XP Question

[GameMaster]

Originally Posted by Bond

Definitely a video card issue, like Renwood said. You probably defaulted to the motherboard's horrible graphics card.

Yep, that was exactly the problem. This is my parent's computer and I was reformatting it for them because it was so damn slow and probably infected with all sorts of shit. So I identified the graphics card and then went and downloaded the latest driver's from the manufacturer's website.

Anyway, I reinstalled with a stripped-down version of XP called TinyXP. It's streamlined with Service Pack 3 and all the latest updates. Takes out a lot of the unnecessary junk that Microsoft includes. And it's also free of Outlook, IE, and WMP.

So I have Firefox 3 installed on here now. And I burned the ISO file on a disc so it'll be very easy to reformat in the future.

So thanks for your help guys. Now I'm trying to decide whether I need to put any anti-virus on here or not. From my very limited knowledge, I hear Avira is the best free one. I guess I should also install the infamous Spybot S&D and Ad-Aware. What do you think?

[Vampyr]

Originally Posted by GameMaster

So thanks for your help guys. Now I'm trying to decide whether I need to put any anti-virus on here or not. From my very limited knowledge, I hear Avira is the best free one. I guess I should also install the infamous Spybot S&D and Ad-Aware. What do you think?

I'm actually not that fond of Spybot anymore.

For the best protection, you should get:
1. Ad-Aware. One of the best free programs on the market.

2. Windows Defender. It's from Microsoft, but it's actually very very good at keeping bad things out.

3. Spyware Blaster Probably the best preventive spyware protection there is. The free version doesn't autoupdate though, so whoever is using the computer needs to remember to do this every so often.

As for an antivirus, this depends on what they want. If they want something free, get AVG Free, which is very very good and will probably keep your computer safe in nearly all situations. If they want something better but not free, I would recommend NOD32.