I don't see an issue with AVG on 7. I do see an issue with McAfee see link. If you like AVG and are use to it then for sure consider it. Download it to the desktop and install it. If you restored to factory settings like you said McAfee should not be active, a perfect time to uninstall it. It should uninstall using programs and features, we don't even need to worry about that yet because no McAfee files are running yet. Note The McAfee removal tool is not removing some new versions of McAfee. "Enterprise Software Detected" please contact McAfee. Lets avoid that or it's off to Revo un installer. When you get home connect Ethernet cable to the laptop. Then try going to www.google.com. Only go there just see if Google opens. Let us know if you get this far and we can give you a direct link for AVG so you may install that. Then while McAfee is not active we can uninstall it as I mentioned. If you want I can look at a hijack log for you after.

The Toshiba A135 received a Very Good rating from cnet. Cnet doesn't give very many $1000 affordable laptops that high of a rating. I recently bought the A135 2877, I believe is the model, the one with 2 gs of mem. (would recommend 2 gigs minimum for vista, from what I hear. It has a 180g hard drive, actually two seperate hard drives, a 100g plus an 80g. Great for backing up your system. With this much memory and hd space, you could collect a sizeable video and audio library (were talking hundreds of songs and movies). It runs Vista flawlessly. Yes, there are faster systems out there. I would have loved one with the Nvidia graphics card, which would give you a whopping 512m of shared graphics memory. The Intel that comes with the A135 has 256megs, acceptable. For about $1100 at costco online, I thinks it's one of the best deals out there. It was about $300 more than I wanted to spend on a laptop, but I'm just thinking where technology is going today, with streaming video, tv and music becomming more and more prevailant, before too long, anything less that 2 gigs of memory and a harddrive less than 100 gigs will probably be obsolete in the next couple years. I think this will be sufficient for our needs for some years to come. -- john

I agree right now if you can keep your old pc working for you and wait till windows 7 comes out you will be avoiding having to purchase any upgrades. It will be out in about a year. If you have any friends that have pc knowledge likely they could easily help you install a new hard drive and some RAM, these are things I do myself but my first time I was pretty anxious. I also agree that the desktop is generally the best option unless you travel a lot and would need a laptop for that. My sister just asked me the same question and I talked her into a desktop pretty quickly, if you have not used a laptop try asking a friend with one to let you try it out for an hour or so, feel how the keyboard feels, see how you like the touch pad instead of a mouse, etc. If you have any problems seeing also consider the smaller screen of a laptop. I have pretty severe hand problems so using a smaller keyboard would be very difficult. Sitting in a chair with the laptop on your lap would require some type of laptop desk so you do not block the air flow. As stated updating and replacing parts in a laptop is much more difficult. One thing you could definitely do also rather than install a new hard drive in your pc is buy a stand alone usb backup hard drive and move all your thousands of pictures and music and other files and data to that hard drive and free up your hard drive in the pc, if you did that and got rid of any old programs you no longer need, clean out any junk files and folders, empty the recycle bin, defrag the hard drive you may find you have plenty of room on that 80Gig hard drive. I have been seeing some incredible prices lately on usb hard drives so you could easily find a nice size one for around $50, and you could use that stand alone hard drive with any new computer you buy in the future. Plus no one would have to install it for you, you just plug it into your usb port and then you can access it from your pc just like your other hard drive. Add some RAM to what ever belarc says is your limit for that pc or at least 2 gig and I bet you would be surprised. RAM is cheap. I just bought a 1gig stick for one of my computers and it was less than $20 shipped. If your current pc is a desktop I would also highly suggest turning it off unplug it and open the side panel up and clean out all the dust bunnies, that can really affect the performance of a pc. Cleaning the computer and its components ecost has some very good prices right now this search is for under $50 units but it gives you some ideas. well now you have lots of options and ways to go and up to you to make that big decision. Here is a link that might be useful: usb hard drives

There are some things you can do to improve the speed of your computer. Everyone should do these to keep everything functioning properly. I have a friend who is a software engineer and this is what he has recommended that I do in the past. If anyone needs additional help, let me know and I'll help you out. Also, sorry for the length of this - there may be a few tricks you may be able to use. 1) Scan your computer system for viruses, spyware, and other malware - Spyware and viruses can cause many problems with your computer including slowing down your system, corrupting or erasing data, causing system crashes, or stealing data. These are horrible and can cause irreparable damage to your computer, data, and on-line safety. If you ever access the internet, keeping up to date on your anti-virus software is one of the most important things you can do to extend your computers life, safeguard your information, and prevent identity theft. You can use commercial software such as Norton AntiVirus or McAfee VirusScan, or free software such as Spybot - Search and Destroy. It is recommended to set up an automatic scan to occur at least once a week. 2) Move all unnecessary files to an external hard drive, CD, or DVD - The fewer items you have on your hard drive, the quicker it will be for your computer to locate the files you need on a regular basis. Move pictures, mP3Âs, large databases, and other large files to an external hard drive or CD to free up space and to make it easier and faster for your computer to perform functions. 3) Remove unused programs - Unnecessary programs use up valuable disk space and consume resources, especially if the program automatically runs on startup. Remove these to free up hard drive space and resources - and speed up your computer. How to remove unused programs: Click Start Â> Control Panel Â> Add or Remove Programs Select the program to remove You may have to restart your computer after removing a program. I usually do this after I have removed every program I intend to remove, instead of doing them one at a time. 4) Remove autostart programs - Many programs are designed to automatically start when the computer boots up. This sucks up your computerÂs processing power and slows it down tremendously. Many times you donÂt even want/need the program to constantly run in the background. Removing the program from your start up will improve your computerÂs performance. A good utility to see what is running at start up (and at other times) is AutoRuns, which is a free Microsoft product. It does not need to be installed - just download, then run it (execute it). It will display everything that starts automatically, the order it starts, where the file is located and more. How to remove autostart programs: Click Start Â> Run Â> type msconfig Â> Click OK Select Startup Tab Â> this displays a list of programs that run on startup Uncheck those you donÂt want to run on startup (do a Google search to identify those you arenÂt familiar with, or check out sysinfo.org). The programs you unchecked will not load the next startup and your computer will start faster next time. You can still run the programs by starting them as normal. 5) Turn off programs you arenÂt using - If all you are doing is checking your e-mail you probably donÂt need 5-10 applications running. Turn off programs that constantly run in the background, and close other programs when you have finished with them. This will free up processing power for other applications and your computer will perform faster. 6) Clean up Disk Space with the Disk Cleanup Tool - Freeing space on your hard drive will improve your computerÂs performance. The Disk Cleanup tool helps you do that by identifying files that you can safely delete, then enabling you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the identified files. This is a great way to remove your temporary internet files and other data that just takes up space. How to clean up disk space: Click Start Â> All Programs Â> Accessories Â> System Tools Â> Disk Cleanup. or Open My Computer Â> right-click Local Disk Â> and then click Properties. Select which files you want to delete. You may have to do this for each drive if you have more than one hard drive. The system will spend a few minutes analyzing how much space will be saved. Click run. The process will take a few minutes. 7) Run Scandisk or Check Disk to check your hard drive for errors - Scandisk is a Windows utility which you can use to scan your hard disk for errors caused by improper shut-downs, viruses, and other problems. It can also clean your hard drive of the miscellaneous errors caused by software conflicts. Using Scandisk will help you check the integrity of a computer hard drive drive to help prevent issues with your computer data. It can also help isolate and correct errors that slow down your computer. How to run Scandisk: Close all applications and programs and turn off your screensaver Click Start Â> Run Â> type in: scandisk You will have an option of choosing a "standard" or a "thorough" scandisk. If you have never done a scandisk before, choose the "thorough" option. Be prepared to wait this may take awhile! Check Disk: Accoring to Wikipedia, ScanDisk is similar to Check Disk. How to run Check Disk: Click Start Â> Run Â> type in: chkdsk To automatically fix any errors that are found, Type "chkdsk /F" (note space). You must restart your computer for it to run Again, this may take awhile! 8) Defrag your hard drive - Disk fragmentation slows the overall performance of your system. Data on your hard drive gets fragmented the more often you install new programs, delete data, and move data to new folders and locations. This causes data to be broken up (fragmented) and stored in different locations. When this happens, your computerÂs performance slows down because it has to search in more places to retrieve the data. Run a system defrag to arrange your files better so your PC can access them faster, which will increase your computerÂs speed and performance. If it has been awhile since you have done this, you may need to perform a system defrag several times to gain full benefit. I like to run a system defrag about once a month on my home computer. I run it more often at work because I deal with large databases. How to run a system defrag: Click Start Â> All Programs Â> Accessories Â> System Tools Â> Disk Defragmenter. In the Disk Defragmenter dialog box, click the drives that you want to defragment, and then click the Analyze button. After the disk is analyzed, a dialog box appears, letting you know whether you should defragment the analyzed drives. Keep in mind, this process can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. If it takes a few hours that means your disk is highly fragmented and you will probably want to run a system defrag several times until a defrag completes in just a few minutes. 9) Install additional RAM (Memory)- The amount of RAM in your computer has a direct impact on your computerÂs processing speed. The larger your computerÂs RAM, the quicker it is able to perform certain functions. If you donÂt have enough RAM, your computer will use temporary disk space instead (virtual memory), which will substantially slow down performance. How much RAM do you need? Computers running Windows XP need a minimum of 256MB and 512MB is recommended. If you use a photo editing program like PhotoShop, play graphic intensive computer games, or if you often have several programs open simultaneously you will need more. I have 512MB one a laptop, and 2GB on a new computer. How to check the size of your computerÂs RAM: go to Start  > Control Panel Â> System. It will be shown on the bottom of the page. How to upgrade your RAM (memory): Each computer has a different method for upgrading your memory, so I recommend reading your user manual, look at the memory upgrade instructions by Microsoft, or doing a Google search for a user forum where you can find instructions for your model computer. In most cases, it only involves accessing the area where the RAM is located and clicking it into place. I added RAM to my laptop, and the process involved removing 4 screws, inserting the new stick of RAM, and starting the computer. It was extremely simple, and something anyone can do (keep in mind, however, it may be more difficult depending on your computer setup). After adding additional RAM, my laptop seemed almost new again. How much does RAM cost? The RAM for my computer was only $30 (including shipping), and it was well worth the expense. Depending on where you purchase the RAM, you should expect to spend anywhere from $20-100, depending on the type of RAM you buy. I found a great deal on a memory stick on eBay and saved over 50%. Another great place to find inexpensive computer components is TigerDirect.com. Using these tips, I was able to extend the life of one of my computers. The biggest difference maker was upgrading the RAM. The other actions - performing anti-virus scans, system defrags, and removing unnecessary files, are good things to do on a regular basis and will help your computer maintain its performance. They will make your computer run smoother and faster, and possibly last longer.