Worth Godwin's reply history at Help.com

You’d really have to be a lot more specific, or we’ll be forced to resort to magic. ;)

There appear to be a number of possible options on Versiontracker.com. It’s a good place to find Mac software, along with MacUpdate.com

Hope that helps.

[quote bronzebrun2]clicking in a computer either means that you need to clean out the inside of it or you need to get a new one because i bad bad bad virus has got in it and started taking control of your computer. what i would to is delete the virus by downloading “anti virus protection 4.5″ it is good but it cost a good bit of money. all you have to do is trace down the virus and BAAAM its deleted in a matter of 24 hours to 48 hours. the biggest virus i have ever had was 5489 MB!!!! it only took 24 hours to delete it!! with regular virus software it would of taken about a week to do it!!!!

you could also just take the front off and clean the inside of your computer??? that should do the trick if it isnt a virus. your computer will also run a whole lot faster too.
[/quote]
I’m sorry Bronzebrun22, and I mean no offense, but this is very incorrect information. I have been a professional computer tech for over 13 years (about as long as you’ve been alive, judging by your photo) and your advice is basically incorrect in all regards.

A clicking noise has nothing to do with cleaning (except *possibly* if the sound is coming from a floppy drive, which fewer and fewer people even have these days, or *maybe* the a CD drive could produce a “clicking” noise). The “click of death”, where a hard drive is repetitively making a clicking or ticking noise, is a well known symptom of a hard drive that is failing. Not being able to see the computer myself, I can’t verify for *certain* that it is the sound of a bad hard drive, but given the original submitter’s description, it certainly sounds like it.

You recommend downloading and using “anti virus protection 4.5″, I can’t comment on that since you haven’t mentioned any specific antivirus application. It really shouldn’t take a day or two to remove a virus, let alone a week. I’ve seen virus scans take hours, especially on slower computers, but a week? I suppose that could happen if the hard drive was bad or something, but it certainly wouldn’t be normal.

And lastly, while it is a good idea to have dust cleaned out of your computer from time to time, I would never advise the average person to open up their computer case and clean it without more specific instructions — computers are *very* sensitive to electrostatic damage (ESD) and handling the inside of a computer incorrectly can damage the electronics with static electricity from our bodies. All it takes is a single touch, and you don’t have to feel a shock. It won’t (normally) kill the computer entirely, but it will make it less reliable and it will tend to have more problems.

Using compressed air to clean out the inside of the computer, while carefully avoiding touching anything aside from the outside of the case, is good for the computer since it prevents dust from trapping heat and gradually damaging the parts, but it won’t have a profound affect on the speed like you’re saying.

Please understand I’m not making this reply to embarrass you or anything like that — you just were giving out a lot of misinformation (I’m sure you meant well) and I didn’t want anyone to be confused by it or try to follow the advice and end up with a bad result.

I train people how to use their computers for a living, and have for about 13 years now.

Here’s the thing a lot of people don’t realize: kids tend to be very *comfortable* with the computer, and they use it very confidently, but it doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing.

You’d be amazed at how poorly a lot of kids use their computers; they just look like they know what they’re doing, but often they make worse mistakes than people over 40 who didn’t grow up with computers because the over-40s tend to be more cautious, more and more so as you get into older age groups like 60s and 70s.

While seniors tend to be way more cautious and apprehensive than they probably need to be, the kids are just as bad in the opposite way — careless and running headlong into trouble because they think they know it all.

I can tell you as someone who has made his living training people on computers, repairing them, and fixing messes caused by users, just because your kids seem like they know what they’re doing, don’t assume they’re experts.

The fact is, they may be better than you, but it’s because of their mental attitude more than anything else.

There’s a good article on this very thing. You should be able to find it if you Google the phrase:

a simple secret to improving your computer skills

Gives some good tips about helping get the right attitude to make it easier to learn the computer, plus tips on avoiding problems when you do. And it’s a real easy, fun read.

Good luck, and remember not to beat yourself up over it. :)

A clicking or ticking noise from the computer usually does mean a bad hard drive. I don’t know the details of the virus infection you had previously, but maybe (again, this is just an educated guess) it wasn’t a virus that caused the original problems, but the hard drive in the process of failing.

Either way, it sure sounds like the problem now, so it’s time to replace it. Fortunately, a good sized hard drive can be bought for under $100 these days, and shouldn’t cost much more than that to install for you if you can’t do it yourself.

Good luck with it.

The F10 to restore option is specific to certain computers; it isn’t universal, just FYI.

If you have Windows Vista, apparently one of the recent updates has caused this problem for a lot of people. I just did a Google search for the terms

vista update restarting

and found several sites with information on the problem (assuming this is what you’re experiencing).

Hope that helps.

There are a lot of possible reasons your computer could be running so slowly, one possibility is that it is infected with a virus or something similar. Another possibility is your hard drive could either be too full, or may have physical problems.

I don’t know how long it’s been acting like this, or really enough information to diagnose the problem, but I would have it looked at.

I would also strongly recommend that you back your files up, since chances are you never have (the vast majority of people never do, which is a huge mistake). Do this before defragging your hard drive, if you try that, since if the drive is bad (as opposed to just infected with something) you could kill the drive in the process of defragging.

This is not to say that defragging a drive is normally damaging, just that *if* the hard drive is failing (and of all the parts in the computer, it is the most likely to go bad in my 13+ years of experience as a computer tech) the extra work of defragging can be the last straw. It’s kind of like someone with a heart condition dying while shoveling snow or exerting themselves — they may seem OK in normal circumstances, but the sudden extra heavy work causes their heart to fail.

Not a pleasant image, I know, but it gets the point across.

Anyway, back up your files, then scan the computer and see what happens. Or better yet, get a professional to look at it. Good luck with it.

Usually this is caused by a lack of the free Flash Player.

You can find step-by-step instructions with pictures that cover a lot of the common ways to install the flash player (there are variations depending on whether you have Windows or a Mac, what version of Windows or Mac OS X, which web browser, etc.) here:

http://www.worthgodwin.com/flash/

there is also a link to the Flash download page.

I also recently was trying to help a client on the phone who was having a similar problem and it turned out she had for some reason gone into her settings for her web browser and turned off plug-ins, which meant the Flash Player plug-in was disabled. So it was there, but turned off.

But unless you’ve been messing around with the settings, then chances are you just need the Flash Player, so just follow the above link (or Google “flash player download” to find the direct link) and you should be able to get it working.

Hope that helps.

You won’t be able to boot at all, since the computer would fail the POST (Power On Self Test). Generally you’d end up with a blank screen (or possibly the screen saying check cable or something similar, which means there’s no picture being sent from the computer) and the computer would beep at you.

It won’t harm the computer, but the computer would be completely useless.

If you’ve pulled the plug (or held down the power button for about 20 seconds, which usually does the same thing) and tried restarting it, then it’s likely you have a hardware problem of some sort. Without being able to troubleshoot it, a few *possibilities* would be the power supply, motherboard or processor, video card, or possibly RAM. Really, from the symptoms (or as much of the symptoms as you’re mentioning), it could be just about any of the parts, but it’s clearly hardware related.

If it is beeping when you turn it on, the number of beeps might give a clue as to which part is bad.

You could try hooking up a different monitor if you have one to see if that helps (although I doubt it if there is an amber light on the PC itself), but beyond that, I’d take it to a professional, or have one come to you.

The next step really is to start pulling out or swapping out parts, which is not something you want to try doing without some training. It’s far too easy to damage the computer (or even get a nasty shock if you fail to unplug the computer first, which I’ve seen some people do) if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Good luck with it.

OK, to actually post what I meant to in this thread…

It does sound like your PC is probably infected with something (although the exact symptoms are a new one to me).

I help people with their computer problems professionally, and in my opinion, these are the programs to use:

Adware/spyware removal — Ad-Aware & Spybot (both free, but effective) You can get these from www.Download.com, but make sure you actually download the right programs. There are sponsored links above the actual search results when you search for these programs that have deliberately misleading names that are *very* similar to Ad-Aware (note hyphen and exact spelling) and similar to Spybot Search & Destroy (again, note exact name). Make sure you download the real programs, not the sponsored “alternatives”.

ZoneAlarm is a good firewall, especially for a free one, but personally I recommend

Kaspersky Internet Security for both antivirus and firewall protection. Kaspersky AV is consistently top-rated with (last I checked) a 99.6% rating in terms of effectiveness. A 1-month trial version can be downloaded from

http://www.Kaspersky.com

A lot of people have never heard of the program, which is actually a good thing. Something you need to realize about the “top 3″ AV programs (Norton/Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro) is that virus & worm writers specifically test against these three programs before releasing their malicious programs “into the wild”.

In other words, they write their virus or worm, then infect a PC with it and scan with each of the 3 above programs (3 PCs, 3 AV programs) and if the AV programs detect them, then it’s back to work on the virus/worm until they slip past the 3 big guys.

And as for AVG Free, it’s usually rated pretty low in terms of effectiveness.

It’s worth paying for a program if it protects you and saves you time and hassle, at least in my opinion.

Hope that makes sense and helps.

(and sorry about the accidental cross posting!)

Whoops! Sorry, posted that to the wrong tab in Firefox!

D’oh!

Well, I can’t blame you for not being able to find the software online. I just went to the official Zune site and had a heck of a time finding the download link!

But I did find it. Go here:

http://www.zune.net/en-US/setup/

and you should find what you need.

Hope that helps.

Well, I can’t blame you for not being able to find the software online. I just went to the official Zune site and had a heck of a time finding the download link!

But I did find it. Go here:

http://www.zune.net/en-US/setup/

and you should find what you need.

Hope that helps.

I’m not sure what you mean by a “loading sign” (I’m guessing that *maybe* you mean the spinning “beachball” that comes up when the computer is “thinking”?) but I tell all of my clients to get an external hard drive to back their files up. This way, they don’t need to worry so much about losing files.

My recommendation would be a Firewire hard drive (not firewall, Firewire) that is at *least* the same size as the drive in your Mac (although it’d be better if it was larger). Hook it up and get the free program Carbon Copy Cloner which you can get from http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html and run it to duplicate *everything* including your iMovie project onto the firewire drive.

You pretty much open the program, select Macintosh HD (or whatever your internal drive’s name is) as the source, then select the firewire drive as the target. Then click clone — you will be asked for your computer’s password, and then let it run.

It will take an hour or more to run, but when it’s done you’ll have a backup copy of everything, just in case.

It’s also possible to set the CCC program up to automatically back up just the changed or new files whenever you plug in the drive (it’s much faster after the first backup if you do this) but it’s a little more complicated to set up.

One more tip: make sure the Firewire drive is formatted for Mac, or the backup might not work well or at all.

Hope that helps.