laptop problems

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Shayla

Shayla

WOW Framer
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Apr 5, 2008
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Washington State
Hi. I finally got my modem at home fixed. But I'm still having problems.

Now my computer's doing all these weird things. Like, whether I click on my wireless mouse or on the place you click the laptop itself, sometimes the click works and sometimes I have to do it twenty or thirty times to get it to take. Very frustrating. It's been fine until now. Plus, since yesterday, almost all pictures won't show up. Like right now, there are no pictures showing here at all, not the avatars, albums or friend photos. And I can see hardly any pictures online. Plus, sometimes when I try to go online from my desktop, it takes me there, (ha....after a zillion clicks) and sometimes it just opens an empty Firefox or Internet Explorer tab and doesn't do anything. And it's really, really slow with everything. I wonder if I could have gotten a virus somehow. The click thing isn't my mouse, because it does the same when I do it on the laptop itself. It's hard to enjoy being here when just doing the simplest thing takes five minutes.

And often, when I click and it does take, it'll be right in the middle of doing whatever and then just stop what it was. Like it freezes right in the middle. Then I have to click a bunch of times for it to continue.

Does this sound like a virus, an internet provider problem, or something else?
 
It sounds like an infection to me, or possibly dead batteries for part of the mouse issue.

www.malwarebbytes.org you can do a free scan to get a second opinion/cleaning.

Mike
 
Thanks, Mike. I already have Malware loaded from the end of
March. Would it work to activate that one, or do I need to
ditch it and download it again?
 
You can use the same one, but be sure to click the UPDATE tab and then CHECK FOR UPDATES. They update that program every couple days, to catch new infections.

Then click back on the first tab, and select FULL SCAN.

Mike
 
Malwarebytes is your best friend : )

Is the laptop running extremely slow?

Is your HD light constantly lit up??
 
The problem seems to have gone away and the solution is a very unexpected one. Today I cleared my browsing history and that made no difference. Checked to see if I needed to defrag, and I didn't. Still have lots of room. Wasn't able to download Malware updates, but I ran the old Malware scan that I had downloaded in late March, and it came up with only one thing. After doing all those things and deleting that one thing that it found, the problem was still there. All evening. I've been having to click between eight and thirty times each time I want to do anything anywhere. Going backwards was automatic, but to go forward with anything it would take a zillion clicks to engage. And if I was on a site and then exited it back to my desktop, I couldn't get online again unless I shut the whole thing off and then turned it back on. Now it's working great, and that's the only thing I did differently

Finally, just now, I went to that Malware that I had downloaded a few weeks ago and deleted it. Deleted it from my recycle bin, too. And suddenly, everything is working fine again.

Knock on wood, every click does what it should and things are opening up great. All I can think is that maybe it was competing with a system already on here? From now on, when I download it, I'll use it and then delete it rather than keep it on my computer. I made an appointment with my $60.00/hr. computer guy for Tuesday, but maybe now I won't need to go. Hope hope.....

Thanks for your helpful comments, Mike and Stephen. Stephen, what's an HD
light?
 
Thanks, Pat. If it's the light that I think it is, it's flashing on and off intermittently all the time. Sometimes just flickers, sometimes very bright for a bit and then off again. Not solid, though.

I spoke too soon. For some reason, in the middle of the night, it got a lot easier. I could just do single clicks and the pictures were showing up again. Then this morning it was back to doing the same thing. Have to click up to thirty times for it to go anywhere. Won't show photos, and on these pages, while a few icons show up, everything else is lost, even the page layouts. It's just text. And when a click finally does engage, the computer might get halfway through loading the new thing and just stop progress. Not freeze, really, but just stop what it was doing. Then I have to click a whole bunch more times to get it to go ahead. And waiting doesn't work. I have to click to finally get it to go ahead.

Pushing the back button works fine. I can back up easy every time,
just not go forward. Ha.... doesn't life feel like that some days. :)

Plus, if I try to go from one site to another, most of the time, it kicks me completely offline.

I don't know why it would have suddenly gotten better last night. If it had to do with my internet providers speed, why would I still be having all these other problems? Looks like I'll have to keep that appointment with the computer guy after all. Thank you for letting me write about this on here. I hope it's okay. I know this is mostly for framing computer questions, but you guys are the only people who seem to know how to fix these things. I was hoping I could fix it without taking it in, and I appreciate your comments.
 
If you reboot it, then come to the grumble chat room - I can get into the computer remotely and give it a complimentary service call/free check up for ya.

It may be an infection, or a program that has a memory leak.

Mike
 
Thank you, Mike. That's so kind of you. I'll write you a private note to see what time works best.

P.S. Your private message inbox is full, so I sent you an e-mail instead.
 
Hi, Mike. I sure hope you check this.
It's 7:42 your time, and I've been trying for the
past twenty five minutes just to get on here and
get to chat. Or at least to make myself visible
so you'd know I was here.

This is so frustrating.

I finally made it and clicked on the chat link, but when I went
there, it just opened up an empty tab and wasn't the chat room.
Now I don't know what to do. I have to click about forty times
to get anything to happen, and then when it does, half the time
the computer forgets what it was doing right in the middle of it.
I'm free until nine your time, and am fine with trying to figure out how to do this, but I don't know how to get chat to open up for me.
I would have sent you a private note, but for all I know your inbox is still full.

I'll send this and then try to get into chat again. Then check back here to see if you've seen this and said anything. But it takes me so long to do those things. I'm here, though, and trying.
 
yea my inbox on the g keeps filling up. :( It holds only 500

I'll email you.

Mike
 
Hi. I just sent you an e-mail. I spent an hour trying to just get on the G and into chat, and it's not working. I made it onto the G and to chat twice, but then it
would either open an empty tab or go partway to chat, but not enough to show the actual chat part.

I'll wait here until 8:35 your time, check this and my e-mail. If there's no other way than chat to fix this, I might have to give up and just take it in on Tuesday. If I can't get into chat, your link won't do much good. You've been more than patient to wait while I try this.
 
The link I emailed 35 minutes ago bypasses the grumble chat and goes right to remote technical support, with one click.

Is that not working?

Mike
 
If I could have gotten it to click that link last week, Mike, I know you could have fixed it. I really appreciate your patience when I was trying to do it. It just wouldn't go.

I took it to a computer repair guy who took off Windows Defender and Spybot,
installed Norton, and agreed with you that Malware is good to use. He found three viruses and removed them, 'cleaned things up', and said that the internet provider I signed up with is the suckiest one in town. Yay, me on that one. Oh well, live and learn. He thought the modem they gave me was a joke. I paid $101.80, almost half of which was to sign up for Norton, and even with my rinky dink modem and hook-up, it's running perfectly now.

I asked him if I bought some more memory for my hard drive if that would speed things up and he didn't seem to think so. What do you think?
 
More memory made a huge difference in my desktop: sure couldn't hurt and maybe it's still as inexpensive as it used to be.

I don't think it's as easy to install on a laptop as in a tower, but...
 
Shayla:

I wish you were able to reach Mike.

It would have been much cheaper (as in free) and your lappy would not be shlepping around a ball & chains called Norton.

But glad it worked.

On another note: Avira This free anti-virus / worms and Trojans always gets good reviews. But I am happy with Kaspersky and Malwarebytes.

On a second other note: And just for general knowledge: Memory and hard disk drives are 2 different beasts. Buying more of one doesn't increase the other and vice versa.
 
Thanks for the notes.

I totally know Mike would have done it better and for free.
And he patiently waited while I tried to make it happen, but my
computer was so fouled up that it couldn't get to him.

So Norton is a ball and chain? Oy, vey. Paul, I think of Mike
and you as the computer go-to guys, and if you don't like it,
that's a bummer. What do you do on your computer? Do you
have Malware or Avira on it all the time, running in the background,
or do you have something else? It's obvious from my assumption that memory goes in a hard drive that I don't know a heck of a lot about these things, and I like learning how to say things in the right way. Do you think it's worth it to have someone install more memory? Is there some kind of flash drive or thumb drive thingy that a person can just plug into the side that makes things work faster, or does it have to be physically put inside the machine?

Pam, I appreciate your input. I know it's a tricky thing to do, but if adding memory helps I'd like it. That will be awhile, though. I'm not someone with money, so this trip to the computer doc will be my last one for awhile.
 
Don't worry Shayla:

Norton is fine if your lappy is used mostly to surf the web and not crunch numbers and such. I don't it is worth adding more memory for the same reasons.

I have Kaspersky and Malwarebytes on all my machines.

Relax.
 
Thanks, Paul. I'm so primitive that all I know how to do on here
is visit websites, usually this one, do internet searches and buy
things on eBay. Very few things, that is. I have no clue how to
do anything useful with it, such as crunch a number. :)
 
Norton is a major resource hog. I almost consider it to do more harm than good. Then again, I'm a power user and any slowdown is greately loathed. A better alternative is NOD32.

As for the RAM, what OS are you running and how much do you have now?

XP will benefit greatly from having at least 256-512MB and Vista likes 1-2GB.

If you're looking for speed improvements, degfragmenting your hard drive can help somewhat. It's also good to disable all the useless #### that starts up with your computer. Things like Quicktime, Acrobat, Java updater, etc. It seems like every program these days wants to create an always running "quick start" program that does nothing but keep resources tied up and slow down the system startup just so their app will launch 1ms faster in the event that you actually start it.
 
Shayla, I went from 512 megs of RAM to 2.43 GB. That is a bunch of speed. It made my life a whole lot easier.

And it's true that you should go around and disconnect a lot of stuff that likes to be seen at Startup. My brother is a big help to me in having the courage to pull the plug on programs I don't need.

All this, defragging, malawaring, etc., will aid you in enormous ways. :)

MM
 
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