First week on Broadband (WinXP)

W

Whiplash

Veteran XX
I need a little help TW. My Sister just got Broadband for school and i am being swamped by the calls. they never really used the computer for anything other than Spider solitaire til now. Pathetic i know.

I have to go over there to "fix" this comp today and i have no clue. i still run Win98 so i have never dealt with XP. What are the basic steps i need to take to disable the messenger popups and such?
i will be adding a firewall and spyware programs, but what else should i enable/disable just so i dont get anymore calls?

My sister is going for her RN cert and thats why the broadband. Mom uses it for Solitaire and only for that. Nephew (9) plays little bullshit games on it.

Edit: yeah i know 'hahha you use 98" well from what i have seen XP is slow as shit. my p3 500 runs 3 times faster than their p4 1.8 :shrug:
 
Whiplash said:
I need a little help TW. My Sister just got Broadband for school and i am being swamped by the calls. they never really used the computer for anything other than Spider solitaire til now. Pathetic i know.

I have to go over there to "fix" this comp today and i have no clue. i still run Win98 so i have never dealt with XP. What are the basic steps i need to take to disable the messenger popups and such?
i will be adding a firewall and spyware programs, but what else should i enable/disable just so i dont get anymore calls?

My sister is going for her RN cert and thats why the broadband. Mom uses it for Solitaire and only for that. Nephew (9) plays little bullshit games on it.

Edit: yeah i know 'hahha you use 98" well from what i have seen XP is slow as shit. my p3 500 runs 3 times faster than their p4 1.8 :shrug:
Click to expand...

Boot up into Safe Mode and once you're in windows run a spyware program like ad-aware. Copy down all the files that adaware pops up with onto a piece of paper. "Delete" all the files with adaware (it doesn't really completely delete it, which is why you wrote the files down on a piece of paper).

After you do that, start>run>regedit ... That's the registry editor... BE CAREFUL what you do here. Search for the files that you copied down to the piece of paper, and one by one, delete them from the registry.

These are rough instructions, maybe someone else could elaborate... Hope it helps.
 
wow i didn't think it was possible for people to know this little about computers anymore except for parents.
 
thanks for that. i try to tell these people that...
i get called on to do everything related to computers for my entire family. all of them run XP and i still run 98. fact remains they will not call anyone else so i am forced to do it or be bothered forever.


Thanks bud. this comp has never been online. out of the box set on a desk and thats it.
 
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Whiplash said:
thanks for that. i try to tell these people that...
i get called on to do everything related to computers for my entire family. all of them run XP and i still run 98. fact remains they will not call anyone else so i am forced to do it or be bothered forever.
Click to expand...

Another thing, when you're in Windows, hit Cntrl+alt+delete and look at which programs are sucking the memory out of your computer... There are some (explorer.exe, taskmgr.exe) that you do not play with, but if you see some like GAIN.exe or GATOR.exe those are the ones you have to delete in your registry.

Just hit cntrl alt delte and any running program that looks suspicious, do some research on it... and try to find a way to get rid of it completely (from the registry).
 
firefox wont fix shit.. whiplash if you want i can fix her computer using xp's built in remote desktop, i do this shit everyday lol pm me if u want
 
The last time I did a clean sweep on my parents computer, since I wasn't going to be home very often I setup some timely preventative measures. It is only a PII-233 running 98SE. Any type of spyware would just kill that computer. So I setup some handy tasks to run weekly using ms scheduler. It grabs the latest updates for ad-aware, runs ad-aware, defrags, runs disk cleanup, and does a monthly virus scan. I also installed google toolbar. When they don't have to deal with pop-ups they don't have the option to click "YOUR COMPUTER NEEDS A TUNE-UP". I've been home a few times and the 233 runs quicker for web browsing than the 1.7ghz they bought a year and a half ago. Mainly because the newer computer is just clogged up. Last time I was home I cleared up 25% of the hdd space by getting rid of system restore (something they'll never use).
 
EvilMonkey said:
firefox wont fix shit.. whiplash if you want i can fix her computer using xp's built in remote desktop, i do this shit everyday lol pm me if u want
Click to expand...


yes give evilmonkey complete unabridged access to your sisters computer. he will have it running fine in no time.
















and fill it with more backdoors than your neighborhood has
 
EvilMonkey said:
firefox wont fix shit.. whiplash if you want i can fix her computer using xp's built in remote desktop, i do this shit everyday lol pm me if u want
Click to expand...


It will keep alot of spyware off and that's half the problems I see with poorly performing computers. Shit, running a regular spyware scan is more important than virus scanning anymore.
 
uh he can always watch me while i do it so he can learn too? you can get spyware from using firefox too... edit: your right most people get spyware more than viruses, usually the spyware is infected with a lil trojan backdoor though
 
Also, you might be better off just upgrading to SP2. The built in firewall/security center/improved IE security might be enough to keep them out of your hair for a bit. The whole 'security center' is catered to those kind of people.
 
yea thats what i was gonna have him do, i install SP2 on all the xp machines that i see at work. ive been using it and its great.
 
EvilMonkey said:
uh he can always watch me while i do it so he can learn too? you can get spyware from using firefox too... edit: your right most people get spyware more than viruses, usually the spyware is infected with a lil trojan backdoor though
Click to expand...

Firefox isn't a savior against spyware, but it helps. I prefer my browser to not be tied into my OS. The big problem is popups. Decreasing the amount of potential popups that they have to see let alone click on will decrease spyware by 10 fold.
 
Start>run>services.msc go to the middle of that list and disable messanger, ads can come through that as well.
 
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