My neighbor asked me if I could help her with her computer problem. She has an HP desktop running windows XP that has become virtually useless due to viruses. It takes forever to do anything and it constantly freezes, and it can’t even be turned off. It has Norton antivirus, but it’s expired and it won’t even run because the thing freezes. The modem activity led shows constant activity (!?), and one can get online. I was thinking that maybe there is an online program that’ll check it and hopefully clean it? (It appears that her relatives also use the computer, and they have used programs downloaded from the internet, including such risky apps like LimeWire)
Any input will be appreciated.

Roughly how much would it cost for a small business to get the following done to their HP laptops by a computer repair firm (11 HP laptops):

-reformat HDDs
-install windows XP
-install adobe acrobat
-install an anti-virus programme
-install MS office
-run a full diagnostic
-clean the exterior of the PCs

how much would it cost, excluding any transportation costs, and costs of buying the software?
what would be the average cost? is per PC (0 total) a good deal for buyer and seller?
i know i could do all this by myself…i am doing it for someone else…just wanted to make sure i was giving them a good deal, but not too good.

oh well, no such thing as too low of a price as long as we stay afloat.

if you want my help, email me at nick@flamesync.com, or visit www.flamesync.com

I think I have contracted a virus. I am having browser issues. When I try to click on a link from Gmail, Google Reader, Google search, Yahoo search, or a variety of other websites, the browser opens a different, spammy-looking shopping website. It won’t open the right link. I have to copy and paste the address into the address bar to get the page to open. And sometimes that doesn’t work. I suspected that I got a virus, so I Googled "virus removal software." Not a single website that contains virus removal software will open. I get the same error message "Page cannot be displayed" for every anti-virus site I try to visit. This makes me think it is a virus.

Here is something that further complicates the issue. I was thinking that if I can’t download virus removal software, I could purchase some and install it on the computer. But then I remembered that our CD drive isn’t working for some reason. Aaargh! What should I do?

I called the Geek Squad and was told that they recommend an agent come to my house and run a diagnostic on the computer to target the problem. I don’t really want to spend 0 for a guy to come out and tell me I have a virus. I am pretty sure that’s the problem. I don’t have a problem paying to have the virus removed, but how can I do that without paying someone to diagnose it? Any suggestions?

Details: It’s an HP Pavilion laptop that uses Vista.

I have a SeaGate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500620AS 500gb hard drive that is not working. It is not detected in bios anymore. Ok, I need to send it for repair to HP, but it contains Windows 7 7600 Build 16385 RTM OS and other programs, music, and mp3? Will I get in trouble?
Sorry, if I placed this in the wrong category.

The problem started yesterday. My computer was doing perfectly fine but then it crashed while running some program. so i had to perform a hard shutdown and restart the comp. the computer was still working fine after that one time but the program was buggy and kept crashing and i had to keep doing the hard shutdown. now times this whole scenario by 30 cause i shut it down nearly that many times from all the crashes. but now my comp wont even last 5 minutes before crashing and this is with the program not even running. i uninstalled it and same thing, i get a crash after 5 minutes. and booting up takes a long time in some parts and even still it doesnt always turn on correctly, it freezes in boot up aswell. even in bios it will freeze. so now im stuck. i tried to reinstall vista and it froze in the middle of reinstallation and then i ran the thing again and finished it up but its still crashing. so im guessing the motherboard got ruined because if it was power supply it would shut down after the crash wouldnt it? and its probably not software cause i completely reset the comp and reinstalled vista and i even tried switching wireless cards and mouse/keyboard. i also ran hp diagnostics tools and it says harddrive memory and cpu passed all the tests.
so pleeeaaase help meee. i cant use this thing without it freezing up every 5 minutes. i actually havnt even been able to get past the initial time setup pages and stuff when you reinstall vista. (using a dif. comp)