Finally, I did it. Took this gizmo to a computer guru and had him

[yy4me]

go over it top to bottom. There has been funny stuff, far beyond my ability to even relay, going on here for months. Every time I booted up this thing in the AM, I would get a message that "I had to restart the computer before I could update". I wasn't ever updating anything that would or should have done that. Half of the programs I had would not operate properly including the word-processing program. My pictures would not print, I got a message saying that a component was missing.

I decided it was time to have a professional take a look inside this thing.
He said I had about 6 anti-virus and anti-spywear programs going, even though I could only see AVG and Ad-Aware. He also told me that the registry was corrupted plus that I had lots of programs that he questioned why I would even have. I'm not one to download stuff, in fact I downloaded very little. Some of the junk he found must have piggybacked on the installation disk for my camera and perhaps some of it was an HP goodie that came with the computer. He got rid of stuff that I do not need, or that I could not delete. My desktop looks good, the programs in My Computer look logical and a couple that would not go away are now gone.

It is now the speed of lightening and I am one happy camper.

He told me never to download anything in the future without checking with him first. For me, that is great advice.

[hobbit709]

1. Any time you get a prebuilt computer

the first thing to do after setting it up and connecting is to download PC Decrapifier and run it. It gets rid of the the crap that HP, Dell, etc bog down their computers with. The "trial" offers and like need to go. You'd be amazed how faster the computer works after you get rid of the crap.

[DemReadingDU]

2. Where do I get Decrapifier?

This computer is a couple years old, will Decrapifier help to make this computer run faster? Do you have a link to download?

[hobbit709]

3. Here U B

http://pcdecrapifier.com/
Getting rid of crap always improves performance.

[DemReadingDU]

4. Thanks, I'll check it out! n/t

[Gore1FL]

5. Did he freak out when he saw

pagedefrag and autoruns?

It sounds like he got a lot more done for you that I did in this forum.

[yy4me]

6. Hi, and thanks for your help prior to my final "I've had it".

He said nothing about pagedefrag and autoruns but did tell me that my registry was corrupt, that I had(and wasn't aware of it)5 or6 Anti-virus, ad-aware, spy-wear etc. programs and they were arguing with each other.(He commented that I had lots of programs that he felt I would never have wanted and that may have piggybacked on other downloads.) I did not know I had all the anti-everything all I could see was the AVG and spy-bot. He has set up the same anti-virus and another anti-spywear program for me and said leave it alone now.

I told him I wanted everything cleaned up, get rid of stuff that I would never use. (games etc) I needed access to programs that I will use, not all the stuff that someone else put there. He was great and as I review what is here now it looks good. He got rid of Wise registry cleaner, Wise Disk cleaner too. I had tried removing them,the machine would not allow me to do so. He said he had to manually remove some of the stuff. I tried to do so from the Control Panel but I could not.

I no longer get the message that components are missing when I try to see my pictures and the message that told me I had to restart my computer in order to update it that came up each morning is now gone.

I can tell by the speed of this thing that it is about 200% faster.

His one warning, don't download anything ever unless I call him first to see if it is ok to do so.

Edit: I repeated half of what I said in the original post-forgive me for not re-reading it. Guess I'm just tired. Bless you all who do this work all day!