John Wragg's Support Blog

Archive for the ‘PC and Internet Support’ Category

This refurbbished laptop includes:

• 1.8 Ghz AMD cpu
• 704 MB RAM
• 40 GB nominal HDD disk dive
• 15″ integral screen
• WiFi Wireless

This floor standing refurbished PC comprises:

• DELL Dimension 2300
• Pentium 4 cpu, 250 GH
• 1.00 MB RAM
• 76.6 GB HDD
• Samsung SyncMaster 191t 19″ TFT external display
• D-Link wireless

Also available

• Microsoft Office 2007 (£50 installed)
• Microsoft wireless mouse and keyboard
• 5.1 sound card
• 10/100 Ethernet LAN card

In addition to the Software Installed this PC includes a copy of Microsoft Works.

This started life as a DELL Inspiron 6000 laptop, but developed a faulty screen. I was able to remove the screen, and use an external 17″ 1024 x 768 TFT flat screen display. This actually gives better desktop ergonomics than the original laptop.

The hardware specification is:

• Intel Pentium 1.73 GHz cpu
• 0.99 GB RAM
• 34 GB HDD

Microsoft Office 2002 is included in addition to the Software Installed.

Latest versions of the following system software are included and installed on all refurbished PCs, unless otherwise stated.

• Windows XP SP3
• Firefox web browser
• ccleaner
• Tune Up Utilities 2009
• AVG Free
• Adobe Acrobat
• WinZip
• Adobe Flash Player
• Windows XP updates
• K-Lite codec pack
• Paragon Recovery Free

The following upgrade services and sales are offered within travelling distance of Findhorn near Forres, Moray, Scotland:

Upgrade old Windows XP PC or Laptop

Upgrade Newer XP or Vista to Windows 7

Used PCs and Laptops for Sale

(subject to availability)

What about anti-virus on the Apple Mac? My experience is limited, but Sophos seem to have it covered, though costing several hundred pounds for the business market. But see:

• Chester Wisniewski’s Sophos Blog
• Cardiff University seems to have good general advice on Mac security.
• They quote ClamXav as a free virus checker for Mac OS X.
• Apple are selling avast! antivirus Mac Edition 2.74 but I dont know anything about it.
• usatoday blog includes another up to date (Nov 2009) review of security on the Apple Mac.

Up to date anti-virus software remains essential, and I am still sticking with and recommending AVG.

[ www.kaspersky.co.uk/ comes out ahead in the reviews, but would you want to hand over control of your PC to a Russian company?]

There have been some installation and upgrade problems with AVG, which has jumped to V9.0. You need to remove all traces of other anti-virus software before installing it. Norton is particularly insidious, and you may need to download the Norton Removal Tool.

If you get an error message “invalid Update Control CTF file” after upgrading or installing AVG see the attached Comment for the fix, or else the AVG Support FAQ.

AVG now offer:

• V9.0 Anti-Virus Free,
• Anti-virus (£27.99) and
• Internet Security (£39.99),

see the AVG Product Ccomparison. It is probably worth paying for the Anti-Rootkit, as part of Anti-Virus. If you get a Rootkit infection can be very serious, and you may not be able to clear it. Although you can try for free:

• Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool
• Sophos Anti-Rootkit

Regards

PS:

A good security blog, not too technical, and associated weekly email list is available from Sophos at http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/ They have a good reputation but mainly address the business market.

PPS:

Remember that you need one each of:

• anti-virus,
• anti-spyware (such as Spybot – search and destroy) and a
• firewall (which is probably part of your broadband ADSL router).

For further details please see my website Internet Security Page

Windows 98 is bad news.

Adding software device drivers, say for usb support of a memory stick, can take ages or not be possible (the usb spec was not finalised in time for Windows 98 first edition, and even Windows 98 SE had problems).

Often such machines have a write only CD, so without a working usb port you are stuck.

You can fit a PMCIA broadband wireless adaptor, or Ethernet for a wired connection to a router, if you get lucky with the device drivers.

I once spent 7 hours working on a Windows 98 machine, including:

• Download from Microsoft and install XP Service Pack 2 (90 mins)
• Download from Microsoft and install 48 off security updates for XP SP2 (20 mins)
• Remove obsolete Norton with removal tool
• Installed and then updated AVG anti-virus software
• Scan PC, found 37 infections, 30 spyware programs and 120 warnings
• Clean up and tune performance with Ashampoo Winoptimiser (90 mins)
• Defragment hard disc (30 mins)

and that was before the time and expense of upgrading the memory!

The customer was not well pleased, and we negotiated an arrangement.

So this means that any PC with Windows 98 and older than about 2000 is probably not worth maintaining. Sorry about that.

Except that next time I would like to try Linux Xubuntu, but that is another story and you still need 256 KB minimum.

Low Memory is the most common and critical cause of poor performance on older PCs.

256 KB might have been enough for XP on its own but as more and more startup overheads accumulate the whole system slows down, exhibiting multiple symptoms.

Even with 512 KB you might find that the system slows down when you have more than one application running, even say Word and Internet Explorer.

And for an numeric analysis (say Excel) or graphic manipulation (say Photoshop Elements)  you should really consider 1024 KB or more.

Luckily memory prices have crashed since the days of penny pinching, and you can get 1 GB of SODIMM memory for £43 including shipping, plus a fitting charge if yo need help.

Try

• www.crucial.com or
• www.orcalogic.co.uk/.

So I won’t even look at a machine with only 256 KB without upgrading it first.