Thread: Computer Start Up?

Yikes ! Thats way too long so there must be a problem somewhere.

Have you got enough space left on the main drive ? maybe do a disk cleanup/defrag.

Do you have enough memory ? Maybe it needs an upgrade.

Norton is your problem.

IMHO its garbage and hogs the CPU. Get PCCillin.

1. Try a disk clean up, click My Computer, right click on the C drive & click properties. Click Disk Cleanup & wait. Once it has made the list, check it & tick anything you don't want, do NOT select the compress option.

2. Do you have an older version of MS Office or Outlook loaded? MS Office 97 is the one that causes the most problems even if you don't use Outlook, if it is loaded, the default setting turns on journaling & it journals all the MS products by default. The end result is that the computer becomes slower & slower & slower. To fix it, go into Outlook, find the Journal option, delete the journals & then turn it off.

3. Wipe & reload.

Originally Posted by martrix

Norton is your problem.

IMHO its garbage and hogs the CPU. Get PCCillin.

Yeah, I hate Norton too but even though PCCillin gets good reviews in the computer mags, I have found lately that it has a big problem with Outlook, in particular, Outlook 2003.
I have been removing it & installing AVG free instead.

Originally Posted by Cliff Rogers

Yeah, I hate Norton too but even though PCCillin gets good reviews in the computer mags, I have found lately that it has a big problem with Outlook, in particular, Outlook 2003.
I have been removing it & installing AVG free instead.

I have vowed never to use another Norton/Symantec product again, I also use AVG.

I was in Adelaide recently, using a computer with Norton installed, it also took ages to get going on start-up, but 8 mins seems excessive.

The other problem with Norton products is that they are almost impossible to uninstall.

Cliffs suggestion of a wipe and re-install could well be your best option.

I would be going to Start, Run and type in msconfig and go to the Start Tab and have a look at what programs are loading into memory. Untick all the ones you don't use or that you can access via Start, All Programs.

Just be careful of disarming a couple of important ones

Just as Cliff says I think the free AVG is the best since sliced bread.

My grandson who is a systems engineer tested all the virus programs and reckons that the best purchased virus program is Kaspersky and the next best of all is AVG.

Get PCCillin

We upgraded to the latest version. What a memory hog. There are two processes that consume about half of the available RAM and run up the CPU pretty high. We tried to get help from Trend to sort it out but they weren't much use. I might give AVG a go. Does it have a firewall?

Originally Posted by silentC

.... I might give AVG a go. Does it have a firewall?

Not sure about the Firewall, it does have some sort of anti-spyware but I don't use it.
I use the free versions of all of these,
AVG for Anti-virus
Zonealarm for a firewall
Spybot Search & Destroy V1.4 for spyware

Can't find the free Zonealarm. Wheredyageddit?

Zonelabs
www.zonealarm.com


Hmmmm..... I can't find the free one either now.

Found it.... here

I just use the Windows XP Firewall and it has never let me down and Lavasoft Adaware for Spyware.

That's OK if you're running Windows XP

I could probably install ISA but that would be overkill for a home PC I think.

Originally Posted by Cliff Rogers

Zonelabs
www.zonealarm.com


Hmmmm..... I can't find the free one either now.

Found it.... here

I'm not the most patient person around when trying to find things on people's web sites, but all I can see is the free 15-day trial. Maybe they don't give it away any more...