Stuffed up my PC - help required please

[Blackbird]

Let’s be quite clear from the outset, this is my own stupid fault as I’m not what you’d call an IT techo and I need help to fix a problem!

Until last week, I used Zone Alarm Professional for combined anti-virus, anti spyware, anti phishing and firewall duties on our desktop at home. Whilst it worked well enough, it’s a resource-hungry mother and slowed down the PC. I’d read in PC World about how good the Avast free anti virus system was so decided to try it and revert to the Windows firewall.

I uninstalled ZA Pro, although it left a couple of files behind which I was unable to uninstall by any means that I tried. Installed Avast and that works just fine. Now comes the problem. Email and MSN works perfectly but whilst IE Explorer works fine for 5 minutes, it then stops working and the computer then requires a complete re-boot to get IE working for another 5 minutes and so on. I even re-installed IE Explorer to no avail and am beginning to wonder if I have a registry problem. It’s certainly puzzling that email and MSN work perfectly but IE Explorer says no connection after 5 minutes of perfect operation. Why does it trip after initially working ok?

However, I’m not totally dumb and have the whole system backed up on a Maxtor external drive, but I only want to go that way as a last resort.

I haven’t had the opportunity to fault find in depth but do any of you smart IT types have any pointers for me to go digging please?

Cheers,

Geoff

[Cajun]

install Firefox give it a go

If works delete all IE icons ande continue as nothing ever happened

[crashe]

Good luck in sorting this out.

You may need to really get rid of the Zone Alarm Pro files that are still sitting in there as they maybe the cause of the problem.


Rhino was really fantastic and helped me with my major probs recently on my pc. But he is out of the country at the moment (on holiday).

I had probs with my E Trust anti virus upgrading to a new name..... and that stopped my Zone Alarm FREE from working.

Had to uninstall the anti-virus and reinstall AVG to get the Zone Alarm firewall to work again.

That antivirus was great until it upgraded then all hell broke loose.
Ended up up with 6 trogans and 2 viruses.

But with Rhino's wonderful asssistance I got it all sorted out.


I have also stopped using IE sometime ago and now on Firefox (cheers Pyrocam).

[sAsLEX]

oh no my virus protection stopped ........ I must pay someone lots to fix this dire problem......



pardon my sarcasm, but , I ran my computer for four years with no form of virus protection whatsoever, had it on nearly all the time, and spent lots of time downloading games and movies from less than legal sites and no hassles


so avoid tracing blame to a lack of virus protection


Firefox is damn good so give that a go

[mynameis]

Mate, depends on what operating systems you're running on and what version of IE you have? If you have a legit version (just to make things easier) of, say windows XP then what I suggest is doing a full windows update as well as upgrading to the latest IE which is version 7 if not run on something like 6.?.?

In saying that to be perfectly honest IE is bit of a dog and well known to crash a lot of people face the problem, you're not the only one so as suggested try Mozilla Firefox it's quite reliable and user friendly. Run both ya see

Good you're backing your data up so nothing to worry about, if in case shit hits the fan you're safe do regular back ups. As for antivirus try something like AVG pretty popular and is good as well.

If you have the time and the original CD's also try and just reinstall the whole operating systems and all the programmes, I do it a few times a year then you don't have to worry about the bugs hiding in your machine or registry problems ect ect...

There's a lot you can do with computers and pages of solution can be written up, try the basics first, good luck mate.

[Blackbird]

Thanks for the good advice everyone, it is very much appreciated and the suggested Firefox option sounds a good initial way to go as I have it on one of those freebie magazine disks. All my operating systems (XP Pro, IE7 etc) are all legit and up to date.

I'll install Firefox sometime this week and see what happens.

One final question. How the heck do I get rid of the few residual Zone Alarm files that say they they are protected and resist all attempts?

Thanks again for the rapid response and likely solution.

Geoff

[The Pastor]

delete the C drive.

[crashe]

One final question. How the heck do I get rid of the few residual Zone Alarm files that say they they are protected and resist all attempts?

Thanks again for the rapid response and likely solution.

Geoff

Have you got 2 logins on your computer: 'Administrator' and also 'your name'?

Log out of your name and re-login in under 'Administrator'.
Try looking for any Zone Alarm Pro in there...
Load/remove installed stuff
Search - files/folders.

[phaedrus]

One final question. How the heck do I get rid of the few residual Zone Alarm files that say they they are protected and resist all attempts?

Thanks again for the rapid response and likely solution.

Geoff

does safe mode still exist in wondows? f5 on boot. Doing that would force it to not load drivers etc.. hopefully the files wouldn't be opened and locked.

[James Deuce]

Safe mode does still exist and it is F8 on startup.

[Brian d marge]

Just a hought , I had windows ,,yadda yadda .. but I managed to stuff uf my err legal copy ,,, so I was screwed so to speak

Downloaded ubuntu linux never looked back

Now I tinker ,,, as in I dont know what I am doing and try things out Ubuntu takes 20 min max to reinstall everything and another twenty for automatix ( installs codecs and common programs ) one click does it

Just a thought thats all

Stephen

[xwhatsit]

Just a hought , I had windows ,,yadda yadda .. but I managed to stuff uf my err legal copy ,,, so I was screwed so to speak

Downloaded ubuntu linux never looked back

Now I tinker ,,, as in I dont know what I am doing and try things out Ubuntu takes 20 min max to reinstall everything and another twenty for automatix ( installs codecs and common programs ) one click does it

Just a thought thats all

Stephen

^+1 I'm a happy 'buntu user

However, changing OSs is a rather dramatic solution.

When you say IE stops working, what exactly does this mean? That is, do buttons stop working entirely, can't access options from menus et c; or does it just stop being able to access websites? I think this distinction is fairly important.

Installing Firefox is a hell of a good idea anyway. Increases the inherent security of your computer anyway, AV or none.

[Blackbird]

When you say IE stops working, what exactly does this mean? That is, do buttons stop working entirely, can't access options from menus et c; or does it just stop being able to access websites? I think this distinction is fairly important.

Installing Firefox is a hell of a good idea anyway. Increases the inherent security of your computer anyway, AV or none.

To give an example, suppose I'm looking at various threads on Kiwi Biker. I go to exit one I've just read, either using the back button, New Posts or whatever. It sits for a moment, then throws up the standard screen (can't remember the exact words) when it can't connect to the internet. Yet email and MSN remain unaffected. Although I haven't timed it, it's always close to 5 minutes of IE explorer use. Almost like it has a timer running that cuts out the link.

[crashe]

Have you tried turning the computer off for a few minutes and then restart it up again and see if still does it...?

Sometimes just turning them off completely fixes it.


Can you also copy and paste what it says up on the screen and show us as well.

[bobsmith]

linux is absolutely brilliant when you're using the computer to work on it, I used to use it quite a bit especially when it was still in the 1.x.x stage lots of fun with gnome in development, etc...

It kind of sucks when you use your computer just to play games though....

Uhhh..... not that I have my computer just to play games of course............. hmmm......

Oh and try pressing ctrl-alt-del and seeing what processes are running. If there are any processes running that looks like the file names that you can't delete, you need to stop those processes first. Of course you should first ask why those processes are still running and why they didn't get deleted with the uninstall.....