lol

Thought I'd just update this thread re my questions about the W2k operating system of 100 posts or so ago.

Anyway, my husband has now installed W2k on the children's computers and all is fine. However, I asked the question as to whether a copy of W2k which had originally been supplied with a new Dell (there are lots of them for sale on E-Bay!) would work on any brand of PC and the concensus was that it would. Apparently (and I can't verify this), MS operating systems supplied new with Dell PC's actually check the BIOS to confirm that the machine is a Dell before proceeding with the installation and will not work on other brand machines. From what I can work out, the opposite is not necessarily the case with software originally supplied with other brands of machine.

Thanks Hilary, good to know :-)

Hi all

Hopefully someone can help. every now and again ( a couple of times each day ) my computer plays a sound like a creaking or trap door opening. there is no associated program - im wondering whether it is a virus?

Has anyone else had or heard of this - any ideas gratefully received!

fundementalist, I have not heard of a creaking virus but that does not mean there isnt one! Have you checekf for virus's (viri?) in your PC? Are you sure its not an application? What Operating system are you using?

Fundamentalist, it's probably just an advertisement displayed on one of the pages you have open. Some of the more annoying ones have sound :-)

Thanks guys

run a virus check using norton and nothing came up. im on windows XP. the only pages open are this and ig index - if i close them and open up diff pages same thing happens!

kayak, what are advertisments ??

Fundamentalist, is it a standard XP sound?, I dont use XP so I dont know them. Have you worked out when you get the sound??

yes its standard. i always have the sound on and have had no probs in the past - the sound comes on a completely random basis

F, have you got adaware and/or (preferably both) installed? if so run them and see if its ad related, if not download them update the files and run them.

spaceman - thanks for that - can you now explain in english

fundy its not a humming is it , like the fan sound.have you played a pc game on it,and the noise stops.

No Dave its not - i know what the fan sounds like as I have had them replaced already!!! Turns out they had got blocked with cat hair and overheated

OK lots of sites install tracking stuff on your PC, these 2 products hunt it down and remove it, most of it isnt a problem but some could be. Its best to not have it.

I use both of them but one is probably OK most of the time, adaware is the easiest to use so lets start with that.

Download it from here :-http://www.lavasoft.de/support/download/#free

then install it by running the downloaded file. Then run it and Check for updates, when the update hgas completed do a scan, this will take a few minutes and will rpobably come up with several items. I always select all of them and delete them but if you are worried about that you can quareantine them.

BUT..... I am not sure the creaking is caused by this, scanning for adware is good practise and wont do any harm.

Does anyone else use your PC? could they install stuff on it?? kids for example?

Spaceman

many thanks.

no i dont have kids so they havent installed anything but it turns out the missus has put aol instant messenger on it. I am going to uninstall and see if its that.

I will download and run the adaware as well

F, I juste checked AIM (AOL messenger) and I am pretty sure that where its from, it has a creaking sound when a buddy logs on.

Spaceman

many thanks for that and all your help with this - a learning experience for me.

F, no problem.

Spaceman - I've used adaware for ages and it's free but yesterday I was told about Spysweeper by my IT pal. He's gone over to it www.webroot.com - only free for 30 days but it found loads of cr*p that adaware missed.

Thought you might find it useful.

Regards

R