well Shax glad to hear you are moving on up LOL it seems to have pretty good specs, I like HP products I have a few of them here and use them daily with little problem. I am sure you will love the new machine. Be sure you set up all the security programs on it asap and get those windows updates as quick as it goes on line, there will likely be several. It is amazing how quickly a brand new pc put online with out security in place can become infected, so definitely get the firewall and antivirus set up on it prior to going online. Let us know how it goes.

Thanks, Bob. I do see dots - but not near the notification area. It's in the quick launch area and task bar (which shows I have firefox opened) - just to the right of the start menu. So thanks to you instructions, I was able to drag it all back to the bottom. Good to know that keep task bar on top means showing. Now I'm down to just one problem. the notification icons are displaying in three rows. These rows are taking up 2 regular sized bars. I can get the start, firefox open browser tab and quick launch icons on the top line - but I can't make the bottom line disappear because the notifcation icons are taking up 3 small rows. There are no dots there - and I can't find a way to collapse them into a single line. Also - interestingly, the whole reason i started this venture was to get the safely remove hardware icon back. Even though I went to properties - and selected customize, and always show safely remove hardware icon, the icon is still not showing. And the clock is now displaying on three lines as well. Thanks. Lynn.

Nearandwest, you have discovered the best forum on GW. The great people here have helped me out of so many problems, I couldn't even list them all! Its embarrassing, but each time I think I have learned everything, my computers hit me with more. It is an ongoing, learning process. Owbist...good minds think alike. I am only doing this to learn something about cleaning out nasties. Believe me, I told him to come for help and get his computer fixed, but he didn't...he started using my computers. That was the 'straw.' I'm not sure if I can use MS Security Essentials on his XP machine. It is 4 yrs old. Raven, you have the patience of a saint! He uses his computer in his office and I am rarely in there unless he yells for help with something. As a result, I think he would receive notifications of updates and just ignore them. There is no other reason for some versions of software being so old. I have been cleaning up his machine all weekend and discovered Spywareblaster hadn't been updated since 10/09. I downloaded Secunia and he had so many old and dead versions of things its ridiculous. I am setting everything to automatic. If I can run MS Security Essentials, I will. I ran MWB and it found 2 infections. I'm now running ESECT again and so far it has found another Trojan. So I guess I'll wait for Corinne to return and continue to work on it. At least its working and I'm able to see everything again, plus I can update things. Thanks for your support, this is certainly an interesting experience. Jane

you only want the latest one so yes you can safely remove them. You might want to get start up lite by the makers of malwarebytes and take a look at your start ups and make adjustments using start up lite. StartUpLite you can also go to start> all programs> mozilla and choose the option to start firefox in safe mode to see if any of your add ons etc would be affecting it if so you can then try enabling them one at a time. If you do not use the secunia tool to check for needed updates I would do that also. Secunia Online Software Inspector what antivirus program are you using?