The Digital Surgery (computer questions/problems here)

[buksida]

migrant, those links are definitely not there so either your browser has been hijacked or you have a plugin that is highlighting specific words.

What browser are you using? Can you try with another one and see if it still occurs. Try to avoid using IE at all. I would recommend running a full scan with malwarebytes and hijackthis:
http://www.techspot.com/downloads/4716- ... lware.html
http://www.trendmicro.com/ftp/products/ ... ckThis.msi

mags, firstly we need to address your hard disk problem - you need to remove some files from C drive (preferably at least 2 gig) - Windows will not function properly if the disk is full. Then update AVG and run a full scan, then scan with the two programs suggested above, it is likely that you have malware on the machine. The Hotmail virus automatically emails itself to anyone in your address book to spread itself. By clicking the link you're allowing the malware into your machine - once it is there is can do anything from stealing your banking passwords to allowing hackers remote access.

There is a little more info on the MS website: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... b599b31bf5

hhfarang, today's browsers are not designed to run on 12 year old hardware with less processing power than a phone!

[hhfarang]

hhfarang, today's browsers are not designed to run on 12 year old hardware!

Don't I know it! But I'm a stubborn old fart that doesn't believe in throwing away a perfectly good appliance (That cost me $2k) just because there is a newer model as long as the old one works.

Plus I take pride in being able to keep it going as long as possible; maybe it will make the Guiness book someday as the oldest continuously running (daily use) desktop in history. It still has the original 30 gb hard drive running Windows ME on it, but I've added (dual boot) a 160 gb drive with XP plus I maxed out the memory to a whopping 500 mb (it came with 128).

The cheapest smartphones on the market today have more processing power than my desktop!

Mags, on the disk space issue. When Microsoft sends out patches or hot fixes, they back up the old files that are replaced in case you want to remove the patch and go back to the original code. If your machine is stable so that you think all the MS patches installed are ok you can remove the backup code files. With a machine running XP for 6 or 7 years, I did this and it gave me back 1.5 gb in hard drive space. You can download the free (XP only) utility I used here:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm

As I said, only run it if your PC is stable because once you do it you can't back out any Windows patches and go back to the original (unpatched) code. If you have an XP machine that has been running for a few years with a lot of patches this can get you back a lot of hard drive space.

[lomuamart]

I've had malwarebytes for some time but nowadays (for at least the past 6 months) it just gives me a message saying it "has encountered a problem and needs to close". I can't get the program to run.
I must have uninstalled it a dozen times and then downloaded the latest version but still get the same message.
I've a feeling that I'm not uninstalling properly because once I've done a new download the computer tells me it's updating. So, I've a feeling that fragments of the old download remain on my computer and that makes the new download unusable. It could well be that ages ago I didn't download the original version properly (maybe the connection broke as I was doing it).
Anyway, I'd like to do a scan but can't at the moment. Anyone got any ideas?

[buksida]

Would only suggest what you've done, uninstalling and reinstalling.

You could try Spybot which is still a good alternative: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

[hhfarang]

Also you could use the free Revo Uninstaller (carefully) as it will do a much more thorough uninstall than the standard Windows "Add/Remove Programs" in my experience. It hunts down everything in the registry, temp files, etc. and gets rid of them. It does show them to you (in bold) and give you the choice to delete but I have done it many times always deleting whatever they have bolded and it works great.

Get it here:

http://download.cnet.com/Revo-Uninstall ... 87648.html

[margaretcarnes]

mags, firstly we need to address your hard disk problem - you need to remove some files from C drive (preferably at least 2 gig) - Windows will not function properly if the disk is full. Then update AVG and run a full scan, then scan with the two programs suggested above, it is likely that you have malware on the machine. The Hotmail virus automatically emails itself to anyone in your address book to spread itself. By clicking the link you're allowing the malware into your machine - once it is there is can do anything from stealing your banking passwords to allowing hackers remote access.

There is a little more info on the MS website: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... b599b31bf5

Thanks Buksi - will do. As of now my Hotmail account has been re-activated and I found that AVG had updated itself. New HM password set etc.
C drive is still a problem. There is little else I can delete. BUT - I think the photo files need to be compressed so working on that.
I've run the AVG Analyser though which has thrown up some stuff I don't really understand - or know how to sort out. Bear with me!
There are 47 Registry Errors - mainly HKEY_CURRENT_USER_ software\microsoft\windows file extensions.
Then Junk Files - 9 errors mainly 'thumbcach' in temp folder - are these the photo attachments which Hotmail sticks on the end of your inbox?
Disk fragmentation -shown as 34.63% - high fragmentation level. I really don't understand this or how to rectify it. A disk defrag runs automatically every week and had just been completed...
Finally Shorcuts is showing an un needed programme - Acer Arcade - but I uninstalled that months ago and it no longer shows on the desktop.

Getting there - but still confused!

[buksida]

Basically you should not be storing any personal data (documents, photos, music etc) on C drive - this should be reserved for Windows and your programs only so that when it goes wrong a quick format and reinstall will have you running again without data loss.

Get yourself a portable external hard disk and move all of your personal stuff off C and make regular backups of it.

[hhfarang]

It's possible to move things to a different drive (other than the OS, it has to be reinstalled I think) if you have more than one. I have "my documents" including photos (huge) on the C drive and the operating system (XP) only on the D drive. I have all installed programs on my E drive. Most people have all these on one drive which can eat it up fast.

[Pleng]

Even if you only have one physical drive it's possible to partition that so your data is stored on a separate partition. It's not as good as having two physical drives, but it does make things less hassle when it comes to the inevitable OS reinstall.

[caller]

Can someone kindly explain to me in laymans terms what hs_err_pid884 is and does? I have a desk icon for it, nothing fancy just the page/script one, meaning there isn't a formal icon - I think? I've no idea where it came from but got all sorts of sombre warnings when considering deteting it.

Thanks

[redzonerocker]

Can someone kindly explain to me in laymans terms what hs_err_pid884 is and does? I have a desk icon for it, nothing fancy just the page/script one, meaning there isn't a formal icon - I think? I've no idea where it came from but got all sorts of sombre warnings when considering deteting it.

Thanks

It's a crash report informing you have an error with Java.
Go to Java.com, check what version you have & update to the latest edition, this usually sorts the problem out.
You can delete the desktop icon.

[caller]

It's a crash report informing you have an error with Java.
Go to Java.com, check what version you have & update to the latest edition, this usually sorts the problem out.

You can delete the desktop icon.

Appreciated RZR - many thanks!

[margaretcarnes]

Oh Kaaaay - there's a picture coming together here then because a year or so back I loaded stacks of CDs to C drive before transferring them to the MP3 player - except that I had a problem transferring and took the PC in to a computer mister. He sorted the MP3 player but installed stacks of stuff to the PC, including Windows Media Player for Sony (which I no longer need and will uninstall.)
And although the facility to play the music on the PC had also disappeared, there is still (somewhere) a kind of print out of all the damn lyrics! That needs to go as well obviously.
Photo files will be burnt onto DVD (when the shops open again) and I'll activate the ISPs E mail address and finally ditch Hotmail.
Which leaves just one more problem - how to transfer the Hotmail address list from Hotmail to another address - which will be one from the little known Karoo!

HHF - I have a 1.66 gig drive - so just how much space does Firefox use?

[lomuamart]

Mags,
I've just opened a gmail account up and they had a tool to transfer over all my contacts from other email providers, including hotmail.
Must admit that I didn't bother with that and took the opportunity to do it manually and clean the list up at the same time.
It was amazing how many old contacts I had.

[hhfarang]

Mags, your hard drive has to be bigger than 1.66 gb. Maybe that's the processor speed 1.66 ghz. My machine is 12 years old and it came with a 30 gb drive so yours probably has more than 100 gb.

My complaint with FireFox is that it hogs processor time and slows everything down (not the space it takes), but as Buksi pointed out, none of today's browsers are meant to run on a computer as old as mine.