Apr 26

24×7 Help – How to remove

 Is there a man or woman’s face at the top right of every window? Or down in the system tray or notification area? You’ve got the “24×7 Help” program on your computer. Notice that I said “program” not “virus”. Many people think that 24×7 Help is a virus. It isn’t. Its just plain and simple Junk.

Crawler, LLC, purveyors of crapware and adware are repsonsible for this garbage. It usually gets installed along with other garbage software. Thankfully it is very easy to remove 24×7 Help from your computer. In Windows XP, go to your Control Panel and click on Add/Remove Programs and then look for the 24×7 Help entry and uninstall it. The same applies to Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, except the Control Panel icon to go to is Programs.

24×7 Help. Click “Remove”

Apr 19

How To Fix: Diagnostic service policy is not running

 I haven’t had a chance to try this one out, but it looks like a fairly obscure problem with a fairly easy fix.  If you get “diagnostic service policy is not running”, try this.Open an administrative command prompt, and paste in the following commands:

net localgroup Administrators /add networkservice

net localgroup Administrators /add localservice

Restart the computer, and give it a go. If this works for you, please leave a comment!

Source:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/6cfff98f-62e3-4420-8907-6780a2b4bddb/

Mar 23

Removing old Antivirus that cause slowness and instability

Antivirus programs are notorious for leaving behind “stuff” that will cause a computer to be slow and unstable. Getting rid of old anti-virus programs is a pain in the neck, but once you know a little secret, it gets a lot easier. The trick is to get rid of any left over drivers from old antivirus programs. So, lets get to it.

1. Remove any currently installed antivirus programs using the control panel or appwiz.cpl, then reboot.
2. Run the removal tool for the antivirus program you just removed, then reboot.
3. Run through the following program to remove any traces of old antivirus software.
4. At an Administrative command prompt, type the following command , and then press ENTER:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 & start devmgmt.msc

5. In the resulting Device Manager, click on View, Show hidden devices. Then expand “Non-Plug and Play Drivers”

Look for obvious names like Symantec, Mcafee, AVG, Trend Micro, Kaspersky, etc and remove them. Reboot the computer, and then reinstall your antivirus software. I recommend Microsoft’s Security Essentials. Its as effective as any (no current antivirus program gets any respect from me, frankly) and is free and doesn’t nag you to purchase it.

The computer as a result will likely be noticeably faster on bootup and general use.

Sources:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc958122.aspx
http://forums.comodo.com/antivirus-help-cis/antivirus-scan-causes-high-cpu-usage-t70112.0.html;wap2=