Ellie if you only have anti virus you are at risk. I would suggest you get Malwarebytes and SUPERantispyware, both of which are free. These require you to manually update and run scans but they only need doing every one to 3 weeks depending on how conscientious/nervous you are. I never leave my external hard drive connected to the computer. This is both for safety and economy. Connected it is open to attack and also runs all the time. If you have a factory built computer your power supply might be taxed to a degree unless your external drive is self powered. Most today are not self powered I believe. You wrote: If I can't bring my computer up ( that is called a crash or a blue screen) I install my recovery discs first. The CD drive works even if the computer has crashed. There is no real answer to this untill the catastrophic event occurs. You might get clues for days before the event to warn you. There would also be valuable clues in the event of a blue screen of death from the error message displayed. (BSOD) I assume you mean Best Buy replaced a defective hard drive with a new one? What was written on the labels of the disks from BB? That would be a clue as to what they are for. As I noted before recovery disks allow you to take your computer back to the new state it was in when purchased, a backup created on your external drive will return the computer to the state at the time of that backup. Any work saved in between would be lost. You can store your data on the computer itself and back it up to the external drive for protection. Always a good plan to have data you do not wish to lose saved in 2 locations Outlook is generally a part of Microsoft Office although I understand it can be bought as a stand alone program - quite expensive too. One would presume Cobian Backup came with your Go_Flex drive. It is good that you ask these questions but be sure to allow yourself to enjoy the benefit these things can bring you. A computer is only as good as the person sat in front of the keyboard. Urlee and Cat_ky I have no issues with anyone owning more than one computer, I have 6 and all working yet I live alone. But to purchase another computer "just in case" seems rather more than odd to me and a complete waste of money for an item that keeps becoming out of date with alarming regularity. Don expressed it very wisely I think.

bugsybanks : Finally get back to this . . . . re : "Regarding the change to IMAP, I have 3 e-mail addresses set up through my server on the desktop and all 3 are now POP3 on that computer. Do I delete each account and then recreate it as IMAP? Will I lose the e-mails that have been saved under Local Folders? " One thing . . . my "Local folders" only contain Trash & Outbox. All my other Inboxes, etc. are within separate acct folders. I.E., each other acct. contains an Inbox, Drafts, Sent, etc. - outside of "Local Folders." Anyway, there's a good chance that after you create an IMAP acct., the email that you have already downloaded using POP mail, and deleted from the server - won't show up in the IMAP Inbox. You'd have to import them back in. Just to be safe, I would export all your email first so that you have it as backup. Then make new accts as IMAP. See if everything looks correct, or if you need to import anything from the backup you just made. Finally, delete the POP accts. There is a really handy addon tool for TB : ImportExportTools https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/?src=search (That page looks complicated, but the use of the tool is not) The two different ways to export using that tool are - (and you get to the choices by right clicking on "Inbox" or any other folder) : 1) "Export folder" (w/ or w/o structure) This makes an Mbox file of everything that you export. It makes for just a few simple files that aggregate everything within the respective folders. So you will end up w/ one Inbox file, one Drafts file, etc. "Structure" just means you will keep the nested structure of the folders. The disadvantage is that you can't read them later w/o importing them back first (using ImportExportTools). 2) "Export all Messages" (and choose "eml" format here) This exports each email as a .eml file - and you can identify and read each one separately later after exporting. So if you export 500 emails, you'll get 500 .eml files. You can batch import them though using ImportExportTools. And you can read them just by clicking on them individually. There's no harm in exporting both ways if you like. Just create separate folders so you can keep it all straight. Play around with it a bit until you get the hang of it. For all the people recommending this way to do email or that - this debate has been going on for years. There are advantages and disadvantages to each - it really depends on your needs. I wouldn't say that any one of them is "unusual" as someone commented - what's unusual to one is likely normal to someone else. Personally I use them all, and all for different purposes - no one method seems to work for every purpose. I do use web based email for the most part though. Hope that helped. -Kent This post was edited by kbarb on Mon, Oct 20, 14 at 0:42

Thanks everyone. I did try to disable the programs Owbist recommended from the startup. It suggested I reboot - which I did, but it also said that access was denied and I might have to log in as the system administrator to make some of those changes. I have no idea how to log in as system administrator. This is my computer and I'm the only one who uses it, but a computer tech guy did set it up for me a year ago - and I don't know if he set me up as administrator or not. How can I check this out. [This is a separate question, but may be related. I think I need to log on as system administrator and secure my network - and find out my network's name and password. Again, I don't remember setting this up - but perhaps the tech guy did and asked me to pick a password and name - I think I would know which password I would have picked if he asked me. He might have had me type it in. I'm having trouble keeping my new laptop connected - and it is asking me the name of the network and other information. Sorry - I probably shouldn't ask this here, but I think it's related to logging on as system administrator]. Anyway, now when I start the computer, I have to go through a series of prompts to acknowledge that this is not the default start up. So this isn't saving time to get up and running. I'm sure there's another way to do this. I don't think I use real player - but how would I know what I use if I'm on a site like Amazon or Youtube and listen to a clip/video. If I'm not using realplayer, is there a default windows media player (I vaguely recall this) that gets used. Which is the best default music player to have? Is there any reason I would want to keep realplayer? Can I always get it later for free if I realize later I want it? Ravencajun - I do have revouninstaller and got a list of programs on the pc. But I don't know how to view what starts at boot up? When i tried to press "Hunter" mode, it just exists revo uninstaller. I was able to click on the programs and see that there are other probably useless ones - like netzero, earthlink set up files, - but when I click the link to google them, many sites state it's crapware and should be removed, but yahoo answers said best to leave it and be sure. So I don't know and haven't yet figured out how to get revo uninstaller to make suggestions. If I have revo uninstaller, would the WinPatrol still be good to run in addition? Can you tell me what you mean by disbling some of the startup programs in services rather than in msconfig? Not sure how to do that. Thanks. Lynn.

If she wants a desktop program, it will depend on the operating system she has. If XP, then she can use Outlook Express and configure her Yahoo, Gmail, or whatever to download into that without going to the web site. If she has Windows 7, MS has a program called Windows Live Mail which she must install on her computer. Again, her mail can be configured to download to her desktop program. And there's Thunderbird which has been mentioned.