Saturday, June 18, 2011

Reformat

Today:
     My older brother decided to drop by today with a computer that was just filled to the brim with viruses.  It wasn't his computer though it was his wife's younger siblings computer so it is expected to be filled with viruses.  I manage to get it to boot up into the OS and open up Internet Explorer and see that every toolbar known to man is installed.  The computer ran so sluggish that it took over 10 mins to fully be functional.  The sad part is, is that it is only half a year old.  It shouldn't be that slow since my near 10 year old xp machine still runs like a champ.

     My solution:  REFORMAT!  This way I avoid all major headaches and since it was a siblings laptop no real important information was on it that needed to be backed up.  Also the kid didn't really seem bothered with it since everything on it could be easily attainable again (such as music which was backed up already).  Reformats also seem to give the computer that "new" feeling to it such as when you first build the computer or when you bring it home from the store.  Another thing about the reformat is that you know that at that point, nothing is wrong with operating system and your starting with a clean sheet.
     First few things I did when I installed the operating system again was to remove the damned Internet Explorer and replace it with something else.  I understand that it is not a bad web browser to use but for some reason, every time I go to help someone with "computer problems" it always seems to end up being because of being careless with Internet Explorer.  I decided to install Mozilla Firefox 4 as an alternative instead because of all of the add-ons and extensions that there are available for it.  Ad Blocker is probably going to stop them from installing any more of those damn toolbars.

Comments:
      I know today's post was dull but I felt like I needed to update to get some creative flow back in my head after dealing with that today.  Tomorrows post will end up being better though since I'll be doing some stuff outside of the house.
     What are some of the computer problems you guys have encountered?  What are the worst computer related problems that have happened to you guys?  The worst physical computer problem I had was when my motherboard died completely because of blown capacitors.  The worst related problem was when my hard drive crashed making me do a bunch of research again for a paper I put off to the last minute to write.

14 comments:

  1. I've had memory go bad, at the time I didn't really know much so I had no idea why the computer wouldn't start up. Think that's the worst really, I had that love bug virus about eleven years ago too, the worst virus I had.

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  2. Ahh I love reformatting machines, when you're done it feels like you've just come out of the shower haha.

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  3. Lol, love how people can wreck an install in such short time! Im sure you will be seeing this one back again in 6 months time, even with adblock and all the other extensions these people find a way of installing malware still.

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  4. Oh, man reformatting was the best thing to do, I know I had to do that with someone who didn't know what they were thinking putting every toolbar to sites they would only use once, up....

    The only thing with reformatting is when you don't do it and the computer does it by itself..

    <__< I had it done to my laptop like a month and a half ago, which was a very unpleasant 200Gigs or gone without any workable back ups.

    Nice post...

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  5. sounds like that kid needs to reformat often

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  6. Same thing happened to me a little while back. I couldn't get rid of this nasty virus so I just reformatted.

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  7. I wouldnt say it was dull, I found it very usefull, because I can relate to problems like this. followed :)

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  8. My computer is so terrible I have to reformat it at least once a year. I hate it. haha

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  9. hahaha :) I think everyone knows the problem when you inspect a pc from one of your relatives. There is ALWAYS every possible toolbar installed on the browser. :)

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  10. I had to reformat six months ago... it still hurts.

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  11. Losing your data is never good...I've done it only twice in my life, and that was enough.

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  12. Haha I laughed at the internet explorer comment - I love my firefox/chrome.

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  13. Gotta hate the dreaded format, usually takes a day of my life away backing up the files and what not >:(

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  14. I hate reformatting, but sometimes it must be done. It is nice knowing your computer is squeaky clean though.

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