Can you beat the Dell technicians?

[Herbert]

Oh knowledgeable ones of the forum…please help. My inspiron 1300 arrived today. Switched it on and whilst I was looking round I noticed that the hard drive was being accessed and subsequent egg timer appearing at the side of the cursor very regularly. It turned out that this was happening exactly every 10 seconds! I contacted Dell, the support person was extremely polite and patient but after an hour on the phone I still have the problem despite… not getting the egg timer every 10 seconds when in safe mode, uninstalling and then re-installing the McAfee security centre, and also disabling google desk top. She said to leave it running as it is finishing installing and will call me back on Friday. :help:

 

Grateful for all constructive advice!

[GrinderBloke]

Indexing service running on the hard drive?

 

Have a look in task manager see if anything stands out at the time the hard drive is active.

[Herbert]

THANKYOU SO MUCH!!! The file GTB.exe was the only one running, google toolbar me thinks! I disabled then deleted google desk top and even thought GTB was still there I could disable it from task manager. Dell should have realised this, when I installed google desktop before it indexed the drive in vision on the desktop itself. Thanks again.

[Bikertec]

Can you beat the Dell technicians? If you have a big enough hammer. Totaly useless what a copout ring back friday.

[Cyclone]

run msconfig and have a look at the startup option, dell load a whole pile of rubbish onto their machines, a lot of which can be disabled, leaving your computer leaner and faster.

[Herbert]

Even though I have removed google desktop and toolbar the file still loads as it is in a folder called Dell E Centre:suspect: How bizarre, ccleaner is red hot at the mo removing trial this and that...removed norton ghost 90 day, should I bother re-installing McAfee security centre or just rely on the firewall on my router and the old favourites of avast and ad-aware? It's nice not to feel so alone...cheers guys:thumbsup:

[cube]

As Cyclone said, run msconfig from the run prompt and take a look at what's in startup. Also see what other programs you don't need in add/remove programs and un-install them. McAfee security centre is quite big, try looking for one of the free virus programs on the web instead.

[Savannah2]

I would certainly bin McAfee, too big, bloated and slow.

What process is consuming CPU when you see the egg timer?

I don't use a firewall, only take this option if you are happy in the knowledge that with out a software firewall it will be hard to know what programs are accessing the net to phone home.

If you want free av, then I would go for AVG free, and firewall Jetico.

Paid for AV then NOD32 free 30day trial.

[neeeeeeeeeek]

If I were you I would bloody format the thing, borrow a standard copy of windows XP and install that. That way you can avoid all the crap that Dell stick on the machine that's really hard to get rid of. You can use the XP key from the machine on any copy of XP so all will be above board, then download things like AVG, adaware and other good free programs to replace Norton, Mcaffee and all the other rubbish.

[Savannah2]

If I were you I would bloody format the thing, borrow a standard copy of windows XP and install that. That way you can avoid all the crap that Dell stick on the machine that's really hard to get rid of. You can use the XP key from the machine on any copy of XP so all will be above board, then download things like AVG, adaware and other good free programs to replace Norton, Mcaffee and all the other rubbish.

 

YES!! Thats what I did for a friend who recently purchased an HP computer, put in XP home disk and did a reformat and clean install.....updated with Autopatcher then installed Acronis and made an image.