Computer Self Help

[br0k3nman]

I notice a lot of cries for help on here with computers. While there are a group of helpful and fairly knowledgable people around (tarxjf, jarhed, genwitt, etc)... there is often little we can really do to help you. Computer repair is often expensive at shops even for simple things, companies don't like to play nice with their warranties, and the

Comments

[br0k3nman]

I use AVG generally, although the highest catch rate on a www.overclockers.com roundup was Avast! and I think the Trend online scan, although don't quote me on that. AVG is nice in it's minimal use of ram and lack of intrusiveness.

[jegskaltisse]

should i be unplugging my external hard drive when i'm not using it?

[br0k3nman]

Not necessarily. If you want to, depends on how much you use it. Read what tribby said above: "I think the idea with an external hard drive as a backup solution is more about (non-RAID, non-complex) redundancy than anything else. It's a lot less likely two hard drives in two separate enclosures will fail at the same time, etc. But keeping super-important data off-site is always a great idea."

[acexoffender]

I have an anti-CMOS virus I got from 5.25" floppy full of shareware games :(