No offense taken. I never recommend realtime applications other than a single AV. Without this limitation a user could inundate there system with applications running in the background which would demand resources and possibly conflict with one another. For all the postive service they could provide the potential negativity is there too. A user has to accept some responsibility for awareness, and protection such as frequent scheduled scans. Just two schools of thought. DA

Hi, Sorry for the delay. And apologies for the long response. I attempted a system restore and somewhere along the way my computer had stopped booting up completely. While I never got the blue screen of death, I did get the black screen of purgatory. ;-) Apparently (based on later events) the system restore never completed. At some point during the process I got a black screen with a white arrow/cursor (perhaps it was just after the "starting windows" screen). And it just stopped there. I manually shut down (turned off the switch at the surge protector) and tried restarting, but the computer couldn't get past that black screen! Well, at that point I started trying different things: - trying to boot up in safe mode (didn't work; got stuck at the same point), - trying the 'start up repair' option on the same screen as the safe mode option. That didn't work either and it was during these attempts that I got a blue screen saying, "a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer." Etc. But there was no way to shut down, so I had to do it the old fashioned way: turn off at the surge protector. Then on to trying something else. - trying the Windows Memory DIagnostic Tool, which I found inadvertently while poking around the same screen general menu area as the above. The WMDT started a two-part scan and froze during part 2. While it was scanning, though, it did display a "Status:" message indicating that hardware problems were detected and that I should contact the computer manufacturer. Well, instead I called the delightfully honest and knowledgeable computer guy who built my computer for me. :-) (more on that below) Finally, I again tried booting up and ended up on the same screen as the one where I found the WMDT option. At the top it simply said "Windows 7," which I thought was just a heading, but it was an actual option. So, I selected it just to see what would happen, and suddenly it took me all the way to the desktop screen! I had/have no idea how that happened! But once there, and after looking things over, I realized that the system restore I attempted earlier never went through successfully. Neither did my Pale Moon uninstall. Well, I skipped attempting another system restore and instead did the following: - again used geekuninstall to remove Pale Moon (this time also choosing the "forced removal" option, which ended up removing all registry items as well; I hadn't done that the first time), - shut down properly (first time I could do that in a while!) and fully (i.e. not the 'restart' option) and restarted manually, which finally took me through to the desktop as it should! - ran all scans (AV, MBAM, SAS) as complete scans, all of which were successful and detected no problems! Since then I have had no problems booting up or shutting down and no crashes of FF. :-) So, as far as I can determine just from the computer's behavior, it was probably all caused by using the 64-bit Pale Moon. :-/ Btw, my computer guy was going to come over and physically look at the computer (based on the computer's behavior and the status message I got (above), he suspected harddisc issues). But after telling him that I am now able to reboot and that everything is pretty much back to normal, we will be setting up a time and he will be able to access the computer remotely and do various checks. Now, in response to posts made since my previous one: owbist - Thanks for the link. :-) But I don't have the disc necessary to do that. DA - I was watching either You Tube videos or videos at the 'watchseries' site (mentioned here at this forum on occasion). Once in a while I watch old American TV shows from that site, but it never gave me any issues. And it seems that it really wasn't the problem this time either. It was just during the viewing of them that PM or FF would crash; more a symptom than the main problem. mikie - Thanks for your further suggestions! I never had a chance to read them before my journey into limbo, and now that things are working I'm afraid to mess with success at the moment by doing something I could easily mess up! :-D But I'll definitely bookmark this thread for future reference. Thanks to all for your feedback!

Turning off tracking cookie checking is a configuration option in SuperAntiSpyware. But imagine that will save only a few seconds on total time to scan completion. Running a cookie cleaner like CCleaner before virus scans will keep the found warnings window less scary looking from all the tracking cookie finds.:) By default SuperAntiSpyware default configuration is 'only scans known file types' & few times I've noticed when that option is unchecked the computers anti-virus program will additionally pop some extra warnings on the second scan when SAS touches some of the bad guy type files - but it adds alot of time to the scan completion. I just cleaned one reoccurring virus .. it was acrobat.com would ask to update.. and that was the offending party. So every update... scan again hah.

A fax doesn't always have to be set to receive and a dedicated line is not REQUIRED, however if you have need to receive faxes 24/7 and not be there to attend to it if you use the phone line for other things, then a dedicated line is more important. If you simply need to send and/or receive a fax on occasion, then your current line will work. You could even use fax software on your computer to fax. This was my preferred method when I'd prepare letters, contracts, reports, etc on the computer, then fax it out of the computer and receive faxes into the computer and use my printer to print them out rather than use the thermal paper that many faxes use or an inkjet, etc. Once I started needing to fax other peoples' forms that needed to be filled in and the like I bought a cheap standalone fax machine to send them (rather than scan them into the computer and fax it out of the PC and still receive them on the computer. There's also email to fax and fax to email services available. For a while I had a "fax number" and then it converted the fax to an email and emailed it to me. I did a few sending faxes over the internet too. For the unit. The combination units, called 4in1 when it has fax, scan, print and copy capability (a 3in1 doesn't have the fax ability) and they can be a flatbed scanner or a sheetfed scanner (similar to a conventional fax machine. Sheetfed are handier if you send multiple pages regularly. This is why I bought a fax machine (new for about $16) when I had to send multiple pages. The units normally will have a built in phone so you can use it as a regular phone - thus eliminating the plug/unplug all the time. There's a setting to sense fax receiving and it can be off and if you hear the fax tone, just hit receive and it'll receive the fax. Or you can set the fax to pick up after, say 5 rings as long as a voicemail or answering machine doesn't pick it up. There's machines and software that will sense whether it's a voice call or fax and adjust accordingly. If it hears the tone it'll work like a fax and receive it. If it doesn't get the fax tone it'll work like a voicemail/answering machine. There's a number of options, depending on need and budget.