My main PC has decided to be ill as well. I've already spent 3-4 hours trying to restore settings, repair files, check memory and whatever else the thing suggests.
I can't even log into it now, it just stops doing anything at the 'welcome' screen. When I was able to get past the welcome screen it was so slow at doing anything and would not go into the restore options.
I have up to date security and anti virus software installed and that reports no problems. It seems to be Windows itself with an issue. Great...
Wonder what time I'll be able to leave it and get to bed ?
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Gordon57
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Ah, 10 past 3 in the morning and I'm back in, but everything is still slow. I think I'll give up and try to get some sleep... I stated this blog on the laptop, in case it didn't make sense that I was writing to say my computer wasn't working...
Hullo Gordon from newby Annie 80. Is there a pc doctor near you - see local paper. Call out should be free or maybe you can sort things out on the phone. I appreciate this forum. My problem is asthma,,bronchiectasis with the usual medication. But I get around but at snail pace.
• in reply to
Hello Annie from Basinga. Thought I must be one of the oldest on here, 81, but you are
catching up! I share your health problems,wonder what your "usual medication "is?
Glad to hear you still get around. We`ve got to keep going so not to miss out on that
"100"card from the Queen! Agree with you-this Forum is great.Greetings, Basinga.
• in reply to
Hullo Basinga - Are you M/F? Either is acceptable. I am subject to frequent chest infections. I have a very good respiratory nurse, \Nicole who keeps an eye. I have Salbutamol, Seretide and Tiotropium puffers, montekelast at night plus an assortment of other stuff. I am 81 too. I expect physical shortcomings at this age but both the brain and the tongue are very active.
Not sure about the 100 birthday - maybe it will be from the next king (Charles Bye Annie
• in reply to
Hi Annie, I am a F ! (At least I was the last time I looked!)
So you are 81 too, you are lucky that your brain is still active,
mine seems to be wearing out rapidly, but my tongue is OK!
As for getting our "100"cards, it may be from King William or
Queen Kate , or even still our Queen,if like her Mother. We`ll
have to wait and see! One good reason for `hanging on`.
As for my drugs-I have Symbicort,Ventolin and other stuff for
other parts that are wearing out! Thank Goodness for NHS.
(You and I can recall how it was before.)Greetings,Basinga.
morning gorden
have you got a 'restore point' you can go back to, back up files first.
when was you last tune up, disk clean, de-frag. takes hours, but worth it.
are your scans up to date, spyware/malware. don't half slow you down.
I had that problem with one of my computers Gordon. I am very IT proficient so really should have known to keep the maintenance on my computers up to date. Over time all sorts of rubbish accumulates on the HD. Download 'Advanced System Care 5' the free version. And do a cleaning of your HD. Also download 'Smart Defrag 2' free version and after cleaning the drive, do a Defrag. Don't use the windows Defrag. That is really not very good at all. Worked well for me and now do that routine on all my computers.
Our main computer is so damn slow now, about to go and buy a new one in a couple of weeks when finances allow, cannot grumble though, see us through 5 years. Also my little netbook has been brilliant considering that I surf the net on it for hours and have spent the past 3 years doing my degree on it. Must be lucky bought good machines, up until the past 6 months have had pretty much trouble free computing. But all good things come to an end, time to retire the desk top! Hope you get yours sorted Gordon, otherwise there is always the option of throwing it at the next person who annoys you
It was a new PC in May, custom built rather than off-the-shelf with a big name/big price. The guy who builds them does it for a living and I was very pleased with the deal. It's not his fault that Windows 7 messes up like this.
I spent 18 years looking after computers as a job so I do tend to sort my own out, and by 5am I had restored it to a couple of days ago. It seems OK again but I'm dreading re-doing the Windows Update as I think that's what caused the problem. I don't have a virus, at least not on the computer.
I have ESET Endpoint Security 5, bang up to date. I have an auto defrag that runs every week and I do prefer the Windows version to a third party, after a bad experience in the past. I make a point of clearing the browser (Chrome) cache often and running a disc cleanup often.
The only change I've made recently was to install another hard drive. I had 3 drives in the case already, all SATA. a 500Gb system disc and 2 1.5Tb drives, one is partitioned specifically for my radio music system as that requires certain drive letters to be in use. I had a third 1.5Tb drive in an external caddy, which has broken. I used to use that for transferring systems between home and the radio studio, hence it being a 'loose' drive.
As it's not being transported any more I installed it. Giving me a whopping 5Tb of drive space in total. I have much more than that in music files, backed up to DVD's mainly. My intention was to clean up the third drive and start to fill it up with more music. For those who are techie minded, all 4 SATA ports on the motherboard were in use, the DVD drive is SATA too. So, I used a USB HD adaptor and connected it that way, worked first time, no problems into a USB 2.0 port. I've unplugged the USB for now, while I was restoring the system, but will plug it back in on next reboot.
We have a second PC, and old one running Windows XP, and a couple of laptops kicking about so I can get back on the Internet, I just don't like using the laptop as I am forever brushing over the touchpad with my hand and messing up my typing!
Glary is running in the background as I type this - one of the tools I'm using to check the system.
Since getting the system back in the early hours, I've had a sleep then been sorting other things out wile my wife is home on her break, then I will be back to the PC this evening. I just check in now and again to see if the scan's I'm doing have finished or need attention.
After much investigation and checking, I've found the potential cause. I have a 'Virtual PC' running Windows XP installed under Windows 7, simply because I have not found a suitable replacement for the aged Outlook Express email software.
I have many email accounts for sites I look after, my own domains, odd Gmail and Hotmail type accounts set up for specific reasons and about 12 years of archived mail.
Yes, it's big. I could not find a way to move it all into the new-fangled Windows Live Mail and make it work how I wanted it. I really should look at other packages and at least attempt to end my long-running use of Outlook Express.
The Virtual PC mode has it's own disc cleanup and defragmentation - which I had neglected. I got rid of a load of rubbish from the virtual hard drive, temporary files. I do compact the mail folders regularly, and make sure I clean the recycle bin after to regain the space, about 8 Gb in all.
I've now started the defrag going - a sea of red, perhaps the worst I've ever seen. The knock-on effect is that if the Virtual PC suffers loss of speed through needing to maintain fragmented files, it drags the overall performance down to compensate.
Heads up for anyone doing a similar thing, although it would only be tech heads who would set this type of thing up - because we can
Once the defrag ends I'll reboot and see how it performs.
I learned to program on a ZX81, which was black and white, but have a feeling you mean a ZX Spectrum 48K - the 48 was the amount of memory it had. The ZX81 I had came with just 1Mb, with an optional 16Kb RAM pack that you had to put elastic bands round to stop it wobbling and losing it's connection!
Back in those days, the early 80's, computer programmers didn't just sit at a desk and write software. They had to be able to install the equipment, do the cabling, solder connectors... The computer system I worked on was hard wired, each terminal had it's own socket on the back of the massive frame and had to have a wire from the computer room to it. They were just terminals, not PC's, just a screen and keyboard, no monitor, no sound...
If you've seen the old films with the big tape machines and boxes that look like washing machines - they were the hard discs. I think they were only about 28Kb each and very fragile.
The Spectrum was actually more powerful and had a heck of a lot more memory than the mainframe I programmed for a living.
I still have an Acorn Electron, with the cassette player and cassettes. I skipped the Spectrum after the ZX81 as I wanted a 'real' keyboard but couldn't afford a BBC. I wrote something for the Electron that I used on my disco's back then, I could put the top 20 chart on the screens in the pub in big letters, and add messages about pub promotions or even break into it 'live' to add a birthday message or something.
Binary was easy - just 0 and 1, can't go wrong when the value is there in front of you - and you realise that 1000 is actually only 8 in real money.
Or did you mean BASIC - the programming language? I still use it for small programs for myself, either in MS Visual Basic or VBA in MS Word, which is more or less the same
I borrowed some code from a magazine program that did really big letters on the Electron. I changed it to use different base graphics so the words were clearer and not as 'gamey' as the original. I added colour changes and some routines to black out the screen, build the page, then display it - in reality just a second or so, but really effective when a whole page appeared, instead of seeing it being built in graphics.
By making it a callable routine I could pass strings of text to it and they'd scroll up, so I could show the top 20 - great on a Sunday night when I start the disco at 8 and the new chart had only been on at 7.
Back then I did a video disco, MTV had just started and we had 'Music Box' during the night on ITV too, so I recorded hours of this stuff. I then spent most of Saturday editing it all between two VHS machines to produce a 3 hour tape of current hits and classics, which was my 'show' for that night.
If, as happened, someone made a request I had a suitcase full of tapes, all pre-set to popular tracks, ready to play. I could stop the main tape, let the Electron display something on the screens instead, pop the requested track in and be ready to play in less than a minute. I'd swap back to the pre-set show after the request.
You can imagine that back then it was well ahead of it's time to be doing that sort of thing. I remember Michael Jackson's 'The Way You Make Me Feel' being on MTV for the first time at 7.15 one Tuesday night, and I was playing the video in the pub at 8pm when I started
Then, some kid undercut me at the pub and took over the disco nights, a new manager trying to save money...
Hi Andrea - and that was a very good reason for me leaving Internet Explorer behind and moving to Google Chrome instead. Actually, I moved some time ago, when I was still on XP, before Windows 7 came along, as it was a much better browser to use.
I have two versions of Chrome installed, the latest Beta release is the one I use daily and I also have the Canary release, as I've had some issues with graphics and was doing a lot of testing about a year ago.
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Glary is running in the background as I type this - one of the tools I'm using to check the system. 
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