The swine flu doesn’t bother me in the least. I am too busy trying to beat the viruses out of my little laptop. This is the major reason why I haven’t been blogging much of late– my laptop is so slow and hiccup-y that I keep it turned off. I can check my email with my work computer but I really don’t want to be blogging on it. After much consideration I have come up with an idea:
1. Back up data to my external hard drive
2. Back up data online (Gotta be safe)
3. Revert laptop to factory settings
4. Install latest Service Pack
5. Install BitDefender
6. Stop surfing pr0n. (Just teasing)
My dad says I shouldn’t have to reformat. He says I could clean it all up by running CrapCleaner and PCPitstop– but so far I have had no luck with either program. My one fear is that all my data is somehow infected and once I transfer all my pix/videos/docs/mp3s back, my computer will once again be buggy. Of course there is a possibility that my computer is totally clean and what I think is evidence of a virus is actually VISTA being VISTA. Why didn’t they just call it PISSTA? I swear, this laptop runs worse than my old 386 with the monochrome screen.
Okay, I do have some questions for you guys…
1. Do you keep your computer on all the time or do you turn it off when you are not using it?
2. If you keep it on, do you also keep it connected to the Internet?
3. If you turn the computer off, when does your anti-virus run?
I used to leave it on and it would go into a low energy state and in the middle of the night the anti-virus would run. But at some point the computer stopped going into sleep mode and I could hear the dang CPU cranking at all hours. I started turning it off but then whenever I would turn it on the anti-virus would start and it would suck all the system resources. And I never can seem to remember to just turn it on to let the anti-virus run, especially because I have such a huge hard drive that the thing takes hours! How about some cheese with all this whine?
Why is this so difficult?
laptop is always on and always connected to the internet, antivirus software runs at 3 am every day, i practically sleep with my computer and it doesn’t wake me
I shut it down at bedtime. There are separate AV and anti-spyware apps which run on their own schedules.
I recommend the ESET package (eset.com); it is the least-intrusive security package I’ve tried, and the price is competitive.
Donna:
I suggest Norton for PCs. It’s comprehensive and, well, it ain’t the industry standard for nothin’. For the $10 or so you have to pay per year, it’s well worth the peace of mind.
Of course, you needn’t worry about that stuff if you’re using a Mac, but the cost is a bit higher. They do have Norton for Mac, but it takes *forever* to finish a scan.