problem. Computer was working fine the last time I was on it. Slow... but it worked. Well, a family friend told me about a program to install to clean up my registry - it removes programs and old remnants of them. I had installed it the night before, removed a few programs (AOL - what I consider to be the worse "virus" on the planet, along with Google Earth and a few others that I never use).



Well... now the only profile that shows up is my young sons. My profile and my wifes profile are still "there" - but I can't access them (can't "switch" to them). When I started poking around, I got a notice that it was because of my "msgina.dll", but that is all the info it would give me.



I tried going to Microsoft's page and downloading the fix for the msgina.dll, but I'm too computer illiterate I guess, because it still doesn't work. It told me to load it into a non-encrypted TEMP file, so that is what I did. But it doesn't work. Then I read something about making sure the executable line had a T: ... blah, blah, blah (doesn't matter what it really said - it made no sense to me anyway as I have no clue where to type that or how to make it work. I tried it in the "Run" line, but that didn't work either.



I'm about to take a Dell XPS system and chunk the whole dang thing into the local lake and on the way back, stop by at the Apple store and pick up a new Mac. My wife doesn't have 1/100000 the problems I have with this computer.



Anyone have a fix for this that I might be able to understand? I'd greatly appreciate it.



All the best,

Glenn

 

[Bill McElroy]

Thanks Glenn,..I'm easy to get along with!! I won't cause you any problems!!



"Mac"

 

[TritonGlenn]

Somehow... I knew I'd get that reply from you even before I hit the submit button. :lol:

All the best,

Glenn

 

[Jim B]

Glenn,

one thing to try. go into your user control panel and turn off fast user switching. It should bring you to a logon screen and you can type in the user name and password to logon to any of the various profiles on the machine.



The mac option is always a good one. They work well but they do have problems, they do crash etc. I have both a mac and windows machines and i use both every day and they both have thier merits.



btw fwiw to anyone else reading this dont ever run one of those magic "cleanup" programs. As Glenn just experienced they do more harm then good and can really screw up a system in short order.

 

[TritonGlenn]

Jim,



Thank you very much for the response. The log-on screen came up, but my son's profile name was in it. I didn't even think about typing "Glenn" in there to see if my profile would pop up. I guess I was expecting it to either be in a drop down menu to choose my profile, or not there at all. I'll try that when I get home. I feel dumb for not thinking of that.



Computers seem to last about 2 - 2.5 years at the most for me. After that, they are so slow, I want to throw them out of the window. I don't play any games on any of my computers - just work and surfing the internet.



What do you recommend for a slow computer? I mean this thing has really slowed down to a crawl lately. It used to be lightning fast, and now it takes about a good minute or so just for my "personal settings" to pop up on the screen when I log in. I can hear the hard drive spooling up - sounds like it's going to take off and fly away. The other day - I swear it took over 5 minutes for me to log-in, log on to the internet and a page to pop up. I checked the system resources - tons of memory left (literally - I'm not using even 1/10th of my memory, but the CPU was running at 85-90%. It would drop down to 5%, then right back up. It kept doing that until my personal settings came up, and then it calmed down. I look at the "processes" going on - it's dang near two pages long, and I don't know what is supposed to be running or not. I'm sure all of those processes shouldn't be running at system startup or general use. I'm fairly certain that is what is slowing down my computer.



I know all computers can have issues. My co-worker just bought a new Mac and he is about to chunk it out of the window. But my wifes MacBook has been pretty awesome for her. I don't know if I'd like one - I'm just frustrated with my Dell and want to get it fixed soon and not continually have problems. The co-worker I just mentioned cracks me up at work. He types away on his computer, and then I hear him stop. A deep breath... then "D**m you Bill Gates!" from the other side of the cubicle. :lol:



Thanks again for the response. I appreciate you taking the time to help me out.



All the best,

Glenn

 

[Bass Tracker]

Yes please dont ever run those "quick fix BS prgrams"



here is what i would do.



Consider that your old profiles are now completely gone and corrupt due to some sort of registry editing /deleting. Do the following if possible.



Go to C:Temp and make a new Folder called "Backup" then make new folders in that one called "Profile1" and "Profile2" etc..



go to Cocuments and Setting***** (your user profile)

Once there "copy" the following folders into the new "profile 1" folder



"Desktop", "Favorites","My Documents"



Then do the same for any other profile that got corrupt.



Then just simply make a "new" profile for yourself and "copy" the info back from your folders into your new one and you shouldnt have lost much of anything (internet favorites,documents,desktop icons,etc)



This may look confusing, but read it step by step as you do it and you will see it is very easy..



If you need a hand let me know. Good Luck

 

[Scott Hammer TOXIC]

From the peanut gallery.......how about a system restore? That being said I don't know that much but I am still running the VIAO that Corey helped me get!! Just about got it filled up though!!LOL



TOXIC

 

[Texas Transplant]

As was said, many of those 'fixer upppers' will get you in more trouble than you can stand. Messing with the registry, can kill a windows maching quickly. Follow suggestions above.



Tex

 

[TritonGlenn]

Toxic,

For some reason "system restore" has NEVER, in the entire time I've owned this machine - worked. Not even once. Every time I try to restore my computer to a point listed on the calendar under "system restore", it runs for a while and then gives me a message saying something like "System could not be restored to the requested point. No changes have been made to your system. Please choose another restore point and try again". No matter what you pick, it never works. Windows XP machine (Dell XPS 400).



I turned my system on when I got home and typed my user name into the login screen. My profile immediately popped up, and I got a notice that my system start configuration had been modified. It said for me to go into the "General tab" and choose "Normal start up" or something like that. When I closed that window, the window it wanted me to go to immediatlely popped up. I clicked what it said to click and then closed it and restarted my computer - issue fixed. All of the profiles popped back up as normal, and everything is working fine now.



First thing I did today - Deleted the free "Spybot" program that just told me that I had "O" spyware on my computer, and I purchased (was $30 a good deal?) "Webroot Spy Sweeper" on a one-year subscription. Ran it after install - 32 items quarantined.



Next thing I think I'm going to do is purchase and download AVG Anti-Virus (I've been running AVG Free version on my laptop and like it), and delete Symantec Anti-Virus. Symantec seems to be taking up a lot of time running the virus scan (Anywhere from 56 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes at last count).



Thanks again to all the computer gurus that popped in here and helped out.



Now to do a backup... if that does any good with this frackin thing.



All the best,

Glenn

 

[Jim B]

Glad to see its all fixed up Glenn.



A good backup is never ever a bad thing. I cant think of one time in my close to 20 years in IT that having a backup wasnt helpful. Too bad not enough peole do it, there seems to be a level of trust that the hard disk will never fail in a pc and that info is safe. That cant be further from the truth....



Spealing of backups that is one of the things i love about my Mac laptop. The time machine software that they relased in lepoard works great. It snaps my machine once an hour and i dont even have to think about it. I also have a network attached time capsule so it does the whole thing wireless, its really fantastic. Overall the Mac generally just works, it has its quirks but mostly it just works which i like since the last thing i want to do in my off time is fix another pc.



Ditching the symantec AV isnt a bad idea either. Its really a resource hog.. I have been runing corporate symanted AV for years and its gotten worst and more bloated with every version release.

 

[TritonGlenn]

Jim B,

Thanks for the response. I have been running Symantec because it was free from the Government when I was active duty. Now that I'm no longer active duty, it's no longer free... so I figure if I'm going to pay for it - I'm getting something better.



Is AVG the way to go, or do you recommend something else. I remember someone on here (was it Rich?) that posted about AVG, and that is why I installed the AVG free version on my laptop. Thinking about buying the whole shebang for my desktop.



All the best,

Glenn

 

[Texas Transplant]

I used AVG for awhile, but with my new computers, I have Trend Micro. Easy to use, and so far (5+ months), no problems at all.



I didn't have any particular problem with AVG, but the new laptops came with 18 months of Trend Micro.



Tex

 

[Bass Tracker]

Glenn,



I use a Symantec End Point Protection. That to me is the best one due to the fact that I dont even no it is running. Very low system resources used. Although my PC is pretty fast.



I can hook you up. Email me if you need more info. [email protected]



Good Luck

 

[Jim B]

Jason,

Are you using the SEP 11 coporate product? If so id have to respectfully disagree on the system resources used. It has a much larger memory footprint vs the SAV 10 product it replaced. On the machines we use i found there was about a 15% performance hit by "upgrading" to SEP 11 just by it being on there and idle. Thats without the firewall enabled. It also pretty much renders a machine useless when its running a scan even when its throttled down to low CPU useage it just sucks up so much memory that the machine starts paging like crazy and becomes virtually unuseable. We dont have slow pc's at my company by any means, just when a product has ~1gb memory footprint when running a scan something isnt right with it. I get the pleasure of running our SEP infastructure here and i really dont like it one but the 10 version was a whole lot better.



Glenn, AGV is a fine product and it will get the job done for you. I use that on my Windows pc's at home without issue.

 

[Bass Tracker]

Jim,



Not sure on the version to be honest. I will have to check. maybe I am just getting lucky. EndPoint just works good on my pc lol.

 

[William H. (Bill) Barham]

Just my opinion but I would never mess with the registry, period. I do however, defrag quite a lot and it seems to help both my 'puters stay fast.

I have McAfee on both of mine because it was free with Comcast. It seems to be doing it's job and I have no problems with it. My brother uses AGV and loves it.

As for computers crashing, my brother has been using UNIX for over two years now on his main computer and has never had a crash or drive problem. I have been thinking about changing over on my laptop but am too chicken.



Uncle Billy

 

[Jimmy Easterling]

I have been running AVG Free for two years and when the ecomony went belly up I installed SuperAntiSpyware, also free. We have three computers here at home that stay pretty active on the internet most of the time and we have had no problems. The definitions have to be updated every day and your Windows maintenance (defrag and clean up) has to be done on a regular basis. Another program I use is CleanUp, also free. I replace my computers about every 5 years just because I want the newer technology. And if you are running Vista, call Microsoft and request a downgrade to XP Pro, I think you can get it at no charge. My new laptop came preinstalled with vista but came bundled with xp pro downgrade.