Well, I give up. I've tried two virus scanners and about three spyware programs, it's kaput.

I got nothing, serious. It only manages to start up half the time now, and I can't go to any websites, without it re-directing me to a shopping thing. Gross.

Now I have to reinstall MUSH and Spore and, well, this is just bleh.

So depressing. At least I can save my school work!

Anyway, back as soon as I can find my windows CD and redo it.

Blarg.

Love,

Kinson

*contests for Regent*

Less pr0n. More Lusternia.

I agree, stop looking at all that damn porn. LOL
I've had great success with a combination of Ad-Aware/Spybot/Windows Defender

I used to have McAfee, but i haven't renewed my subscription in over a year, because i'm sick of all the annoying messages it pops up about updates.

Yup, get AVG, Adaware, Spy Blaster, and Windows Defender. Having those four will keep you spyware and virus clean.

If you want an even better virus scanner (probably the best) but costs money, get Kaspersky.

And McAfee is terrible. So is Norton.

Trend Micro's PC-Cillin rocks.

I'm always amazed how people seem to pick up all the nasty stuff so easily, even packed with protection software.
I've had none for like years now and I'm fine.

I suggest trying some rootkit scanner, they can sometimes pick up stuff a typical antivirus can't. I used Rootkit Revealer on client's computer once with success, but it was quite some time ago.
Scan, post the results somewhere where good folks will tell you if there's something to get rid of.

I use AVG/Ad-Aware/Spybot and all that good stuff, to no avail!

Haaaaaa..... kinda broke right now too, so, the cheapest route=start over.

Unless you people have something wicked awesome for free and post it within the next....five or so hours before I get back from work, I'll be spending the night crying and holding Mr.Laptop close while I pull the plug. And his battery. And then plug it back in and re-install Windows.

P.S. McAffe and Norton can die in a fire. A grease fire.

I...leave my protection software turned off most of the time. Between Vista's incessant prompting (which has actually saved me from two apps) and my general leeriness of potential security holes, I don't have issues.

No more free screensavers for you!

The catch 22 there, Xavius, is that Vista itself is a giant problem

No more pr0n for me either! Honest!

Ahaha, anyway, thanks for the suggestions, if you have any more suggestions for virus/spyware/registry stuff, please, let me know. I get paid soon so I will have a bit of money for real software.

Now, to say bye bye, and pull life support.

It was a good laptop, a Dell XPS. It had several flashy lights, and some not so flashy. It served well through the good times of Lusty, and the bad times of WoW. Spore is coo too. It helped me keep notes in school because my handwriting is perfect for Med school.



Oh well, time to get a fresh start!

Apologies to Serenwilde, hopefully I should be around again in the next day. I will be redoing Windows tonight while I study for my Anatomy test.

Joy.

Only if you believe Apple's billion dollar marketing campaign. Vista is beautifully stable. (It wasn't always. But it is now!) It's not exactly lightweight, but neither is OS X.

I like the Ubuntu distro.

Since you are wiping your system clean anyway, why not try Ubuntu or some other linux flavor until you find your Windows CD.

At least you'll have a usable computer in the mean time.

To give you an idea, this is sort of what my desktop looks like in use (forgive the terrible music). It's really customizable, it can alternatively look nothing like this, just clean.
Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron with Compiz

I dual boot, but I rarely log into Windows anymore, only occasionally for a specific game or program that won't run in Wine.



Edit: Oh yea, did I forget to mention, no viruses or malware?

Holy crap, that looks cool.

Well, now, I've already got it up and running!

Hmmm.... I've never been one for Linux, but that does look neatorific.

I might have to give it a look.

Thanks!

While I'm at it, any firewall suggestions?

Go to www.ubuntu.com. Download a LiveCD, burn the image to the CD. You can then boot from that CD and test out Ubuntu before installing it, it'll run slow since it's running off a CD and not installed, but it lets you make sure your hardware is compatible and play around with it a bit (I've installed it on 3 different laptops and one desktop so far with no trouble).

After that, it's simple enough to install it as a dual boot, so it'll ask you at startup if you want to go into Windows or Ubuntu.

Best thing about Ubuntu is their package manager (Synaptics package manager) really. Don't feel like explaining it, but in some regards, Ubuntu is way beyond Vista. It's like, what Windows Update / Add Remove Programs should be... but fails so hard at.

For Windows, use Zonealarm, it's free. And a NAT router and you should be fine.

For Ubuntu, it's ports are closed by default, but you can find a firewall to manage ports in the package manager. Actually you can find any software you need in the package manager just about.

Well, that's more then enough to convince me. Downloading it now.

This should be fun.

Speaking of fun, how do you play Lusternia?

Clientwise, I mean, what do you use?

Well, Zmud kind of, sort of works under Wine. There is two clients in Add/Remove programs, one called KildClient and another called Gnome-Mud. Both are sort of meh, but again, due to the amazing package manager, it's just a quick search, and one click to download and install it (like almost all the software).

However, from what I understand, Mushclient works perfectly in Wine. I haven't tested it, but I haven't been actively Mudding. I've always been a zMud person but I might switch to Mushclient. Wine is a thing that let's you run Windows programs in Linux. TinyFugue I've heard lots of good things about, I'm going to grab it now and play around with it, never used it before.

Though I can always boot into Windows, it's not like it's gone.

Edit: I didn't realize TinyFugue had no GUI.