In for a penny

Niall · Feb 26, 2011, 20:19:04

In for £500 (well £499.83)

I've just ordered:

Icy Box IB-863-B 5.25" 6x Slot Card (I got fed up of having to reach around the back to swap things over)
Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3, AMD 890GX,
8GB(2x4GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC3-10
800W Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold,
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition

I say just ordered, I did it this morning. I decided to use Scan, hoping I could pay for a different delivery company rather than Citylink, and as it turns out they now use a company called DPD. My mate tells me they're just as bad as Citylink, but I'm off work this week so I'll be here to sign for it, whatever. Scan have sent confirmation of dispatch, which means they now actually ship things on a Saturday, which they never used to. Anyway, they claim my items will be here Monday. I hope so, as I'm in physio on Tuesday.

I still need a new DX11 graphics card and an SSD drive, but I'll get the gfx card next month and I'll wait until prices have dropped for the SSD drives. £139 for 90gb is just too much to justify it when I'll need twice that for my applications alone.

Steve · Feb 26, 2011, 20:32:34

DPD are fine for me at least they give a delivery time which so far they've kept to.

Niall · Feb 26, 2011, 20:58:18

Most problems with delivery stem from not being able to sign for something, or them not allowing an alternate delivery address, then having to collect from a depot that wont confirm when it will be there (if you can get there), and refusal to deliver before 9am or after 5pm.

There should be no problems this time, no matter what, as long as they stick to Monday delivery. I'd like to have everything here, unpacked, installed and done before the end of the day

Rik · Feb 27, 2011, 10:55:36

I've also found DPD to be good, Niall.

Ray · Feb 27, 2011, 11:49:06

Ditto

Niall · Feb 27, 2011, 15:38:43

I hope so

Last night my aunt phone up telling me MSE was telling her that she had 6 virus nasties on her laptop. I pointed her to 5 online scanners which she ran. That apparently cleared 3 of them. I told her to bring it around anyway and I'll have a look at it (perfect excuse to play with my new wireless router

).

Anyway, I get it here and it took malware bytes nearly 90 minutes to scan the entire system, only to find 3 entries. 1 of which was a hijacker, which would explain the webpages not loading that she had problems with.

Firefox was on version 2
IE had 4 search utilities installed and 4 anti virus programs of various nature
All, and I mean ALL the security software I installed on the laptop when she got it had been removed. I'm assuming, by my cousin when he went around there as there were three downloaded films on the laptop (were

)and 10 albums that there is no way in hell she would watch/listen to.
Some "free" games. The free bit was the malware and redirecting programs.
Java had 6 version remnants on the system, and no current version. Although, without me installing a new version, it's telling me that the new version is now installed, so I'm assuming that the nasty I removed, has now allowed it to update itself.
Adobe reader was 2 version and about 6 updates out of date.
Shockwave and flash, likewise.

I could go on, but there is so much that my helpful relatives have done to this laptop, I'm stunned that they're so bloody stupid. I know that they all are aware of security because I always go on about it when they ask me something about the laptop. My sisters other half was there a few months ago, and he installed the programs I've done today, so some tool is actively removing them!

God I'm annoyed. Mainly because I've now spent 5 hours sorting this out, there's so much wrong with it. The laptop is a couple of years old too, and wasn't fast back in it's day. That doesn't help matters either. Running scanning programs only for the virus installed to block it and freeze the laptop about 20 mins into a scan helps my mood too!

Oh yeah, and someone installed a "free" registry cleaner, which installed malware too. Very helpful that.

Rik · Feb 27, 2011, 15:40:24

I think we've all probably got that T shirt, Niall.

Niall · Feb 27, 2011, 15:45:53

I can't believe I used to like XP either. It's a horrible little thing and I also forgot that windows update only liked IE on that OS.

Rik · Feb 27, 2011, 16:05:33

It's a very nice OS, if used wisely.

Niall · Feb 28, 2011, 13:19:52

Well the delivery company emailed to say they'd be here between 11:32 - 12:32 and turned up at 12:05. That's the sort of service I'll be using.

Odd things:

PSU is in a HUGE box, with a little pouch with a velcro seal to hold the modular bits, which seems like something that would cost them more than they need to spend on production as it's increased the box size by a third.
The box it all came in as a result of the PSU box being huge, is ENORMOUS! You could fit a kid in there! <insert inappropriate joke here>

On the subject of my aunts laptop, I spent 8 hours cleaning files, manually removing files that were stuck (the fun old XP problem where it won't let you delete a file or rename it, unless you cut and paste it to the desktop, then move it to the recycle bin). This morning I thought I'd check Spybot (which works well under XP) as it kept crashing yesterday which set off alarm bells. Today it didn't crash but allowed me to see memory access violations from 'spycrush' 'spyfalcon' etc, etc. It seems my aunt clicked on one of those "we'll scan your computer for issues. OMG YOU'RE GOING TO DIE FROM FIVE BILLION VIRUS PROGRAMS!!!oneone!11! USE OUR STUFF" which then edits registry entries making scans think there are evil things on your PC.

It looks like I've managed to clear the actual nasty program by running malware bytes, ccleaner, comodo cleaner, spywareblaster and Avast. These just seem to be remnants from that nasty program, so I'm currently running spybot in safe mode which should solve it. I've backed up the registry in case I kill it though

One annoyance I've discovered (well, rediscovered) is that now even Adobe are using the bundled AV programs with their install. While that's a relatively good idea for people who don't think to use AV (MUPPETS!) the program itself isn't stored in a folder or registry entry I could find. It seems to have a .dll within the flash folder. Now THAT does annoy me. That's like hiding the fact you accidentally downloaded it with a program, then hiding it so you can't remove it through any normal means.

720k items scanned, 80k to go then I should have a nice clean laptop. Now I just need to somehow refuse the money my aunt has brought for my services, without insulting her!

Niall · Feb 28, 2011, 13:28:21

Hmm, that's odd. Spybot didn't detect any problems. This could get annoying.

Oh, I just thought. I've turned off system restore. They could have been hiding there, and have been vanquished.

* Niall looks under rocks

pctech · Feb 28, 2011, 13:39:52

Yep. always advisable to switch off System Restore before running a scan as its the one area of the file system that is write protected even from security software.

Niall · Feb 28, 2011, 14:46:07

Yep, I turned that off and looked through the system again and nothing was found, so it's already gone and had files in system restore. I just tried installing zonealarm on it, but as it's a really old laptop with 256mb ram on it, it absolutely killed it. So I reluctantly had to put the XP firewall back on and just set auto update on the other programs I'd installed. I doubt she'll have the problem again as I've installed the latest firefox and addblock, so those lying pop ups wont even be seen from now one. Plus my mums pc doesn't run anything other than the XP firewall and hasn't had a problem in 8 years.

I'll just cross my fingers. Oh, and my aunt sneakily brought me a mars bar from the shop and hid a tenner under it

Some people wont take no for an answer! I shall invest it on a subway foot long veggy patty tomorrow after physio

Rik · Feb 28, 2011, 15:56:14

Accept graciously, Niall, it would have cost her a small fortune at PC World.

Niall · Feb 28, 2011, 17:56:01

I've just got my PC to build now. I don't think I have another PC install left in me today. It can wait until tomorrow

Rik · Feb 28, 2011, 17:56:27

There are days like that.

Den · Feb 28, 2011, 20:24:13

I drove along the Llay New Road/Rhosddu Road today and could see all this steam rising from a house as I drove along. It must have been your brain working overtime Niall

Niall · Feb 28, 2011, 20:59:29

Probably. Bloody laptop

Niall · Feb 28, 2011, 23:56:30

New stuff! by Niall Allen, on Flickr

The nerd in me is pleased

Still not installed it yet. I've been looking up graphics cards and there is apparently a new Nvida 590 card out in March, although that will probably cost over £400 so I'll probably not get that

Niall · Mar 01, 2011, 19:50:38

God I hate building pcs. For some reason the graphics card was doing what looked like browning out or having memory issues. Swapped the connector and it worked fine. For god knows what reason it can't see my second drive which is where ALL my files are so I've had to spend ages downloading it all again!

I'll check the bios revision as that's the only thing I can think of as the board itself isn't seeing it.

Lance · Mar 01, 2011, 22:07:21

Do modern drives still have jumpers which might need changing? I've not had a new drive for many years so don't know!

Niall · Mar 02, 2011, 00:59:18

I haven't got any on. I was wondering if this motherboard is more unforgiving (or less forgiving - christ I'm tired!) in those areas. I'll try connecting it to another sata port tomorrow if I've heard nothing from a couple of other forums.

My sisters other half has the same motherboard and had the same issue, but he didn't tell me how he solved it, and went offline the git!

It's been a nightmare having this happen. I backed up EVERYTHING on the other drive and this happens, so I've lost my passwords, my bookmarks, my photos, software registration info, etc. It's not the end of the world, but I really need that drive for my itunes backup, my 94gb steam backup and my photos! There's literally a years worth of date on it that is not replaceable, and itunes is so cr*p that the music on the iphone gets deleted if you sync your phone unless you bought it through their store. I hate itunes & Apple, the absolute money grabbing whores

Oh, and also my icons in my taskbar are HUGE. Even though I've set them to small, they are the size that medium was on my previous install. I don't understand what's happened there

Niall · Mar 02, 2011, 01:05:58

Ah ha! I've found a "use small icons" button. Perfect

Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey! Now I'll leave my PC download all my steam games overnight after de-fragging the drive!

I still can't get over the fact there's over 2gb of patches to install on a new O/S, the last 900mb was SP1 and a couple of patches for things that installed. Then there's the office updates. Oh, and that reminds me; the new version of Avast has a HORRENDOUS amount of false positives from the .net framework when you install Office 2010. My god it was annoying. CONSTANT pop up warnings.

Lance · Mar 02, 2011, 08:09:21

To access the drive would any of the external drive docks be any good?

Niall · Mar 02, 2011, 11:07:51

Well the drive is an internal one, and I don't want to buy an external dock for it. I've already been stung twice by the converter connection things for IDE/SATA/USB that don't work

A dedicated docking bay would work, but I'd really rather get a working hard drive seen by the bios. Time to start rummaging again!