Hi
I don't know which category to post this in as I don't know what's causing the problem: could be malware, lack of RAM, operating system or just a rubbish computer?
My Mum is having problems with her Acer Laptop and I am trying to help. She is a very low skilled user and pretty computer illiterate. She uses it for basic web browsing and email. I am a Mac owner operator so I am in the dark here.
The laptop is a Acer Aspire 7110 Series, about 4/5 years old but has very little use. It has always been sluggish but run fine. It has 512MB RAM.
Problem 1: Recently she started getting an error message saying that Explorer would have to close down the computer in XX mins. It did. Several times.
I took it home and did a bit of research online. As a result I did the following;
I deleted Norton and MaCafee antivirus which were both years out of date.
Installed Malware Bytes and ran it - found nothing
Installed Comodo Firewall
Installed AdAware
SpyBot was on it so I updated it.
I installed CNet tech Tracker and updated all the out of date software
I deleted all the software she does not use (a lot of which she had got by accident - clicking on windows which ask her to CLICK HERE)
I tried to stop Microsoft firewall operating but not sure if I succeeded (so it does not clash with Comodo)
I de-fragmented the hard drive
Deleted all the temporary files
I have ordered an extra 1GB of Crucial memory but am waiting for it to arrive.
I fixed problem 1 as she no longer gets the error message which I thought might be Malware.
Problem 2: Now it is taking 40/50 mins to fully boot up so I have caused some problem - could there be incompatibility problems between the different antivirus software? I know that 4 pieces of software seems too many but I'm not sure which does what exactly so tried to cover all the bases.
Can someone tell me what the problem might be (of course it might be me!:p ) so I can decide where to post this?
I don't know which category to post this in as I don't know what's causing the problem: could be malware, lack of RAM, operating system or just a rubbish computer?
My Mum is having problems with her Acer Laptop and I am trying to help. She is a very low skilled user and pretty computer illiterate. She uses it for basic web browsing and email. I am a Mac owner operator so I am in the dark here.
The laptop is a Acer Aspire 7110 Series, about 4/5 years old but has very little use. It has always been sluggish but run fine. It has 512MB RAM.
Problem 1: Recently she started getting an error message saying that Explorer would have to close down the computer in XX mins. It did. Several times.
I took it home and did a bit of research online. As a result I did the following;
I deleted Norton and MaCafee antivirus which were both years out of date.
Installed Malware Bytes and ran it - found nothing
Installed Comodo Firewall
Installed AdAware
SpyBot was on it so I updated it.
I installed CNet tech Tracker and updated all the out of date software
I deleted all the software she does not use (a lot of which she had got by accident - clicking on windows which ask her to CLICK HERE)
I tried to stop Microsoft firewall operating but not sure if I succeeded (so it does not clash with Comodo)
I de-fragmented the hard drive
Deleted all the temporary files
I have ordered an extra 1GB of Crucial memory but am waiting for it to arrive.
I fixed problem 1 as she no longer gets the error message which I thought might be Malware.
Problem 2: Now it is taking 40/50 mins to fully boot up so I have caused some problem - could there be incompatibility problems between the different antivirus software? I know that 4 pieces of software seems too many but I'm not sure which does what exactly so tried to cover all the bases.
Can someone tell me what the problem might be (of course it might be me!:p ) so I can decide where to post this?