I've just spent the last hour trying to disable Avast, which had gone rogue after a recent update.

It was taking 100% of the CPU on bootup and ignoring all attempts to disable it.

After many restarts I finally managed to uninstall it.

Anyone else had a similar experience recently?

I did have that problem quite a few months ago and had to uninstall Avast. However you need to go into Program Files and manually remove the few remaining files otherwise it seems to resurrect itself at a later date! I use Microsoft Essentials now on both machines as have had problems with both Avast & AVG. Also tried Avast on mobile but it slowed everything down so much that I uninstalled it.

Harry - I've reinstated essentials and run a full scan - it found PWS:HTML/Phish.gw !

I run Avast on my mobile with no obvious detrimental effects.

Thanks for the heads up - I'll check for residual files.

Skinny, I would run a scan with the freebie version of Malwarebytes. I've lost count of the number of times it's helped me restore friends/neighbour's machines back to sanity after some severe infection.

Thanks Klal - running it now!

Skinny, I use IObit Systemcare in conjunction with Malwarebytes (paid realtime version) and am very pleased with them. Systemcare comes with a very good uninstaller that removes all the bits.

Thanks Plateman.

Malwarebytes found 11 items, which I've quarantined for now.

best to keep off those dodgy site skinners.,.

I don't do any of that BB.

I read that as "doggie" :-)

lol........or that!!

One of the most important things to be careful about, is what boxes you allow to remain ticked when you do a Download.

I'm an advocate of using ADWCleaner to keep my browsers healthy. And if you download it to try it out, then just like anything else, watch what boxes you leave ticked in the download process

Galaxy S5: Expert views on Samsung's latest smartphone

most people wanting a premium phone already own one

Still happily using my Galaxy S2. I'll probably change eventually but in no rush.

Hi guys,

Looking for a new laptop mid-range £500-£700. Have a Acer aspire 5738pg for last
four years without problems so looking in that direction again but any suggestions
greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Pat - if you are looking for a standard laptop, you could do worse than start your search at PC World - they have some Easter deals.

Thanks skinny, will have a look
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Does anyone use a non windows or Mac pc ?? as in Linux,i have a spare fairly high spec puter that have been thinking about installing Ubuntu.Never used anything thing else other than Windows but just fancied playing around and as i understand it Ubuntu comes with FireFox all ready installed.

A couple of questions regarding linux,does this operating system have the same problems with virus attach,Malware that type of thing ??? mainly will be using the linux as a internet terminal and nothing else.Regards to system spec all though mine does have high spec am i right in saying that linux is less spec hungry than the Windows OS.

Mega

Mega,

Linux is generally used as a web server. Many Windows applications won't run under Linux, so you'll probably need to visit Wine HQ to get them working.

Fwiw, I use CentOS as a Linux distro rather than Ubuntu.

Hils,thanks for the input on Linux,the reason i wanted to use is was to try and learn it.

Will have a go installing it over the weekend,the Wine HQ add on looks to be exactly what i am after.

No recent tweets from you ?? no account.

It's not just about which OS distro you go for, Mega - you'll also need to decide which GUI to use. The GUI doesn't form a part of the OS, and I'm assuming you won't want to be using the CLI all the time to talk to the thing.

There are several Linux GUIs that you can choose from, of which Gnome, KDE and Enlightenment seem to be the 3 most popular, but you'll need to do some research. Sorry, I can't offer you any experience on using Linux as anything other than a webserver.