IT PROBLEMS - BEST ON LINE HELP SITE?

[martincymru]

As a non techy who is tormented by IT issues what is the best website for reliable opinion?

Anyone know of a person/shop where they give free or quasi-free advice?

[bgd]

I normally just search on line for the error message or issue I encounter.

Macrumors.com is good for anything Apple related.

I don't have an equivalent for Windows.

If it's hardware there are any number of places in Sim Lim that will be able to fix, but I don't have any recommendations.

You could always try asking in this forum.

[martincymru]

"I normally just search on line for the error message or issue I encounter".

> increasingly the search results are producing at best garbage, at worst creating an even bigger issue (scams).

Macrumors.com is good for anything Apple related.
> I'm Windows 7. IE.

I don't have an equivalent for Windows.

If it's hardware there are any number of places in Sim Lim that will be able to fix, but I don't have any recommendations.
> Hardware is kind of easy, it's the minor day to day IT stuff that frustrates me.

You could always try asking in this forum.
> Not fair to ask so many [trivial to some] IT questions on this Forum unless there is a dedicated section specifically for same. Forum is really for wider / profound issues for an audience greater than one.

[Strong Eagle]

Please ask. IT support is my profession, currently. If it turns out to be popular, I'll ask the board admins to create a sub-forum here.

Another alternative, if you are having specific IT issues, is to permit someone to remote into your PC and have a look around. There are two good free options to do this, and if you do ask questions, we'll see if that's a necessary thing to do.

[ecureilx]

As a non techy who is tormented by IT issues what is the best website for reliable opinion?

Anyone know of a person/shop where they give free or quasi-free advice?

Ask away.

Oh, online searches have turned to monetization

Those paid results are over powering

[princessb]

How can I make my computer run faster? it's very laggy lately? any great recommendations?

[martincymru]

me too.
Other than re-format what are the simple steps we can take?
[Dear Strong Eagle....... help!]

[Strong Eagle]

For martincymru and princessb: Here's a few things you can do to try and speed up your computer.

1. Download malwarebytes free version and run it against your computer. This will hunt down PUP's (potentially unwanted programs)... trash programs that get installed, usually without your knowledge. You can safely delete whatever malwarebytes comes up with.
2. Next, bring up your list of installed programs... Start button, start typing "control panel" (no "), then click on control panel, then programs and features. Review the list of installed programs and see if there is anything that you didn't install and don't want. Uninstall them.
3. Next, right click the Start button, then click Computer Management, then click Services. This one is a little bit trickier. Many of the programs you have installed will have automatic update services that are installed and run as soon as the computer is booted up. You can disable all these services in the Services menu. This does mean that you will have to update programs manually by doing a check for updates from within the program.
   
   If you have the patience, you can type each non obvious service name into google and see what it does. You can disable quite a few services without impacting machine operation.
4. Finally, you can do a Windows re-install, leaving files and apps in place. This will clean up a lot of crap in the registry. Go to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/softwar ... /windows10 to either create a USB thumb drive or just reinstall on your PC. When you start the reinstall, keeping files and apps will be one of the options.

[martincymru]

Dear Strong Eagle:
I have Windows 7, use Microsoft Office 2007 suite and ACROBAT. McAfee paid for anti virus.
Not sure this impacts your advice at all.

[Strong Eagle]

Dear Strong Eagle:
I have Windows 7, use Microsoft Office 2007 suite and ACROBAT. McAfee paid for anti virus.
Not sure this impacts your advice at all.

You won't be able to update Win 7 in place without source install disks and specialized knowledge. You could probably still upgrade to Win 10 without cost... it doesn't hurt anything to try, and I would recommend it.

MS Office 2007 is no longer a support product for upgrades,enhancements or bug fixes. There are known incompatibilities between 2007 and later versions, a few of which were fixed with SP3 but a few more were discovered post SP3. The biggest pain in the arse? Loading a Word doc produced in 2013 or later and watching 50 percent of the spaces between words disappear. There should not be incompatibilities between Win 7 and Office 2007 but if there were any caused by Win 7 updates, they would not be fixed in 2007... so if it's your office products that are running slow, you may wish to consider upgrading.

I'm still running Acrobat 2008 myself. There are no updates for it anymore but I bet you'll find an update service running... same for Adobe Reader, Bonjour, and a host of other installed apps. You can certainly kill these update services... they don't use a lot of resources but they do wake up to see if there are any updates.

I am not a fan of McAfee... it uses a lot of system resources while scanning, and this could be your cause of slowdown. You can find out by temporarily disabling McAfee and see how your computer responds. You need something with Win 7 (Win 10 Defender is more than sufficient if running Win 10) and I'd recommend Webroot... small footprint and as good a job as any product out there for catching crap... not that any of them are that good at zero day stuff.

Two other things are worth mentioning. In the past one would typically set memory size and CPU power on the basis of the kinds of apps you would be running... Word doesn't need much, Excel a little bit more, AutoCad a whole bunch. But, in this day and age, there are literally hundreds of services running in the background to give you the experience that you get, and all those services consume resources. In order to future proof, I wouldn't buy any PC these days that wasn't an i7 processor.

Two of the best things you can do to improve the speed of an older PC is to add memory and switch to a solid state drive. This is particularly true if you have only 4 GB or so of memory or work with very large files. A solid state drive can respond to requests at least ten times as fast as a hard drive, and with dropping costs are a great way to extend PC life... I just go through updating 40 Dell desktops with SSD's... it makes a real difference.

But again, running Malwarebytes and searching for crapware installed on your computer are still recommended actions as a starting point. So is doing a running services review, although this is a more complex undertaking.

FWIW: I support 50 Win 10 PC's, most with i5 processors, some with i7, with at least 8 gig of memory, and most with 16, and all with SSD's. I use Windows Defender and Firewall on local PC's. These work well with all but the largest of files (and I'm talking Excel files with 700,000 rows as a large file). We subscribe to Office 365 for office software.

[bgd]

Two of the best things you can do to improve the speed of an older PC is to add memory and switch to a solid state drive. This is particularly true if you have only 4 GB or so of memory or work with very large files. A solid state drive can respond to requests at least ten times as fast as a hard drive, and with dropping costs are a great way to extend PC life... I just go through updating 40 Dell desktops with SSD's... it makes a real difference.

About a year back we did this to my daughter's macbook, massive difference. I think it cost around $150 for memory and SSD in Sim Lim, much cheaper than a new computer. She's still using it and it must be over 8 years old now.

[Strong Eagle]

Also - defrag your hard disk. In fact, download a disk test and see if it is failing. A disk with a lot of bad sectors takes longer to read/write and will eventually conk out.

[martincymru]

Thanks all, actioned Malwarebytes and defrag,appreciated.