ok, I went with the HP, what next?

[Kali]

For those following my saga, I also got an external dial-up modem and the "new" laptop connected just fine, even after rain last night so now I am 100% sure it wasn't the phone lines that caused my loss of connection. I am curious to try this little usb modem on the old desktop, but skeered to do it yet - could whatever is wrong with it screw up the new device?

Anyway my real questions for you all:

Is there some huge update needed for W7 like sp 3 with XP? I am thinking I will take this to the library to do my big downloads but...

What security do I want, and what order do I load and install these things?*

Related, is do I remove all the junk before creating recovery disks? That is next on my list.

Is there an updated how-to list for W7 somewhere?


*this is windows 7 and it has a bunch of other junk preloaded on it. I have started removing some (Norton was the first to go).

On the old desktop I had some kind of download manager, firefox, open office, komodo firewall, an expired version of AVG, crap cleaner or something like that, a non-working version of adaware and spybot, some kind of defrag program I can't remember at the moment, and crap cleaner (name?) also malwarebytes. Maybe a couple other things, I blew it on backing up some stuff when I wiped the drive trying to fix the modem/port problems so now I am relying on my sad biological brain function. If I had got XP again I was going to go with the firewall, microsoft security essentials, and malwarebytes - is that still a good choice for W7? Anything else? Should I stick with Firefox or try something else? Not QUITE ready to try a different OS, but close! Maybe if I get comfortable with this laptop and ever figure out what happened with the desktop, I will play around with that. Hey, I'm old and not real comfortable with change, but I can follow instructions and have learned a lot since the first gateway I ordered because of it's reputation for customer service LOL

Almost all of the progress due to the DU computer forum community (anybody seen RoyGBiv lately?)

Thankyou all!

[Kali]

1. see? I told you my brain didn't work very good

forgot I actually already asked this! looking at my old posts and found it:rofl:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=242&topic_id=32847

[struggle4progress]

2. at some point, check out OpenDisc

http://www.theopendisc.com/

[struggle4progress]

3. your small usb dialup modem is almost certainly a winmodem, and you may have

trouble getting it to work with a free OS

[pokerfan]

4. This is true

But fortunately, internal/external hardware modems are dirt cheap these days...

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Modem-HOWTO-2.html

[Kali]

5. oh thanks for that -

I did reinstall the xp on that for now so if I were to try the modem that is how I would do it.

It is so puzzling what happened.
could my old modem have gone bad AND I bought a lemon replacement (that seemed to work for a couple of hours)? did the computer ruin them both? or are they fine and it is something on the computer? I need another spare junker to try them out on now that I know for sure the phone line is ok. (mostly for my curiosity! I have a sick need to autopsy things LOL)

[Occulus]

6. Some answers

Setup and Recovery

When you first connect to the internet with Win7, you'll want to do a couple things. First, get online, and then activate Windows (click the start button and type 'activate' without the quote marks, and select 'Activate Windows" from the list). This will verify your installation with Microsoft and let you install some critical updates.

There are quite a few updates for Windows when you run it and get online for the first time. I would strongly suggest taking it to a place that has broadband internet; be prepared to spend some time doing this part. Personally, I would not do this over wifi and definitely would not even attempt it on dialup. This will take a while.

As to removing unwanted software before making a recovery disk, I don't think it matters. The Windows recovery disk doesn't let you reinstall Windows or contain a copy of Windows; it instead contains several tools for recovering from errors, detects and automatically fixes problems, going back to restore points, and so on. If you're lucky, HP provided you with a disk that has the system on it (I bet they didn't and I think that omission should not even be legal). If they didn't, there are a couple things you can do:

1) Call HP and ask for a system disk so you can reinstall if necessary. They may charge a fee for this; pay it if it's not too high (the fee should not be terribly high, more than $20 and I'd say you're being soaked).

2) Buy a Windows 7 OEM DVD. This is actually the best option of the three here, because you always have a true, clean copy of Windows 7 on hand- without all the junk and bloat your system's manufacturer threw at you. This will cost some money; I paid $120 for my copy, but believe me, it is worth the cost. With that, if your entire system goes kaput, you can simply pop the disc into the drive and reinstall.

3) Create a copy of your installed system. There's an easy way to do this I found out about while researching your questions called DriveImage XML, which lets you create a copy of your entire drive while you're using it. This is pretty snazzy and the home edition is free (same product, no cut features). It lets you split the resulting copy to CDs or DVDs, make it one big file on another drive, or even a big file on the current drive. I think I'll be installing this myself after my own saga involving a bad Ubuntu install. You should also check out the company's other products, as those look pretty useful as well.

For a Windows 7 post-install setup guide, try this from channel9.msdn.com. You certainly won't need all of these, but this will help get you started.

Security

You sort of got rid of Norton. Norton is one of the worst pieces of useless crap ever to abuse the antivirus community of products; it's as useful as a screen door on a submarine and Norton doesn't uninstall itself all the way. Go to this link at the Norton site to download their official Norton software removal tool (if you didn't already do so).

Hard to believe their own software doesn't remove itself completely, but there it is.

Since you're running Windows 7, you'll want Microsoft Security Essentials as soon as possible. This is a free piece of software from Microsoft that actually is pretty good. It'll update itself (you can change that) when it connects to the internet; I've tested it on known infected files and it's detected everything I've thrown at it. However, if you feel the need for some extra protection, Spybot Search & Destroy is pretty good, as is the free version of Lavasoft AdAware. I wouldn't set either of them to employ system-resident (aka 'always on') protection if you also install Microsoft Security Essentials; multiple antivirus/antimalware applications running in memory can cause conflicts and false positives, as well as slowing things down.

That said, I have heard good things about Malwarebytes. That's another one I think I'll grab.

Bear in mind, there are software packages out there that will cause your antivirus software to alert you when there's no need. If you're downloading software you already know to be legitimate (for example, Firefox), you know you got it from a safe place on the internet, and you get an alert from your antivirus software, that may well be the reason.

As for a firewall, Windows comes with one. It should let you know if it's turned off; if you want to look at it yourself, type "firewall" (without the quotes) after you open the Start menu. Note that you can find any installed program in that same manner.

Software and Conclusion

Go ahead and get as many web browsers as you like. That's entirely up to you. Windows comes with Internet Exposer Explorer, you apparently use Firefox, Google has the Chrome browser, and there are others as well. Play with them, as many or as few as you like. The actual application software you run is as personal as you and your own needs from the machine.

Hope all this helped! :D