Fixing Rose's laptop
The Rose complains that her laptop is slow. I sit down to take a look.
- Boot machine. Ten minutes later, Windows is done loading. Slowness confirmed.
- Run msconfig. Removed useless startup items. (qttask, rundll32, ituneshelper) Reboot. Still slow.
- Run regedit. Search for “run”. Remove more useless startup items. Reboot. iTunes crashes with a Chinese error message.
- Uninstall iTunes. Run regedit again. msniu.exe is back at startup. Delete it. Watch it add itself back. Virus.
- Contemplate installing a real OS (Unbuntu). Decide against it.
- Get USB key with anti-virus software (AVG) on it.
- Install AVG. Watch it kill msniu.exe.
- Install Microsoft’s anti-spyware program. Girlfriend says it’s best. Watch spyware die.
- Reboot. Still slow. Look at installed programs. Lots of Norton anti-virus, internet helper, and popup blocker software there. Delete it all. Reboot. Slowness gone.
- Contemplate installing a real web browser (Firefox). Decide against it.
- Reinstall English language version of iTunes.
- Try to schedule disk defrag and cleanup to run semi-regularly. Access denied error. Curse CompUSA techs who “restored machine to factory settings”.
- Girlfriend helps. Access denied error gone. Defrag, cleanup, anti-virus, and spyware killer should all be automated now.
- Reboot. Network connection slow to initialize. Really slow. Why?
- Run HP online diagnostic. Install lots of ActiveX controls. Watch remote scripts take over machine and “test” hardware. Scary.
- Only problems found are with HP software. Let it all autoupdate itself. No problems found. Reboot.
- Network connection slightly faster. Decide that’s good enough for now. Shut down computer.
- Go play with SSH on my Mac.