Replies

Greg,
Hello…I have no experience with MSE.. I do with Norton Internet Security 2012 and Malwarebytes Pro…I have use these both as a primary security paradigm for years with no MS stuff at all (patches or Updates )..Norton is completely customizable, almost to a fault… On XP, Vista and “7” (mix of 32 and 64 ) so far no “Problemo” … In my world you get what you pay for …..:cheers: Regards Fred

Fred,

Thanks for the reply but you couldnt PAY me to put Nortons on my computer. At a rate constantly over 81% it doesnt find viruses in my testing, even some it was supposed to know. I realise they have cut some of the sloppy coding out but it still didnt help them in readily identifying viruses. In fact even AVG constantly finds them prior to Nortons.

Note that like Mac lovers, I realise there are Nortons lovers and I really appreciate them where I am. Without them I wouldnt have anywhere near the income I have delousing computers so really I have nothing actually AGAINST Symantec really.

I second Revo. I especially urge you to download the TRIAL PAID FOR version and then go to your c:Program Files dir and look for leftover entries in there of things you know you have uninstalled then copy the c:ProgramFilesProgram-to-be-removed” to “Forced Uninstall” in Revo Pro and see what happens. I clean many computers that way and in fact am about to buy the product myself. I am not even touching on trawling the registry for anything left there not appearing in Program Files but that is fun on a long cold night (;-}). Lastly, though this isnt a cleanup tool, once you have done that (or preferably the other way around) run Malwarebytes Anti Malware. If it finds something it also speeds the system up after removal, albeit probably unintentionally.

Did you ever buy a new laptop with Nortons or Mcafee installed and not want them so uninstalled to put your favourite on? Use Revo Forced uninstall and it will surprise you what was left behind. Oh and for Avast and some other well known free and paid AV programs, there is nothing like Revo to get rid of the rubbish blocking the computer if it gets infected with those AVs on it. They can cause all sorts of merry hell with the system as Zone Alarm will even if uninstalled when nothing was wrong with the computer. Revo kills it completely (paid for version or trial of same with Forced Uninstall).

Greg.

Fred,

Thanks for that info but that has never been a real problem. What *IS* a real problem is this:

Under Win XP, let us say you have a damaged Windows that wont even boot into Windows or possibly you have moved the XP itself to newer hardware that is completely different to the old HAL. In a lot of cases if you moved it (not all cases) the XP wont boot. So, you get a like disk (eg, Home or Pro, OEM or upgrade, whatever) and you boot from it and act like you are going to do a new install, at which point you get a “repair” option which then goes through and makes things right for the machine to boot (to cut it down to a nutshell). In Win Vista and 7 you cant. You cannot, to my knowledge, move Win 7 from, say, an old C2D using machine to an I7 using machine as is unless you use third party software that ignores HAL and allows you to then fix that up later (I am thinking of the newer offerings from Aronis in their True Image line here for example). THAT is the large problem that needs to be resolved – that MS give us the ability to boot off a Vista or Win 7 DVD and do a repair install. It just isnt possible as you have to be IN Windows to do that – or can someone tell me how if I am wrong?

Thanks for reading this.

Greg.

The best way to ensure that image restoration and creation is done in a timely maner is to separate out as much of your user data as possible from the operating system.

Wrong. The best way to back up is to decide what is important and your statement doesnt even begin to address that. What is important for “Mr. Joe Averageuser” may well be only his pictures if he is a Gmailer (or whatever free online email account) and his music. In that case back those up but not just to one spot. In real estate they say “location, location, location” and in I.T. it ttranslates as “backup, backup backup” because no matter how nicely you treat something electronic, sometimes it may make up its own mind and commit “Electronicide” on you just after your C drive bit the dust and now you have only 2 backups left. One may have been overwritten by your S.O. for all you know. Keep 3. It is more costly but then how much do your beloved memories MEAN to you?

And the best way to accomplish that would be to keep a well organized file system with key folders located off the primary operating system partition. Many folders in
windows 7 can be moved to other locations appart from the operating system. Partitions are good, but extra internal drives are better.

Not necessarily wrong but dicey diced out info. I see a lot of people with desktop machines and having either 2 internal drives or even one internal and one USB connected and they decide that their 500gig has only 200gig left free and is therefore almost full (dont argue with the logic. When they are customers, smile and look concerned!) so they buy an external USB or have their internal extra HD and they start installing new programs to that drive rather than moving their loved pictures to the exttra drive or their music to it. So they now have a C drive, a D for CD/DVD and an E for their internal drive and then they decide to make E their virtual memory store and E goes belly up and along with that, a lot of their installation of needed programs and maybe even their entire installtion. Oh sure, the loved data may be there but if they arent I.T. minded, it may as well not be. So, music and pics on a drive getting too full for you and you have an extra drive? Good, shove it there but remember about backing up, too. No good moving it off C drive because viruses may erase it (inserted space so everyone cowers in fear right here) yet not having backups. If it exists in one space only it may as well exist on the point of Occam’s Razor!

Having many MB’s worth of photos, music, and documents scattered about the operating system and difficult to locate is inefficient and wastefull. Microsoft’s solution was to create libraries, but this unfortunately, does little to separate data from the operating system and thus reduce the size if image creation.

Again that depends on the user’s needs. A graphic artist may well find it useful to keep online backups on their own domain but keep the working data on C drive only. The NYSE may think entirely different and Joe the Mechanic may be somewhere in the middle of that. You have to ask the user about their use of the machine before you just decide that.

The concept of data backup goes far beyond just drive images and hard copy backups to external drives. A well organized file system negates the need for complicated search engines and resource hungry indexing, even system restore imo. With a well organized file system you will come to know exactly where your documents & files are located and be in a position to easily back them up independant of imaging.

Apple and oranges. Organissed or not, a file system which suddenly dies or just a physical error that is beyond the abilities of anyone outside of a hard drive lab to retrieve is entirely useless. You need a backup of your “cant lose that” data or if you are like me and would prefer to spend time doing interesting things than putting a new hard drive in, installing Windows, activating Windows, updating Windows, installing the antivirus, updaing the antivirus. Installing the favoured email program and trying to remember the username and password for all 27 email accounts you currently have (and yes, I have 27 of them for myself on my own domain for various reasons) then the bookmarks and the usernames and passwords that go with the subscriptions not to mention……sorry I phased out with boredom. If you want easy, you image your C drive to some other drive. You keep at least 3 images (depends on hard drive space on that other drive) and when C drive unexpectedly karks it, you replace it if needed or if it is physically OK just boot off your CD (in the case of True Image) and wait 40 minutes for everything to be back the way you like it. Oh and 40 minutes was on an old C2D getting the data back out of about 63gigs of compressed image.

So am I boring the reader here? let me put it easily – if you are diametrically opposed to hard work and would rather do SMART work so you can get on with your daily drama you call life, Image backups are what you want. Anything else is like trying to unpick a ship’s hawser without breaking any strands!

As far as I am concerned, operating system images of the primary drive are only a means of quickly restoring the os in the event of an os failure.

I am really glad you said it was YOUR opinion. case in point – a mining industry supplier customer of mine uses heavy electrical equipment in their work. When saving a Word doc, the office manager’s computer which didnt have a UPS attached (and after that dramatic example, they decided I was right and got me to put them in on all machines) had the power cut by a blown fuse due to heavy equipment. When they fixed the mains fuse and the power came back, she had a nice doorstop in front of her but not a working computer. I had previously put that scenario to them and installed True Image to image every machine they had, late at night and save the images on an external drive attached to their server. So I get there, insert a boot CD for True Image and having brought the external drive to that machine, told the machine to go get that image back which was done every night. All data was back excepting what had been done that day (fortunately not a lot lost) and that took about 40 minutes. The office manager had some important docs from a day or so before stored in My Documents and of course they came back, too, so they saw the value in the outlay I insisted they pay for backup. They also saw the value in agreeing to UPS units after that, too but you know what they say about the gate being open and the horse and all….

Image backups are not always entirely useful for a home user but then again it depends on the home user. My own father in law is elderly and sick and he doesnt have to worry about losing data because he is on those same backups. I cant afford the downtime so I have them. Many businesses cant afford downtime so need image backups and oh, yes, you could talk to me about raid setups etc but I have seen the main drive in a mirror go down and write spurious crap and that get mirrrored to the mirror meaning the lot went down. I always insist on image backups. If a virus got in yesterday and wiped out everything 24 hours later, at least you have either the virus laden image backup or the one from the day before the virus to choose from. If you load the older one and pick out data from the virus laden one, you are better off than no image at all.

Setting up you computer in such a way that renders the operating system as unimportant and expendable also goes a long way in dealing with security threats like viruses and malware.

Tell that to banks, stock exchanges, medical places, tax agents…… and the list goes on. Downtime is one of the largest, if not THE largest, expense for many businesses. Limiting downtime is one source of income for I.T. people and limiting it means mirrors or images depending on the business’s perceived needs.

In my not so humble opinion, too many people with absolutely no or limited computer skills are fumbling around trying to find solutions to rid themselves of some irrelevant infection when it is completely unnecessary.

20 to 30 minutes of computer downtime for an image restoration is all that should ever be needed in 99% of all situations.

Again you dont take into account the needs of the user. Most companies and most users at home would prefer to keep all their loved settings as is. That is why you will find, in a lot of places, that the I.T. staff deploying a new machine image it and demand the user keep important stuff on the server or another HD possibly within the shell of the desktop machine itself and they periodically restore that image even if there is nothing going wrong with the machine. Why? Infections get in, users fiddle around, Windows aint perfect. Going back to the image with all setting installed as at the day the machine was deployed just means that all those problems go in short order. Me, I prefer to get rid of the virus. Unless the virus is not known right now (eg, a real new one) then I can get rid of it in under an hour. I tell the user that and let the company or user (whichever is the one with the say in this matter) tell me what they want done. Invariably it is “get rid of the virus”. It isnt as if it is hard, after all. However, if it is a newbie, I do admit it may well take a lot longer and I do run across new viruses more often than you would think. Once you have decided it must be a new virus, finding it is also dead easy but then it may run into 2 hours to fix it if that is the case. Most companies and home users STILL choose to get rid of it rather than format/reinstall.

So what have we learned here by me butting in? Simple- like beauty, the machine’s data priority is in the eye of the beholder – or user in this case. Some choose format/reinstall but most choose “get rid of it”. So dont assume – ask!

Greg.

After logging in I receive the dreaded “Windows detected a hard disk problem” and as luck would have it, it is the C: drive which contains the operating system. Although I can use the system, I periodically get the “Windows detected a hard disk problem” message and everything is running real slow.

I have another identical drive D: installed on the computer that contains my user data (already backed up). What can I do to move the operating system to the other drive before the C drive dies entirely.

What I have attempted so far. Using Norton Ghost 15.0 I copied my C: drive to my D: drive using options

Copy My Hard Drive (Copy all existing files, programs, and settings from one hard drive to another)
Check source for file system errors
Check destination for file system errors
Set drive active
Copy MBR

Steve

First off, I have been doing PC repair for 10 years. In that time I have learned that a Symantec product is not a good product, excepting their uninstallers which I recommend to everyone.

I have been using Acronis True Image to deploy images of the current installation to other drives meant for the same machine without a problem. You can use it to put XP to different machines if you want with some fiddling about but not Vist or Win 7 without the Extras you can buy (like Universal Restore) from them. I trust their products as they always work. One problem you will face when backing up using True Image is that if the drive has faults on it already, the backup will fail. So, before you do a backup using it (and you CAN download a trial that will allow you to do it), you need to, assuming you cant just attach the drive to another computer, open My Computer (or Computer depending on your OS) and then right click on C and select Propterties, go to Tools and Check Disk and tick both boxes and start it. At this point it will say it cant do it and ask to schedule for next boot. Say YES and reboot it, let the check finish and then do the backup to an external drive.

After that is done, go into Start (depending on OS the word START may not be there) then All Programs and Acronis then Acronis True Image Home then Tools and Utilities and choose to make Bootable Media which is basically a CD to boot from. Now shut the machine down, take out the original drive and put the new one in while keeping that CD you made in the drive. Turn the machine on and it will boot from the CD. Choose Restore and point it to the spot on the external drive where the image is that you made for backup purposes above. Tell it to restore that.

Time passes and eventually it finishes. You reboot and extract the CD and it boots normally into Windows. At this point, go into My Computer (or Computer) and check the size available on your drive is the right size according to the new hard drive and not the old size of the old one. If you have a bigger drive you may find it actually doesnt allocate part of the drive. All you have to do is use Windows own tools to extend the drive to fully use the space and you are done.

One last thing – problems on your hard drive may JUST be physical sector errors. People dont understand that when a laptop with a normal hard drive is running, you have a spinning disk so you do NOT turn it with force to a different orientation and you avoid things like tucking it under your arm unless it is asleep or off and the drive not spinning. The Law of Angular Momentum applies to hard drisk drives that spin. That means that when you savagely turn the orientation of a laptop from level to something else, the spinning disk doesnt immediately turn. It resists a different orientation. This CAN lead to damage and has, many times, that I have had to repair. A lot of the time a simple disk check as I described above fixes everything but not all the time. If you DO put another drive in, make sure the new drive gets treated softly. You wouldnt grab your desktop computer, while running and change its orientation from a tower standing up to laying on it’s side, quickly and expect it to be OK every single time you do that, right? Laptops are the same.

Greg.

Hello:

I hear long shut down times are not a good sign. What is considered a long shutdown time versus a normal shutdown time? I am running Win 7 Ultimate, 500 GB hard drive, 4 GB RAM, M68MT-D3 GIGABYTE mother board. My shut down time can be as short as 17 seconds to as long as 93 seconds. Would that range be considered normal?

Glenn

If you go to the start button and in the box at the bottom of it (like a RUN area command) you type shutdown /f /p and time the shutdown, does it take less time to shut down and if so by how much? Drivers can sometimes be the reason things dont close down immediately and so can antivirus programs. In the end, using that command is sometimes preferable if you are otherwise busy.

Greg.

I bought a copy of the 3-pc family pack to install on a windows xp pc with an 80gb “C” drive and a 300GB “D” drive that is the secondary. Now, my spouse wants to make the larger drive the primary drive and the smaller drive the secondary drive which is a bit of a dilemma because I only have the upgrade media.

I realize I will have to install XP to the larger drive so that there is a licensed copy of Windows on the drive so I can use the upgrade media to upgrade to Win7. My question is how extensive does that win XP install have to be? Service packs, updates or just the bare minimum. TIA

Diane

Firstly, you dont need to “install XP” at all. Buy Acronis True Image Home, make an image backup of C drive to a protected storage area on the same drive then tell the program to restore that image to the larger drive. Now swap the drives about and format the 80gig. Everything you had on that original 80gig will have gone to the new one, warts and all, no matter what it was, email, passwords, you name it.

Secondly, you dont UPGRADE to win 7 from XP. You download and install Windows Easy transfer from Microsoft’s site and run it which will get all your important stuff and store it as a file on another drive. Then, you clean install Windows 7 and run the inbuilt Windows Easy Transfer from there and tell it to load the saved stuff from that file and it puts everything of value back in place on the new Win 7. It doesnt install programs such as Microsoft Office but it DOES save the things such as email addresses and passwords should you have used the full Outlook on XP and have it installed on your new Win 7 prior to having imported the XP data. I build new machines all the time and for those going from XP directly to Win 7 I do this all the time and it works out fine. The only way you can UPGRADE to win 7 is from Vista. Depending on how your Vista is running, it isnt always worth it anyway. A clean install is usually better.

Greg.

I bought a copy of the 3-pc family pack to install on a windows xp pc with an 80gb “C” drive and a 300GB “D” drive that is the secondary. Now, my spouse wants to make the larger drive the primary drive and the smaller drive the secondary drive which is a bit of a dilemma because I only have the upgrade media.

I realize I will have to install XP to the larger drive so that there is a licensed copy of Windows on the drive so I can use the upgrade media to upgrade to Win7. My question is how extensive does that win XP install have to be? Service packs, updates or just the bare minimum. TIA

Diane

Firstly, you dont need to INSTALL XP at all. You can buy Acronis True Image Home and do an image backup of C drive to a protected storage area on the same drive then tell True Image to restore that exact thing to the bigger drive then swap them about and boot off the bigger drive and format the old C drive. You lose nothing, all passwords, favourites, email, you name it will be on the larger drive as it was at the time of the backup.

Secondly, you dont UPGRADE to win 7 from XP. You download and install Windows Easy transfer from Microsoft’s site and run it which will get all your important stuff and store it as a file on another drive. Then, you clean install Windows 7 and run the inbuilt Windows Easy Transfer from there and tell it to load the saved stuff from that file and it puts everything of value back in place on the new Win 7. It doesnt install programs such as Microsoft Office but it DOES save the things such as email addresses and passwords should you have used the full Outlook on XP and have it installed on your new Win 7 prior to having imported the XP data. I build new machines all the time and for those going from XP directly to Win 7 I do this all the time and it works out fine. The only way you can UPGRADE to win 7 is from Vista. Depending on how your Vista is running, it isnt always worth it anyway. A clean install is usually better.

I bought a copy of the 3-pc family pack to install on a windows xp pc with an 80gb “C” drive and a 300GB “D” drive that is the secondary. Now, my spouse wants to make the larger drive the primary drive and the smaller drive the secondary drive which is a bit of a dilemma because I only have the upgrade media.

I realize I will have to install XP to the larger drive so that there is a licensed copy of Windows on the drive so I can use the upgrade media to upgrade to Win7. My question is how extensive does that win XP install have to be? Service packs, updates or just the bare minimum. TIA

Diane

First off, you can buy Acronis True Image Home version, make an image backup of C to a protected zone on the same drive then tell the same program to put that image as a complete copy on the other drive. You dont have to “install xp” at all.

Secondly, you dont UPGRADE to win 7 from XP. You download and install Windows Easy transfer from Microsoft’s site and run it which will get all your important stuff and store it as a file on another drive. Then, you clean install Windows 7 and run the inbuilt Windows Easy Transfer from there and tell it to load the saved stuff from that file and it puts everything of value back in place on the new Win 7. It doesnt install programs such as Microsoft Office but it DOES save the things such as email addresses and passwords should you have used the full Outlook on XP and have it installed on your new Win 7 prior to having imported the XP data. I build new machines all the time and for those going from XP directly to Win 7 I do this all the time and it works out fine. The only way you can UPGRADE to win 7 is from Vista. Depending on how your Vista is running, it isnt always worth it anyway. A clean install is usually better.

Greg.

I just ordered a new computer with Win 7 and McAfee security installed. I would like to put a software utility kit together to keep the system running relatively smooth. People have recommended products such as CCleaner, Malwarebytes, Ad-aware, etc. I will be new to Win 7 and McAfee (always used Norton). Any suggestions?

Dont auto start Adaware. While it can be adequate, it sure slows things down. So only start it when you need to use it. Ccleaner, Defraggler, Mbam and definitely not Nortons or Mcafee. I always have to clean machines using those though Mcafee is definitely better than Nortons. As to which antivirus, that is one of those “in the eye of the beholder” questions. You will get more opinions than you will ever get dollars in your life! All I can say is ask someone you absolutely trust on the subject and go by their advice. I could TELL you use free AVG because I am constantly fighting viruses daily and it comes out second best to Sophos right now but that may be different in six months (Kaspersky was better than AVG for a very short time and isnt any longer) but it also depends on what is worth it for the money you pay. Sophos, for example, is around A$200 but gives you 3 licences for that. If you have 3 computers it is worth it. If you dont, it isnt.

Having said that, if you go near free music download places or porn sites, it doesnt matter what you use, you WILL be infected.

What is also JUST as important in that toolkit is a brush akin to what men in the 40s used to lather soap with to put on their faces so as to shave. You need it to push the dust out of your cpu fan before sicking the vacuum sticky beak nozzle on it when it gets dusty if you dont physically wish to remove the fan and play about with it in order to clean it. Lastly, keep netplwiz in mind. If your computer is only in use by you and no-one else can get to it, you can use that command to help you get out of typing in a password each time you logon.

Sorry – a PS – you NEED an external drive and Acronis True Image Home version. You make an image backup to the external drive that can be searched if you accidentally permanently delete something you didnt want to lose or can also be used to bring back everything the way it was at the last backup, passwords, favourites, you name it if, say, the hard drive bites the dust and you have to put a new one in. Saves you anguish and allows your hair to stay on your scalp and not be ripped out in shreds and be sitting on the floor!

Greg.

I have searched this and it seems to be a problem
I can be working away and it will mysteriously drop the internet connection not the network connection, other pc’s on the same network using XP do not suffer from this, the icon in the taskbar will change to the yellow warning sign then change back later with no input. I have tried updating to factory drivers, disabling power saving for the adapter, changing cables, disabling IPV6,
Does anyone else have some idea’s ?

Your router can be why. What sort is it and how many connections to the net from your network does it support? How many connections can be active at once if all computers are online and in use?

Greg.

I’m installing Win 7 on a Dell Dimension E520 that is equipped with a built-in Intel 82562V 10/100 NIC. I’ve experienced the same problem with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Win 7. I’ve installed the latest driver from Intel for each version.

The problem is a random slowdown/stop of all network traffic. The system will work fine for hours, then suddenly a download stops right in the middle. The only solution seems to be rebooting. After a reboot it will probably be fine and sometimes (like tonight) I can go several hours and never have a problem.

This problem also occurred in the 32 bit version when I installed a 3Com 3c905 NIC and disabled the onboard Intel NIC. So I’m really puzzled and the event logs contain no entries that provide a clue.

How can I pin down if this is a hardware problem (and what component it is) or if it is a Windows problem?

I know you are saying this is a network problem – and yes it probably is related to a NIC or ethernet cable with intermittent and hard to diagnose problems – but I wouldnt go there first after reading what you have said. I would be looking at possible hard drive issues. Can you slave the C drive to another computer and do a chkdsk /r on it that way? If not go into Computer and right click on C drive, go to Properties then Tools and do a disk check making sure each box is ticked. When it says it has to schedule for next reboot, say yes and reboot straight away and let it check. The reason I say to slave it to another computer is that if you arent watching at the right 10 seconds if you dont slave it, you dont get to see the report straight away where slaving it, you can see it as soon as it is finished and you notice that it has done so.

I would also be looking at overheating of the drive or CPU and also at dud ram sticks. You might also check your virtual memory is set adequately.

Lastly, if all the above is OK, start the machine in safe mode with networking and download something large. Does it happen then? If not then it could be a Windows or infection issue. If it DOES happen then and all hardware issues above have been checked, then start looking for the culprit being on another machine or device connected to the network. Spurious rubbish from a malfunctioning NIC elsewhere on the network CAN lead to this happening if the network overloads and for some reason that confuses your computer. Personally, I am leaning towards the hard drive right now.

Greg.

Wow. it actually rebooted and let me login.

Not sure what the issue was nor what it fixed, What all should I check on this laptop now that it’s up and running?

Why this normally happens is that you have had a locked (by bad luck or nasty of some sort) boot block or a damaged boot block. Either way, chkdsk /r will fix it if it isnt completely stuffed. If this happens again it is better to pull the drive from the computer and attach it to a working one then let that computer’s disk check do a thorough check on it. That may seem more messy to you but it normally saves many hours of trying things that dont work.

Greg.

Ok, heres the latest.

I tried changing the position on the switch…..absolutely no difference.

I had to wait a week to get a network card from New Egg since no one local had PCI-e 1x cards! Everything in the local store caters to wireless!

I installed the card yesterday and so far have had no problems with freezing.

That said though; when I disabled my internal LAN 2 days ago through the Windows interface, it still froze at some point during the night! So I’m really hoping that this add-in card will correct things, since the internal LAN gets disabled at the BIOS level instead.

One small thing of which you should be aware – depending on how old the computer actually is and what caused the onboard networking port to go haywire, you may have a dud motherboard. If a new NIC card makes it all work well and if still under warranty, I’d be replacing the whole motherboard were I you. See, where I live, lightning over Summer is a constant worry and some people seem to think that though THEY wouldnt be on a landline in a thunder storm, it is quite OK to have their modem online in one. Thus, if connected with an ethernet cable, they can – and often DO – get a zap up the phone line that kills the modem more than not (curiously, sometimes NOT) and the networking port. Having done that, even WITH a new NIC put in, the computer invariably goes legs up in short order, not even making 12 months from initial problem. If yours wasnt caused by a zap up the phone line, I would say it came faulty and where the is one gremlin, there are usually others.

Greg.

When I start up XP SP3, it automatically tries to find a connection to a network that is no longer relevant (an intranet at a workplace where I formerly did volunteer work). I can log in as a local user, but I’d rather get rid of that network profile. When I log off, it takes ages for the computer to decide that there is no network to synchronize to.
Is there a way to delete that process at startup? Many thanks.

I may be wrong as I dont have enough info but it sounds to me like your machine is attempting to logon to a DOMAIN. You can check – and if so, fix – this easily by downloading Tweakui for XP and installing it then going to the Logon then Auto Logon option. In there could be the domain name that your place used. Remove it from there and OK it and all is fixed.

You may also have a networked drive assigned a letter in your computer. Open My Computer and if that is the case there will be one, or more, under that saying they arent connected. If this is so, go to the Tools menu and choose to disconnect any Network drive under “Disconnect Network drive” there.

If that doesnt help, can you be more specific as to what is being printed on screen when the problem is occurring please? It may well be a program in Startup that wants to connect with something else on the old network that is no longer there and you either alter that behaviour or if you dont need that program, uninstall it.

Greg.