Okay. You guys are great. Clearly the collective wisdom is not to throw money at the problem - but figure the problem out. Owbist - in my thread on not connecting my husband's vista laptop to our network, I tried quietly, methodically to troubleshoot the issues - to no avail. I found lots of similar frustrations on google - but no solutions that worked - and I think I tried them all - at least to the best of my ability. thanks for those great, easy-to-follow instructions to transfer to an external hard drive. He'll want to do that anyway - even if he keeps this computer. This computer guy is pricey - but where I am in DC they seem to fall in the $125-140/hour range - and they can usually fix a problem. Others that charge $40-75 - that the uninformed think are good - but their know-how is less than what I find here. I tried a few of those locally recommended guys - and they accomplished the simple tasks but also made mistakes I had to hire the more expensive guy to fix. My main complaint with him is that he's wedded to his biases - he hates Vista - so his recommendation is usually to avoid or ditch it. Our struggles with Vista seem to often be how often we're blocked from things or performing simple tasks have all sort of obstacles - for "safety's" sake. Thanks to everyone for pointing out that Windows 7 is just a revamped Vista. I got my first issue of Smart Computing and they were tauting it and described some features I thought I'd love. DA - if W8 is in process, is there any indication of what it will be like? Probably worth waiting for - or at least waiting to hear more about how Windows 7 is panning out. So I'll keep plugging away on my other thread to get him connected. If I don't succeed by Tuesday, the computer guy will come and fix it. I guess we'll stop there. Thanks. Lynn.

I install malwarebytes on all of my families computers and show them how to use it. In my opinion everyone should have it. How to download and install Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware application for Windows computers use the full scan option when you scan and always update it before scanning, scan once a week. McAfee will not be on any of my computers either it caused me major problems which all disappeared when it was removed fully. If removing McAfee you must use the McAfee removal tool or it will still be lurking in your pc. You should never only depend on one program for your computers safety. Using a layered approach is the best protection. Using a good updated antivirus program, a good firewall, malware removers like malwarebytes free and superantispyware free, and installing spywareblaster and WOT are also a good idea. SpywareBlaster install the free version, once a week open it and hit the update button once it gets the updates hit the one that says enable all protection, the shield will turn green and you are done, it sits in the background protecting you from malicious sites. WOT is added to your browser to give you indicators of ratings for websites you are trying to visit, if the site is a bad one it will block it with a red circle, when you do a search on google you will have round circles at the end of each line to let you know if it is safe=green, caution=yellow, bad=red. Web of Trust (WOT) do you know if the firewall is turned on, on the computers? If she had McAfee on the pc that has to be fully removed before she can install any version of AVG. The removal tool must be used. Removal tool (MCPR.exe) be sure when installing anything to make sure you do not get any added toolbars or other junk that may be pre checked during the install process, uncheck all that are not needed. Also it is extremely important to keep everything on the pc updated including doing windows updates and all updates for java, adobe, flash etc. Use the secunia tool to make sure you have your pc updated. ecunia Online Software Inspector (OSI)

Read your manual. It probably has the guidelines best suited for 'your laptops design and its circuitry . Toshiba here was first time ever taken out of the factory box about mid December 2007, so its 1.5 yrs old, I don't know how long it sat on shelf - its battery right now shows a 6% wear level, 44000 mWh design capacity new / currently 41151 mWh at 100% of charge. Probably more than 99 percent of the time its on the AC adapter and runs 24/7. Sleeps after 100 minutes of non use which really doesn't happen every day like I should. I should force sleep for it & then maybe I'd force more normal sleep on me too ;) Battery is under the left palm rest where I feel no heat. It would be rare for me in the things I do to shut down windows before moving the laptop while the on battery. Only have the one ac adapter, meant to buy another for a second location but price always makes me dizzy.

To all you kind people: Update Some things I have managed to do so far: Made a recovery flash drive / Installed Classic shell, which has been a big help / installed my husband's Bible Works software and FireFox, our preferred browser. Today in my spare time I am working on getting and installing Open Office, having no need for and no desire to pay for Office 365, which we could have had a free trial of for one year. I don't want to start down the path of subscribing to the Office software, when all we need is a word processor, so am hoping things will go well. It seems that to download O.O. to the laptop was going to take "1 hour and 1 minute," so now I am about to see if I can download it to a flash drive on my PC and use that to do the installing. (Update on that: It worked fine. Downloaded in a flash and was easy to install, though I did have to override the laptop's warning that it wasn't from the App store, so might be dangerous.) Oh, and I have ordered an external DVD/CD optical drive so as to be able to install the OED, as my husband uses that a lot, too. Things are looking up, but he has not yet begun to try to use the laptop.