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Question

Hi I have been a member on several forums. I admit this one is becoming my favorite. I like to explain things and this is a general pattern to how I go about trouble shooting seniors PC's here in my Village. W7 has a lot of features that can really help you with your problems. I'm going to try to create a list and hope others will add to these ideas. This is just a general list and isn't for any petitular problem and not really in any order.
1) W7 has a great trouble shooter that can be found in Action Center.
2) Safe Mode (F8) is always a great tool.
3) I like the Clean Boot even better that the Safe Mode.
4) This is always a good thing to try ( Perform Power Cycle)
5) A simple restart fixes a lot of things.
6) Some times a restore to a earlier time will solve your problem. ( A great Tool)
7) Restoring your BIOS back to default can be a good tool.
8) My favorite is the System Repair disc. This will take you in to Windows recovery, where you will find several tools. If you haven't made this disc, you are really messing the boat. With this repair disc you may be able to boot a PC that isn't booting and find tools for restoring to a earlier time, repair a PC that isn't booting, test your memory, restore your OS with a image you should have made, you can go into dos and type dskchk /r to check your hard drive for errors.This is a great tool.
9) W7 gives you the feature to create a image of your OS that allows you to restore to the time you created that image.
10) The last of my 10 tools is the back to factory. This is a cure for every thing except hardware problems.
This is just a start to what you can try to fix your problems before asking about them on the forum. We like helping you here and there are a lot of smart people here to help. I really don't know what you will do with this message. I know we have people that have ideas and they could add to this, but this may not be appropriate to the forum and there might not be a place for this?? My favorite hobby is passing forward what I have learned and what I'm still learning from others. These are just some of my thoughts and wanted to share. No problem if this doesn't have a place here on the forum
Dokie!
I Love my Satellite L775D-S7222 Laptop. Some days you're the windshield, Some days you're the bug. The Computer world is crazy. If you have answers to computer problems, pass them forward.

Answer 1

For Maintenance:
I use CCleaner and Glary utilities together, as one finds issues that the other misses, and vice versa.  These are both great programs, and Glary has many useful modules built into it.  I use the free versions of both, and run them about once a week for both registry and temp file cleaning.
Malwarebytes is another great program.  Again, I use the free version, and it works very well.  I also use this once a week.
For Anti-Virus, I use Microsoft Security Essentials.  It does require attention on my part(I have to manually scan), but it is a great anti-virus, it's free, and it does not slow down the system like some of the other anti-virus programs out there.
For Virus or Repairs:
In addition to the tools listed above, I use the following for virus or repairs
MRT(malicious software removal tool) is a nice tool that is already on your computer if you are running windows.  Make sure you keep up on your updates, as MRT definitions update frequently.  To use, simply click your start button and type in "MRT", and click on the result that pops up.  I suggest doing a full scan.  It may require a restart once it is finished, and if it cannot fix an issue, it will let you know.  If you suspect that you have a virus on a thumb drive, you can select "custom scan", and scan your thumb drive as well.
MRT Offline can be downloaded from Microsoft's website, and burned to a disc.  Put the disc in your computer and restart(make sure the DVD drive has top priority).  This will search for virus' without booting into windows, and can fix more issues than the standard MRT program.  Make sure to download a new copy each time you need it, as definitions change frequently.
Trend Micro HiJack This is now a legacy program, but can still be found on the Trend Micro site.  This shows you all of the processes that start with windows in detail, and allows you to remove items that you do not want.  It is more detailed than any other program I have used.  PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS PROGRAM CAN BE VERY DESTRUCTIVE IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.  It works properly with a 32 bit OS only.  When running with a 64 bit OS, you can see all of the processes, but you have to manually fix issues outside the program(any changes that you make when running on a 64 bit OS will not save).
Kaspersky TDSSKiller is the only program that I have found that can remove the Alureon virus, which has been popping up more frequently on the computers that I am asked to fix.  It is free from the Kaspersky site.
There is more, but that is all that I can think of off the top of my head. 
BTW... I have done performance tests before and after cleaning up a hogged up registry on a C655D that I purchased a while back.  It had soooooooooo much crap loaded on it, and I stripped it back down to the OS and just a few choice programs.  Once that was done, I tested performance, and it was not that impressive.  I then cleaned up the registry using CCleaner and Glary Utilities.  Once complete, I defragged the registry using Glary Utilities and restarted.  The performance had definitely increased after it was all cleaned up.
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