Hi all! Any kindsouls out there to offer solutions?

[Winnie]

Hi people! I'm new to this forum, and i need some help with my project! I need to find out the cause, provide solutions, and recommend ways to prevent the problems below form occuring again. Can anyone tell me whats the cause of these problems and provide some possible solutions for me??? thanks a lot! ^_^

Question: my computer takes a long time to boot up and shut down. Sometimes, switching between Windows takes several seconds and the mouse may freeze for seconds too.

Question: On checking through the company’s computers, most of them have numerous cookie files present. Are they harmful to us? Can you spell out some guidelines for all users to follow to avoid necessary inconveniences to the company.

[Trigger]

Well Winnie what OS are you running? What are the specs of the computers?

If you run windows (Don't we all) the there are some steps you should take on a regular basis (how often will be determined by how much you use the PC, heavy use once every two weeks, lite use once every two months).

Clear the internet cache (cookies included unless you have logins for forums you do not want to loose)

Remove any unneeded programs.

Clean the registry (regscrub or similar for XP works wonders for bootups)

Run spyware removal tool to remove any nasties.

Run antivirus scan just to be safe

Defrag (I know XP is supposed to manage this but some times it needs a hand especially if you deal with large files).

As for the PC's themselves, you should have antivirus and firewall running at all times, if you are running XP then you will need 512MB ram, it will run on less but s l o w l y.

A complete shutdown and hard boot will also help and by that I mean shut the PC down unplug the power (for laptops unplug the power and take out the battery) then wait 30 seconds then plug everything back in and reboot.

[AndrewCS]

If this is just one computer on a network, you should try running scans for adware/spyware/walmare etc...

You can use ad-aware at www.lavasoft.com, and you should also try an antivirus program with updated definition files. If these come up clean, you should check your resources and see if you notice any programs using up a lot of memory or any spikes in resources.

A while back, one user on a server I administer was uncontrollable in basically taking their computer and turning it into a virus haven. He just kept his mouth shut about his deadened pc while I spent days trying to hunt down the issue. Finally, I was able to trace it back to him and found a plethora of virii residing on his computer. Needless to say, the large bills racked up by my time hunting down the issue did not bode well for this guy. I would recommend making sure you have a solid network backup, and then I'd send out a company-wide e-mail to see if anyone else is experiencing problems. If so, the problem may not lie locally.

[Winnie]

Hi! Thanks for offering all the suggestions! I really appreciate it. All the info provided are useful to me in building up my presentation. Thanks once again!