I had my computer taken over by viri, pop ups, pop unders and take overs, a LONG time loading and various other crud.
I have a new desk top on the way, decided I could not hurt my 7 year old Vista machine so I started uninstalling anything I did not know well.
Must have hit  something right, the annoyances have mostly stopped.
I also have a lap top with 7, could not get it to find my LAN and stay with it, was trying again a few days ago, must have done something different because it has been connected several days now, I am posting from it, now.
 I have a cheap tablet, with 7 basic, it found my LAN within 10 seconds of turning it on the first time, so I now have 3 computers working with another on the way.
I am very ignorant on computers, so I went to Amazon and found some basic 7 books, 3 on the way.
Perhaps I can get past the blind pig stage.

Quote from: drinksgin;136042...I could not hurt my 7 year old Vista machine so I started uninstalling anything I did not know well.
Must have hit something right, the annoyances have mostly stopped.
...

 
That is always sound advice, Windows generally will not let you get rid of something it REALLY needs

HOORAY!

Paul

PS - I have spent most of my life with my nose to the ground sniffing out truffles only now and then.

Paul

Oh, well. What ever I did has worn off, all the crud is back.

Quote from: drinksgin;136062Oh, well. What ever I did has worn off, all the crud is back.

three free downloads that will most likely take care of your problem one is called


ccleaner. this is a utilities program that gets rid of double files, cookies, and so on. the cond one is glary utilities does the same thing as ccleaner but they each will find things the other one does not and the last one that i think is going to fix the problem you have at the moment is malwarebytes. it rids your computer of malware that is what it sounds like what you are infected with. hope this helps.

Did you try the online virus scan Don?

I just tried the 3 programs farmboy named.
I went to the co.s site, clicked download, it went to my download site, I waited until it was through, then when  I  tried to run the program I got a notice that the download had failed.Humm, now what?

Maybe try it again I would do the malwarebytes first and then run the scan.the other two are often given away in one of the computer mags they include a disc sorry I do not remember the name of the mag but if you find one with a free disc and programs it will most likely have these programs on it. Make sure you download the free version.

I have tried to download all 3 of the programs farmboy told me about, all 3 start to download, then click over to a notice the download failed. I have done this several times with the same result each time.

Don, Have you tried booting the computer(s) in "safe" mode?

If you boot in Safe mode, nothing will run but the OS.
Do that.
Then go into the start menu and manually enable the LAN card, as it will likely be disabled in safe mode.

Then download Malwarebytes Anti Malware, and open and install.  This will usually take extra time because the accelerator is disabled in safe mode.  (especially the download)

Then, if Malwarebytes says you have to re-boot to use it, do so, but into Safe mode again.

Then run Malwarebytes.

Jamie, I just looked at the start menu, I did not see anything about the LAN

It's in there under network connections Don.  Under "settings" on the start menu.

After you're booted into Safe Mode, just be sure it's enabled or you won't be able to connect to the net.

I could not get anything to work, so I did a 30 day ago restore, I was then able to download malwarebytes, open, run and get it started on a scan, it has been scanning over   45 minutes, has scanned over 350,000 objects and found 9 malicious items, one of which is the sory trojan named "windows defender" the  scum who wrote the blurb for the program should  be able to make several million dollars selling used cars or writing lies for  pols.

Are you running it in Safe mode?
Sometimes there are malicious enough programs that can hide when all the resources are available.
Safe Mode prevents them from hiding.

Dumping your cookies helps the scan go faster too Don.

Glad you are getting them after you eliminate the malware down load cleaner and run it. Your computer will run way faster when you get rid of all the junk in it.