How do you uninstall EVERYTHING?

To get into dos, hit Start then Run. If you have ME type "command" in the box and hit enter. If that doesn't work, type "cmd" in the box and hit enter. After that type: format C: <enter>. You'll be asked to hit 'Y' to procede. Hang on to your socks at this point, nothing is coming back. If I were you I'd test the windows CD to make sure it boots and actually does load properly before you 86 the drive.

Something you might try before wiping your harddrive is to install Ad-aware from Lavasoft to keep control of spyware and AVG for virus protection. Both are free downloads and work. I recently found a ton of new crap programs installed on my computer, Ad-aware found a couple hundred files, registry keys and folders that had been put in my computer without me knowing about it. Ad-aware got rid of it all. I then ran my AVG virus scan and found something called Downloader.StubbyA and Sec.Thought.A. Both were removed by AVG. My hard drive had died and I had to get a new one. Before I could get all the protection loaded this crap snuck in there.
I also got an ethernet broadband router which has a firewall built in that I've been told is much better than the software variety. If you have cable internet access that might be the way to go.
I run Ad-aware almost daily and there is always something there to delete, mostly "data miner" cookies.
good luck!

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Originally posted by fiddler
Something you might try before wiping your harddrive is to install Ad-aware from Lavasoft to keep control of spyware and AVG for virus protection. Both are free downloads and work. I recently found a ton of new crap programs installed on my computer, Ad-aware found a couple hundred files, registry keys and folders that had been put in my computer without me knowing about it. Ad-aware got rid of it all. I then ran my AVG virus scan and found something called Downloader.StubbyA and Sec.Thought.A. Both were removed by AVG. My hard drive had died and I had to get a new one. Before I could get all the protection loaded this crap snuck in there.
I also got an ethernet broadband router which has a firewall built in that I've been told is much better than the software variety. If you have cable internet access that might be the way to go.
I run Ad-aware almost daily and there is always something there to delete, mostly "data miner" cookies.
good luck!

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I would disagree about the hardware firewall. It great for protecting your computer from inbound attacks but it does nothing for outbound traffic. I Use Zone Alarm Pro on my Windows 98 system and I can control which programs are allowed access to the Internet. It keeps those spy programs from reporting to the mothership. A hardware router can't do that.

So I use Zone Alarm, Mozilla, and NO anti-virus software. My computer runs just fine . Using Mozilla (or Opera -- another browser) for e-mail and Web surfing renders 99.9% of viruses impotent. The firewall blocks inbound attacks and catches outbound sneaky software. Even IE is blocked since I don't use it.

It's the way to go.

Snowdog, very interesting about the firewalls. Zone Alarm was the name I was trying to think of, I had the free version on my old dead drive. Think I'll add it to the new one as well. I just checked out Spybot and it found lots of questionalble stuff, including some programs my son downloaded than turn out to be spyware.
I've also been using Opera for the last week or so and I like it. I still have IE 6 though. How easy is Mozilla to use? I guess I shied away from it because of what looked like AOL connections. I have the free version of Opera which has an add banner as part of the toolbar but it hasn't been particularly obnoxious. I picked a skin that takes up as little space as possible. Also you can use a full screen function that doesn't show the toolbar including the ad banner.
Do you have an opinion onSpybot?
Plan on a Baker trip this weekend?

I like Mozilla because it supports tabbed windows (one main window with a tab for each open Web site), popup blocking, and image blocking. It's a lot more configurable than IE. The bookmarks are better too. The mail client has pretty good junk mail filtering. When you turn it on it creates a Junk folder and as you mark e-mail as junk they're moved to the Junk folder. Once it learns what junk looks like it will do it automatically (but when you first turn it on it marks everything as junk). AOL bought Netscape and Mozilla is based on the Netscape computer code but I've never used the AOL links and I think I've deleted them anyway. Or maybe newer versions don't have them.

I bought Opera long ago and liked it. They had free upgrades for a few years but to get the latest I have to pay again so I switched to Mozilla. The Opera mail client only did plain text so you couldn't include pictures and fancy text (you could still attach stuff). The Mozilla mail client lets you create formatted e-mail with pictures and stuff.

I've never used SpyBot.

These days my day-to-day computer runs Linux so I only fire up the Windows system when I want to watch someone huck in Quicktime or I'm running Kazaa.

No plans for Baker this weekend. It must be spring skiing up there given the temperature.

Light to moderate snow north and moderate to heavy snow south
Saturday and into Sunday morning heaviest near and west of the
crest at low snow levels. Light snow showers decreasing and
ending later Sunday at continued low snow levels. Decreasing
clouds initially north becoming sunny but continued cool on
Monday.

SNOW LEVELS
5-1500 ft N 15-2500 ft S Sat through Mon
Think again, this report looks like winter and powder to me:D

Dude,

Buy Win XP (w/ SP1 or whatever the latest). And then pop it in your CD drive and boot off it, and do a clean install (not an upgrade). Then reinstall what you need. Easy. Do NOT upgrade. Install fresh.

drC

mozilla has been awesome.

I have it set up so when I click on middle mouse button, it opens up a tab for the whatever link I'm over. that makes it so I can load all of the new topics here in one window, and get them all loaded at once, in a few seconds, instead of having to sift through them all one at a time.

Have you tried:

•a baseball bat?
•dropping from a high story?
•downloading more porn?
•buying a mac?

notice the •bullets• on that last post, the most underused character on this board

Wish me luck... I'm about to format the drive. And the best part? If i fuck up, there is a computer technician coming at 10:00 to work on my dad's laptop. :D

my computer is so fucked that it won't even let me format. It says that C: is in use by another process, and then aborts format. :(

Suggestions? The computer tech is coming, but I don't want to keep him here any longer than he has to be (I presume he gets paid by the hour).