CWB

sometimes the best form of education comes from making a hole in one's pocketbook . you might point out to her the cost of taking her machine to a (ahem) *professional* . and the possibilities of the eventuality of not being able to retrieve/recover files (and such) . uninstalling comodo and other unneeded programs is the best way to help keep a machine "cleaned out" . think of it like walking in the door and placing a few of the items you have on the kitchen counter ... eventually , there is going to be a mess that avalanches onto the floor . there are a couple of good programs for helping to keep a machine cleaned out (not endorsing/hawking these) : ccleaner (using the cleaner side only ... leave the registry side alone) revo uninstaller (the old version is free and works well) remember ... an uninstaller program doesn't know or care if the program is needed or not ... that is up to the user to find out . do not fall prey to those "let-us-fix-yer-comp" programs and advertisements ... 99.9% of these are bogus and hype .

to elaborate on what david said ... 'vodafone" is a "carrier" or "internet supplier" and supplies it's customers with equipment needed for internet access . the company does not "make" any type of anti-malware or anti-virus programs . they may however , include a version of an antivirus and/or antimalware that is "bundled' (included with) their service ... this is usually provided as a courtesy and one is not required to use the product . or ... they may not include any solution at all and it is up to the user/customer to provide their own AV/AM programs . most of the time there is a firewall "built into" the modem/router provided ... simple settings are accessible by the customer ... the more involved stuff is accessed by vodafone from the internet side . you may want to contact vodafone and explain the problems you are having . if it is determined that there is a problem with your computer , then come back here and we will try to help you out .

ergo : "don't know you from adam's dog" . certainly you can appreciate the security and hierarchy that is in place .

hmmm ... i would suggest going to the "malware removal" section and start a new topic posting the requied logs as indicated in "... i'm infected ..." .

i am in northwest montana for a chrismas vacation ... the lowest price i have seen in kalispell is $2.31/gallon .

hmmm ... the nuke option is always available ... the decision to use it is akin to the guy with his finger on the button ready to launch those nuke missiles there is a way to re-load the original OS if you have the *real* coa key ... this is usually located on the bottom or inside of the battery compartment of a laptop . however ... to the best of my knowledge the method i am referencing is not endorsed by these forums . (ron , could you weigh in on this ?) as you are a "newbie" ... re-installation of an OS does have it's rough spots and can be very difficult . downloading all of the required drivers from the manufacturer of the machine and such items as the chipset drivers from the manufacturer of the motherboard and cpu manufacturer can turn into a headache . personally speaking , it is not a task to be undertaken except as a last resort .

i did not see this succinctly mentioned in this thread ... this P5Q is made for an intel CPU ... an AMD processor will not fit physically or work electrically . it is like mixing apples and oranges . http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5Q/ i have the P5Q motherboard ... it has some years on it and it is still a good board . you may have to flash the bios and select ram that will run at the top speed of the side buss (your ram speed was not mentioned above) . as was mentioned ... grab a better swmps ... you do not need to spend large sums of money on it . the graphics card is the deal breaker here ... the graphics port on the P5Q is not as fast as the modern boards . sure , you can save up your money and buy the best card that fits the slot and down the road put it into a better machine but you will still be limited by the design of the board . in short , buy the best nvidia gpu based video card you can afford and run the wheels off of it .

yessir ... those type of programs are pretty much bogus and can be a vector for an infection . many of these install junkware without the knowledge or consent of the user . "if it sounds to good to be true , it usually is" i have repaired many computers that these type of programs have happened to .

heh ... most *popular* 'nix distributions have the same deal . i have downloaded the latest and greatest .iso of several distributions and wound up installing a bunch of updates . i will say this about the 'nix stuff ... at least the updates are frequent and close together and do not break the/other programs . also ... when one updates most all 'nix distributions , all of the programs that are currently "installed" in the machine are updated ... this is a big difference from windows and does account for the sometimes large size of some updates .

hmmm ... still nothing conclusive . from time to time , FF will ping me about "cleaning up" my browser (removing old extensions , etc .) however , i do not recall it happening on a continuous basis and not in the system tray . where did you get your copy of FF from ? i cannot say anything about opera as i do not use it . i always download right from the source : https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ you might download a fresh copy from a known clean machine (onto a flash drive) and then transfer it to the desktop of your machine ... install from there . if the warnings show again ... post a screen shot . you may wind up going over to the malware removal section .

mint is one of the few 'nix OSes that has a *real* desktop available . i have noticed that more flavors of 'nix have followed suit .

"I got a warning today that said I had to many files open , that was on Oprah" hmmm ... freudian slip ? hard to say what you are actually seeing ... it may be an "internal" message from the browsers or possibly an infection (malware) . can you post screen shots of what is displayed ?

checking ... about 40 megs for MSO 2007 . 321 megs for windows and IE

have you installed items such as "trafficlight" and "WOT" in a firefox browser (which has it's own "filters/protection) ? this will afford three levels of "do you really want to do this ?" from within the browser . this would be in addition to any similar items provided by your current AV/AM . also ... what version of kaspersky are you running ? if it is the full-blow version that has it's own firewall , using other firewalls is redundant and serves to slow the machine . make sure that the windows versions of an AV/AM (MSE along with defender) is turned off ... many times this gets turned on *somehow* . i hope your grandmother does not do any banking or other *sensitive* operations on that comp . as far as settings go ... if you have locked down the machine so she cannot download and install programs plus have taken reasonable efforts to ensure that all of her email is scanned (incoming and outgoing) and automatically deleted , then educating her is the best investment of time . however ... one cannot save people from themselves . i have seen machines in a corporate environment that were "locked down" and the user still managed to infect the machine .

a heads up on one of those "alternative" OSes ... the REACT OS has quite a way to go (in my opinion) before it is a real contender . while the target of development was to make it compatible with widows based/written programs (think load-n-go) , it currently falls quite short of this mark . some programs written for windows can be run under WINE and "play on linux" (POL) ... but unless the *stuff* required to make it run has been performed by someone else and shows on a list of "yep , we did that" programs , one is faced with a task not recommended for "entry level" users . WINE and POL are available to install on/in most linux based OSes . here is a list of popular linux/BSD OSes : http://distrowatch.com/ at the top of the list are mint and ubuntu ... with mint having a substantial lead , as it has for almost three years (personal observation) . the MATE version of any linux based OS utilizes a "classic" styled and (most importantly) fully functional desktop/GUI that was not designed by fisher-price .

last night a station had dropped their price by .01 ... usually the other stations in town (and slightly outside of the city proper) follow suit . i will see if this is true when i leave in a couple of hours to have coffee with the fellas .

@ advanced setup : and it is pretty much the truth . ole and lena jokes are very popular here . you can't run fast enough to get me to eat klube (fat in a doughball ... boiled) , ludefisk (aka : fish jello) and (uuuggghhh) hot dish . the price has dropped another 2 cents .

in northern minnesnowta the price is about $2.48/gal . a friend mentioned that in some city way south of here the price was $1.90/gal .

pretty telling of what is going on ... subsidizing is an attempt to make the blanket longer by cutting off one end and sewing onto the other end .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtPzInmj8JU

"Isn't this that part where someone inserts some random thing about Linux or MacOS being superior?" if someone did , i would counter it with the fact that when you download and burn the latest flavor of most 'nix OSes there are doing to be a bunch of updates . the number depends on how old the .iso is that is installed ... just as it is with windows . as for programs ... these too can have a continuous string of updates ... look how many versions and updates there have been to FF and libre office . "I'm not sure if it's the same these days, as I'm a little out of the loop." i have been out of it for years .

"I perfomed the recent registry hack for XP" hmmm ... i recall there being some discussion (here) about the "hacks" in an attempt to circumvent security measures employed by MS . i do not recall what the stand on this was .

a happy thanksgiving to y'all . it is starting to smell good all over the house ... the turkey has about 5.5 hours to go . (it is a covered slow roast ... exceedingly tender and moist) i had trouble finding kosher sausage for the stuffing

i just checked for updates ... a little over 22 megs for MSO . removing the "malicious software removal tool" and the "windows defender update" leaves 213 megs of windows updates . there is an option for a 251 meg update for my nvidia card (no thanks , i go back to nvidia for my updates) . i know that a fresh install of MSO results in about a gig of updates .

just to add to the mix and avoid creating a new topic . i had problems logging into the forums after the hack and consequent migration ... this is the first time i have been in the forums in several days . thanks to marcin , david and ron .