When i put my pc in to pc world for it's annual health check, they told me that i had 177 spywares all from limewire and it was them that was slowing my pc down, anyone else had this problem ???

Thank god I got rid of it.

Much do they health check hingys cost?

The NHS is free.


Boom boom tish!!

Mine was free, as i took out a 5 year warrenty thing when i bought the pc.

okie dokie

Download some anti-spyware and do a disk clean up and defrag once a week. That should take care of most of the crap. Also, back up everything you need to disk and re-format your hard drive once a year.

5 Years!

Whats the point of that!!! You'll normally get 3 years out a PC before you need a new system.

Just use torrent sites instead, much safer.

And i'm supposed to understand all of that

Limewire, Kazaa and programmes of such ilk are terrible.
I would never use them on my PC.

Get yourself a good Bit torrent programme and use torrent websites.
The smart mans programme!

DONT get PC World health checks! They just want yer cash!

To keep your pc safe for free, get ad-aware here:

http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Person...ubj=dl&tag=top5

Get AVG anti-virus here:

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

Both are free, have regular updates, and are excellent! Do defrags and annual formats and you're sorted!

A question about annual formats

My PC came pre-installed with Windows, and I acquired MS Office.

How would I go about formatting my disc without losing these?

Do it manually, if you can at all?

"pre-installed" dell style or "pre-installed" dodgey computer shop style?

If its a dell, or similar, you can actually reset everything to factory settings. Look up the specifics for your computer. My flatmate had a computer he got from macro and thats what he did with his too.

As for office - install it again!

Remember to back up everything before you do it onto dvd or an external hard drive!

Pre installed from PC world. Got a licence key and all that, but no disc

Can you find the "restore factory settings" option in the manual or anything? Otherwise there should be a program that burns windows onto a cd for you pre-installed too

I've got Limewire and have downloaded a few files, I can't get them to play without opneing Limewire up though. Is there a way you can save the files and then copy onto a CD using Real 1 or Media Player?

I looked in 'my downloads' but nothing is in there unlike Shareaza where all the downloaded files were stored there.

Of course you are.

Go to programmes/accessories/system tools and you will find the disk clean up and defrag programme, or a maintenance wizard programme.

What exactly does it clean up

Programmes you dont use, fragmented files which are redundant etc.


The defragmentor will piece any fragmented files back together which will speed up the access times for the files on your PC. You should defragment every month if your on the internet alot.

I used Executive Software Diskeeper as its much better then the standard microsoft one. But the built in windows programme will make it mich better.

Thats the 2 programmes I use, but I wouldnt bother with the annual formats.
If you use these two programmes and use the clean up and defragmenter it should be fine.

Annual formats are more hassle than they're worth, as theres little benefit from actually carrying it out.

LimeWire fecked my old PC because my sister used it.

Is there a decent program out there for downloading single Mp3s rather than entire albums, which is all you seem able to get with bittorrent.

It's not for me you understand, it's for a friend

Open the folder where you want to store them, go back to limewire, click on the song you want to take to your folder and just drag it there.

That doesn't work for me, it wont let can't click and drag the files out of Limewire...

As Mattbairn says, it gets rid of all dodgy programme files and other crap, especially from the porno sites you no doubt frequent.

The first time you do it, it is likely to take a long time ( a couple of hours) but after that it should be done in 15 minutes, max.

Things go wrong over time as you install more and more silly programs that you hardly ever use. Its good to start fresh. I did it every 6 months on my desktop, but now i have a laptop its annual. I have an external HDD now too, which is handy!

Formating solves almost ANY problem

LoL That is true!
Unless your Bios becomes infected.

I still think an annual re-format is excessive.
I have a 500Gb storage drive, but its almost full with music (250Gb) and movies/tv programmes.
I still couldnt be bothered formatting yearly.

Then again, I havent had problems with my PC.
If I started getting serious problems and the programmes previously mentioned dont help, then my last resort would be to format, but I wouldnt do it as par for the course.