Ask A Geek

Q: When I forward inline pictures from Outlook Express, there is a blank square at the other end. I have tried different recipients, and no one is receiving the pictures. I have checked the settings in Outlook, but I did not find anything that would prevent the sending of the pictures. I am using AVG antivirus with Windows XP, but there are no settings that I can find that would cause the problem.

Q: I have Windows XP and use Internet Explorer. A few weeks ago some of the sites I visit stopped working. Some of the links on the pages are showing up as gif files instead of html but only on my computer. Any other computer I use works just fine. Does anyone know what might be wrong and how to fix it?

A: The first thing everyone should do when getting started online is to make sure they have a good antivirus software package running like AVG. The second thing everyone should do when they get online is to download a second web browser. We suggest everyone download FireFox. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: Why am I having problems installing a free antivirus program on my computer?

A: The first thing we have to point out is that not all free antivirus programs are actually antivirus programs. Some are very bad pieces of software that will infect your system and cause you to have to reinstall everything to get things cleaned. Our current recommendations for free antivirus software is currently limited to Avast and AVG.There might be a few more out there that are good but we highly suggest you do a lot of research before installing any programs on your computer be it antivirus programs or even toolbars. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: I have a Acer Aspire 6920G Laptop. The problem is that when nothing is running my CPU Usage is 100%. When I unplug my charger and plug it back in it resets the CPU Usage for a while (100%-35%). I run around 38-50 processes. My Task manager says that none of them take more then 0-3 % of the I have no virus’s on my computer so says “AVG” as I run scans everyday.

Q: WinBlueSoft or WiniBlueSoft has taken over my computer. How do I get rid of it? I can’t access the task manager to stop any process and the cursor freezes up at start up. What can be done?

Q: AVG free tells me my computer is infected with Win32/Heur. How do I remove it for good? Hope it’s easy as I’m no sleuth on my PC.

Q: How reliable is Free edition AVG antivirus and do I need to install separate firewall/anti-spyware tools, even though it says it covers me with it all. It is showing up-to-date status.

AVG has a big bank of identified trojans and some virus stuff in virus vault. A “threat detected” warning screen keeps popping up asking if I want to “heal” move to vault” or “ignore”.

What do I do now with all the stuff in the vault?

Q: Which free anti-virus/spyware can remove threats detected during on-demand scans? If a threat is detected during scans but cannot be removed by the program, then what?

Q: My computer will not run any P2P programs such as limewire. I cleared the registry, ran check disk, ran virus and malware scans,titi and I don’t know what else to do. The problem just stared, it was working, so what happened and how do I fix it?

Q: I have Webroot Antivirus and Norton installed on my computer. Norton expired and I tried to renew it but as I was doing that Norton told me that I would have to uninstall Webroot. Webroot is also about to expire so I am wondering which antivirus program I should keep. Which antivirus program is the best right now?

A: Since antivirus programs stay running all the time to check files as you use them you only want to have one installed and running at a time. When you have more than one running at a time they could seriously degrade the performance of your computer. Read the rest of this entry »