Post by Freesia on May 26, 2008 12:47:31 GMT -5
So I'm a little out of my element, here, and I figured I'd tap the Pilalgers resource for help.
My mother has an ancient Dell computer. It was my sister-in-law's/brother's machine for a long time, and they gsve it to her. They didn't clean it off, but I don't think there's anything here they're missing much.
Mom uses it for email and getting on the web.. very slowly. She just recently upgraded to DSL from dial-up.
Now. I don't think anyone ever put any kind of antivirus or firewall on this computer (and if I'd realized thst, I would have probably been able to prevent most of her recent problems). I've got a free firewall on here now (AS3 Personal) and I've been looking for some kind of adware/spyware removal software that will work with (get ready to cringe) Windows ME. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many out there, and the few that will work (or say they will, and then don't) haven't been able to clear off a couple of things. From my research, it looks like the computer is going to need a reformat.. which wouldn't be a big deal if this wasn't an ancient Dell. No disks. No support and I'm kinda stumped.
Specs:
Intel Celeron 400 MHz
64 MB ram
ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP 2X
Should I even try to upgrade her OS to Windows 2000? I know that's a craptastic OS but it's better than ME. I have an old set of Win98 disks at home that would work fine, but we'd still have the software availability issues there.
There's a backdoor worm on here that I can't get rid of. One of the free malware programs I was able to fid ID'd it, but it hangs up and won't proceed to delete it. The virus disabled her regedit, so I can't get in there and clean it that way. Hijack This! isn't finding any more entires in the registry anyway, but there's a hoax "SpyKillerPro" program in her system tray that throws a popup up now and then asking her to download and run a spyware killer.
I'm pretty sure the firewall is protecting her from most bad things, for now, but there are system stability issues - I'm getting a memory fault error and the popup for the spyware thing is super annoying. SHe's not computer savvy and needs a machine that just WORKS. She doesn't shop or do any bill pay online so I don't think she's at risk there. I just need something that will clean this machine up so she can get on the web and check her email.
Any thoughts?
F
My mother has an ancient Dell computer. It was my sister-in-law's/brother's machine for a long time, and they gsve it to her. They didn't clean it off, but I don't think there's anything here they're missing much.
Mom uses it for email and getting on the web.. very slowly. She just recently upgraded to DSL from dial-up.
Now. I don't think anyone ever put any kind of antivirus or firewall on this computer (and if I'd realized thst, I would have probably been able to prevent most of her recent problems). I've got a free firewall on here now (AS3 Personal) and I've been looking for some kind of adware/spyware removal software that will work with (get ready to cringe) Windows ME. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many out there, and the few that will work (or say they will, and then don't) haven't been able to clear off a couple of things. From my research, it looks like the computer is going to need a reformat.. which wouldn't be a big deal if this wasn't an ancient Dell. No disks. No support and I'm kinda stumped.
Specs:
Intel Celeron 400 MHz
64 MB ram
ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP 2X
Should I even try to upgrade her OS to Windows 2000? I know that's a craptastic OS but it's better than ME. I have an old set of Win98 disks at home that would work fine, but we'd still have the software availability issues there.
There's a backdoor worm on here that I can't get rid of. One of the free malware programs I was able to fid ID'd it, but it hangs up and won't proceed to delete it. The virus disabled her regedit, so I can't get in there and clean it that way. Hijack This! isn't finding any more entires in the registry anyway, but there's a hoax "SpyKillerPro" program in her system tray that throws a popup up now and then asking her to download and run a spyware killer.
I'm pretty sure the firewall is protecting her from most bad things, for now, but there are system stability issues - I'm getting a memory fault error and the popup for the spyware thing is super annoying. SHe's not computer savvy and needs a machine that just WORKS. She doesn't shop or do any bill pay online so I don't think she's at risk there. I just need something that will clean this machine up so she can get on the web and check her email.
Any thoughts?
F