HP Vista Laptop problem for the real PC geeks!

[Alaskan89XJ]

LOL.., I am no geek, lol.., sometimes I wish I were in order to maximize the uses that a laptop PC can offer..; BUT, I'd agree with the 'clean wipe' if'in I got into such trouble.., BUT.., not yet. BTW: I use a 2008 model year JHL9026,(no longer offered)--Micro Express, T9400, 4 ram, with Phoenix drivers, clean by Micro Ex.;
no b.s. associated factory add-on programs version of Vista 64bit, SP1, (Won't upgrade to SP2 for any reason, and am annoyed whenever M.S. asks me to download that crap which will cause more problems, as I have read), Vista I have has had no problems, knock-on-wood. Norton, and SysMech, and OPERA browser as default. Not a single major problem in several years other than my being a techno-peasant not understanding wtf I am doing.., i.e., as only able to obtain 'dial-up', the downloading of various programs often result in having some machine language broken, hence me thinking it was my machine.., hence making me think I should just go back and obtain OS shadow copies, etc! Now that I know better, I just surf on dial-up, and take the laptop to town in order to plug into high speed connections for downloading programs, watching vids, etc.

Seems you solved your problems with the expertise you have gained over the years. Me, I would not be able to do all of that, so I would opt for wiping the system and going Win 7.., lol, I think... OR> get a new machine... maybe like the NBL5100 machine, or higher. Not sure about 7200 rpm drives, and the old notions that such spin rates cause faster wear, overheating issues, etc., guess the bugs are all worked out though...

Now if I could get the spin rate on my XJ just right, I''d be a happier camper.:roll:

 

[Ecomike]

LOL.., I am no geek, lol.., sometimes I wish I were in order to maximize the uses that a laptop PC can offer..; BUT, I'd agree with the 'clean wipe' if'in I got into such trouble.., BUT.., not yet. BTW: I use a 2008 model year JHL9026,(no longer offered)--Micro Express, T9400, 4 ram, with Phoenix drivers, clean by Micro Ex.;
no b.s. associated factory add-on programs version of Vista 64bit, SP1, (Won't upgrade to SP2 for any reason, and am annoyed whenever M.S. asks me to download that crap which will cause more problems, as I have read), Vista I have has had no problems, knock-on-wood. Norton, and SysMech, and OPERA browser as default. Not a single major problem in several years other than my being a techno-peasant not understanding wtf I am doing.., i.e., as only able to obtain 'dial-up', the downloading of various programs often result in having some machine language broken, hence me thinking it was my machine.., hence making me think I should just go back and obtain OS shadow copies, etc! Now that I know better, I just surf on dial-up, and take the laptop to town in order to plug into high speed connections for downloading programs, watching vids, etc.

Seems you solved your problems with the expertise you have gained over the years. Me, I would not be able to do all of that, so I would opt for wiping the system and going Win 7.., lol, I think... OR> get a new machine... maybe like the NBL5100 machine, or higher. Not sure about 7200 rpm drives, and the old notions that such spin rates cause faster wear, overheating issues, etc., guess the bugs are all worked out though...

Now if I could get the spin rate on my XJ just right, I''d be a happier camper.:roll:

Well I have been around computers since the 1960's. My father patented and build a specialty computer in the mid 1960's, TM'd the Talematic (I have the last surviving one, plan to donate it to the Smithsonian some day). It was designed for contractors to speed job estimates by using a counter pen and conversion scales to calculated length of runs, like pipe, and cost the job. I ran the old IBM tape machines during the summer for him, the ones that used 2400 (IIRC) resistors on a rotary drum for 2400 bits of memory. Took 24 hours of warm up time to get the memory stable!

I took 2 semesters of Fortran 77 in 1991-2, writing chemical engineering program code that had to work perfectly, and we only had 7 days from the minute the program reguirments were released to write the program from scratch and submit working programs to Unix server at the University. There were over 300 students in that class, and only 3 of us passed that semester!!! It was a weed out class for engineering students.

My father wrote programs directly in assembly (object code IIRC) language a lost art now I think!!! I still have his antique SWT-80 computer made by a company from San Antonio ( South West Tech) that was state of the art in 1980. It used two 8" floppy hard drives for memory (It pre dates the first 10 MB HD era!!).

Anyway, I was taught and learned how to fix computers at the elementary level going back to the 60's. I even still have all my father's and brother's (Both deceased now), old WWII army air corp surplus radio gear, and Ham radio gear spanning the 40's to 70's. Maybe that is why I still tool around with >25 Yr Old jeeps! I was building PC networks from scratch in 1999 during the Y2K boom. So it is not that hard for me to jump into something new to me, like Vista, and debug it from the back side, with all the tools around now days.

I have been reasonably impressed with Vista, but my first Vista computer is barely 12 months old. My son's Vista is about 3 years old now, and worked perfectly till about 5 months ago. I know early adopters of Vista had nightmares. But that is typical of MS Operating systems in the early release days. My daughters is about 7 months old running Win 7, with no problems.

I still have a windows 3.1 machine I built in 1999, and connected to a 1980 gas chromatograph for data acquisition for my R&D work.

Back to the Vista topic, Last night I cleaned out about 1 GB of junk files in the C:\windows\temp\ folder. The windows disk clean up tools don't seem to clean out that area.

I have yet to try Sniggs suggestions. Probably will run the two tools he suggested next, to be sure I got everything, as they are highly recommended across the internet.

But, long story short, the fast easy way, like trading my 1985 jeep in for a new Prius (The clean, wipe and start over method), just is not my way of solving problems.:lecture: It seems to be the only way the new generations seem to know how to fix things?

I had hoped for deeper, more Geek like answers from some of the old timers here, but they did not show up here this week?

I did finally confirm what I thought, specifically that Phoenix Bios message telling me to replace the HD because it is toast, was wrong. It was referring to HD slot number 2 (designated drive 1) which does not exist! And reported nothing about drive 0 which is working.

I probably will buy a new HD, larger, and do a clone this summer in case the HD does fail later.

 

[Ecomike]

definition of insanity: Doing the same thing the same way - expecting different results.

Has it occurred to you that there are a few of us that actually KNOW what we're talking about?

I am done - waste your time.

:flame:

Actually I am not looking for different results! LOL. I am looking for the SAME results :laugh3: I have experienced the last 30 years in my prior same style efforts at debugging problems, I.E., a fixed computer by debugging it the old fashioned way!!! LOL

Except for one or two replies (like yours) I did not see any posts by what I would call real experts! You at least answered one of my original questions, namely recommended tools, so thanks!!!

 

[Ralph]

Actually I am not looking for different results! LOL. I am looking for the SAME results :laugh3: I have experienced the last 30 years in my prior same style efforts at debugging problems, I.E., a fixed computer by debugging it the old fashioned way!!! LOL

Except for one or two replies (like yours) I did not see any posts by what I would call real experts! You at least answered one of my original questions, namely recommended tools, so thanks!!!

Computers are much different than how they were back in the day. They are much more complicated and the hackers that write the code for these viruses are very tricky. It is very difficult to clean every bit of their code from your machine. All it takes is one seed left on some obscure corner of your hard drive to reinfect the whole system. Then there is the risk involved. Just because you think your computer is running properly doesn't mean that something isn't running in the background stealing your important information. The reasons to re-image are that is generally faster and easier to do, you know that your machine is clean and re-imaging mitigates any security concerns. You may not consider me an "expert" but I do run a shop that supports around 500 systems. For the reasons stated above, we do not try to "fix" an infected system. It's not worth our time and its not worth the risk.

 

[Ecomike]

Computers are much different than how they were back in the day. They are much more complicated and the hackers that write the code for these viruses are very tricky. It is very difficult to clean every bit of their code from your machine. All it takes is one seed left on some obscure corner of your hard drive to reinfect the whole system. Then there is the risk involved. Just because you think your computer is running properly doesn't mean that something isn't running in the background stealing your important information. The reasons to re-image are that is generally faster and easier to do, you know that your machine is clean and re-imaging mitigates any security concerns. You may not consider me an "expert" but I do run a shop that supports around 500 systems. For the reasons stated above, we do not try to "fix" an infected system. It's not worth our time and its not worth the risk.

If I had to deal with 500 systems, I would not bother either, I would have clones sitting around ready to swap out too, so good point. Unfortunately the hackers and their tools are so good, and the MS junk (an internet itself) is so weak, that even a new wiped machine is at serious risk as soon as it logs on to the internet to get virus database and Operating system updates, etc, or logs on to an intranet where people are running around loose with USB drives, that I am not sure they are that much safer today, even after a wipe and reinstall. My sister teaches network security at a local college. We chat about the issues..... I use to subscribe to hackers magazine, LOL!

Now that I have my son's drive pretty well cleaned up, to where it boots real fast, and shut down real fast (chkdisk and defrag run in about 5 minutes now with out crashing), and seems to be OK, I am now downloading and running tools like malwarebytes, which already found 7 more bits of junk, remnants, and malware, so Malwarebytes lived up to its reputation. That was a quick scan, now on to the deep scan.

 

[Ralph]

If I had to deal with 500 systems, I would not bother either, I would have clones sitting around ready to swap out too, so good point. Unfortunately the hackers and their tools are so good, and the MS junk (an internet itself) is so weak, that even a new wiped machine is at serious risk as soon as it logs on to the internet to get virus database and Operating system updates, etc, or logs on to an intranet where people are running around loose with USB drives, that I am not sure they are that much safer today, even after a wipe and reinstall. My sister teaches network security at a local college. We chat about the issues..... I use to subscribe to hackers magazine, LOL!

Now that I have my son's drive pretty well cleaned up, to where it boots real fast, and shut down real fast (chkdisk and defrag run in about 5 minutes now with out crashing), and seems to be OK, I am now downloading and running tools like malwarebytes, which already found 7 more bits of junk, remnants, and malware, so Malwarebytes lived up to its reputation. That was a quick scan, now on to the deep scan.

There's a big difference between a clean machine and an infested one. One you have good confidence that it is safe and if you are careful you can keep it that way. An infected machine is always suspect. I wish you the best and hope that all your efforts are worth it.

 

[Ecomike]

There's a big difference between a clean machine and an infested one. One you have good confidence that it is safe and if you are careful you can keep it that way. An infected machine is always suspect. I wish you the best and hope that all your efforts are worth it.

Thanks. Malwarebytes found nothing on my laptop, and no more stuff after the deep scan on my sons.

Running spybot search and destroy now. Then I will run Hijackthis. Avast seems to be very good!

One problem is that people let their guard down over time (the ones that know what they are doing that is, they get too confident, the rest are screwed because they have no clue, LOL).

 

[Ecomike]

Spybot wants to load and run all the time in the back ground, but I already Avast running, so now that I have run Spotbot, should I uninstall it, or will it play nice side by side with Avast?

All spybot found was some routine cookies.

Highjack this did not find anything significant.

 

[Mesh]

After cleaning a machine I usually uninstall all the tools I've used. I haven’t found spybot to be very effective there is no reason to have it running in the background unless it's actively doing something.

If your just looking for things to run on your computer superantispyware is good it comes in a portable version http://www.superantispyware.com/portablescanner.html?tag=SAS_HOMEPAGE Then there's combofix but it's a last resort only to be used when scans come up clean and you know it's still infected http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix

I like the round robin approach of cleaning just don't overdo it.

 

[Ecomike]

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