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Hi, My computer has been a lot slower lately, and I'm thinking I can remove at least a few of the items checked below. I've run Registry First Aid, to clean up invalid files, paths, shortcuts, etc. and still am having performance issues. Eventually, I'll purchase additional RAM, but in the meantime, any advice or freeware you would recommend, to speed up? Many thanks for any tips.

Three computers...$2000 worth of software. This stuff extends about 12 feet above....I know where everything is....I have no life...at least during the daytime. I still have my old 555mgh Compaq from 1998...runs perfectly.. 1999...just moved in... 2004 I'm a packrat when it comes to hardware...

WEB GURU NEEDED By Michelle Malkin   ·   November 28, 2004 02:13 PM Reader Michael S. Sanders asks if he is "the only one who cannot download any of your graphics on your site." No, Michael, you are not the only one. It's a pretty common problem, unfortunately. Is there anyone out there who can help? If so, my e-mail address is malkin@comcast.net.

Phishers tapping botnets to automate attacks By John Leyden Published Friday 26th November 2004 13:55 GMT Computer criminals are making phishing more potent by automating attacks. Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) analysts reckon fraudsters are using automated tools and botnets to ramp up attacks. It estimates attacks grew by an average of 36 per cent a month between July and October.Scam emails that form the basis of phishing attacks often pose as 'security check' requests from well-known businesses. These messages attempt to trick users into handing over their account details and passwords to bogus sites. The details collected this way are...

By Gene J. Koprowski Published 11/24/2004 11:56 AM CHICAGO, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- A team of scientists is developing a "virtual tumor," a computer model viewed over the Internet by cancer researchers around the globe. It is used to observe the tumor as it develops from a single cell organism to a neoplasm, an uncontrolled growth of tissue.The cutting-edge project, in the planning stages right now, and others like it, promise to harness the power of the Internet in the battle against cancer -- and in other crucial scientific endeavors -- in the coming years, experts told UPI's The Web.Last...

Need some help from our resident computer experts. My computer died last night. The hard drive started making a racket and the thing locked up, so I'm 100% sure it's a mechanical problem with the drive. I know physically changing the drive is easy but then configuring it could be a real bear.My question is how big of a problem is it to get the thing back up and running again? It's a 3-4 year old Gateway given to me by my son when he bought a Dell notebook. It has a good lcd monitor, would I be better off...

I hope I am posting this in the right area :) I have a web page that SHOULD automatically refresh itself every x number of minutes. It isn't. I am trying to figure out if there is a setting on my computer that will fix the problem? I have already gone into options and clicked on automatically check for newer version of web page. This didn't fix the problem though. The page I am trying to refresh (automatically) works fine at home on my home computer. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks

Hey Freepers, you gotta keep those computers healthy, so I thought I'd post these links together for those of you without good spyware protection on your computer. These programs will clean your system out and get rid of a bunch of nasty little programs that have installed themselves on your PC over the years without your knowledge. This is a great combination of products (100% FREE!) that can deal a knockout blow to spyware and bad computer viruses. To eliminate spyware, use these. Ad-Aware 6.0: http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edition/3000-8022_4-10319876.html?tag=lst-0-2 and Spybot Search and Destroy: http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10289035.html?tag=lst-0-2 If you don't have a good Antivirus program...

Russian fined for virus-writing exploits By John Leyden Published Thursday 18th November 2004 13:24 GMT A Russian member of well-known 29A virus writers group has been fined 3,000 roubles (approximately £57) after he admitted writing malicious code. Eugene Suchkov (AKA Whale), from the little-known Russian republic of Udmurtia, admitted writing the Stepan and Gastropod viruses. He posted live code for the viruses alongside the source code necessary to create variants onto a number of underground virus exchange websites. Neither of these viruses spread. The nickname Whale comes from the name of a virus rather than any reference to Suchkov's physical...

Internet hunting idea has wildlife officials up in armsHOUSTON, Texas (Reuters) -- Hunters soon may be able to sit at their computers and blast away at animals on a Texas ranch via the Internet, a prospect that has state wildlife officials up in arms.The Web site already offers target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and could soon let hunters shoot at deer, antelope and wild pigs, site creator John Underwood said on Tuesday.Texas officials are not quite sure what to make of Underwood's Web site, but may tweak existing laws to make sure Internet hunting does not get out...

Microsoft's Google-killer arrives with a 'whuh?' By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco Published Friday 12th November 2004 12:01 GMT Google's executives might be sleeping a little easier this weekend after Microsoft unveiled its much-hyped new search engine. It's fast, slick, and comes with a raft of interesting new features: confounding some expectations as surely as it confirms others. In short, Microsoft has produced a search engine that's better in almost every way than Google, except for one: its search results are terrible. But let's start with the good stuff.Incredibly, MSN Beta Search trumps Google for speed: it's an order of...

I have written a book and have turned it into a PDF. I now want to sell it on eBay, but want to do so by making it downloadable (thus saving myself effort and the buyer shipping fees and time). I don't see any mechanism for making a file available for download by the buyer. Also, eBay help doesn't seem to address this possibility. Can I do what I want to do? Thanks.

U.S.A tops supercomputer list again!! #1 and #2 beating Japans "Earth Simulator". Topping the charts is IBM and the US Department of Energy's 'BlueGene/L DD2' beta system, at 70.72 TFlops, followed by NASA's 'Columbia' at 51.87.TFlops. Go USA!!!!!!

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A $100 million supercomputer being built to analyze the nation's nuclear stockpile has again set an unofficial performance record — the second in just over a month. IBM Corp.'s still-incomplete Blue Gene/L system, which will be installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, achieved a sustained performance of 70.72 trillion calculations per second using a standard test program, the Department of Energy said Thursday. The world's current official leader, Japan's Earth Simulator, can sustain 35.86 trillion calculations per second using the same software. The announcement is the latest in a series of claims leading up to next...

Phishing for dummies: hook, line and sinker By Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus  Published Tuesday 2nd November 2004 14:55 GMT Recent "phishing" episodes, and two new browser vulnerabilities, show how the bad guys are tricking people into exposing their passwords and bank accounts. Couldn't happen to tech-savvy users, right? Unless you consider how entire nations have been fooled.The art of faking out opponents in a clever, elegant, beautiful way is one that I find fascinating, and I cherish examples of that art. When looking through history for stories illustrating the deliberate use of distractions to obfuscate an intended purpose, I often return...

President Elect's first computer analysis of the 2004 presidential race predicts that if the election were held now, Republican candidate George W. Bush would defeat Democratic candidate John Kerry. According to the computer, which takes into account current poll data, past elections, and state voting tendencies, Bush would win 283 electoral votes from 31 states, while Kerry would win 255 electoral votes from 19 states and DC. If "on the edge" states are not included, the count is Bush: 205, Kerry: 183, toss ups: 150

Pop-Up Videos Hit Instant Messengers Sat Oct 30, 2004 By Leslie Walker It has come to this: Pop-up video attack ads on instant messaging software. The ads are part of a noticeable ramp-up in Internet political advertising that some Web sites report in the last days before Tuesday's election. Arlington resident Chris Stammer discovered the latest flavor of electronic attack ads when he signed onto his AOL Instant Messenger program last week and saw an image of Sen. John Edwards (news - web sites) above his list of messaging "buddies." A video started in a pop-up window, showing the Democratic...

Gmail accounts 'wide open to exploit' - report By John Leyden Published Friday 29th October 2004 16:50 GMT Google's high profile webmail service, Gmail, is vulnerable to a security exploit that might allow hackers full access to a user's email account simply by knowing the user name, according to reports.The security flaw allows full access to users' accounts, with no need of a password, Israeli news site Nana says . Using a hex-encoded XSS link, the victim's cookie file can be stolen by a hacker, who can later use it to identify himself to Gmail as the original owner of...

where's my friggin scoll bar!!!! (windows xp)

80 per cent of home PCs infected - survey By Thomas C Greene Published Tuesday 26th October 2004 19:59 GMT The Internet is well on its way to becoming one vast bot net, a survey by AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance suggests.Researchers interviewed, and examined the computers of, 329 volunteers. They found that nearly all Windows PCs are infected with some form of malware, and that a majority of users are unaware of the simplest security basics, such as the difference between anti-virus software and a firewall, for instance. Most users had antivirus software installed, presumably because it's...