Nice one H Glad you've got a new PC......

I got a new one for Mother's day, cause my old one died I can't live without my pc, and Dogsey

Hi H, as you know I am NOT an expert but we recently took our machine into the local computer shop to have some programmes removed and the guy said he found a lot of rubbish, and what I think they call 'malware' on the hard drive and he had removed it.

The thing is you never know when some of these virus's are getting on to the hard drive, often they don't do anything on the screen they just sit there waiting for you to enter some personal information and then they recognise that and 'store it' then the next time you go on line while you are logged into Dogsey or whatever this 'malware' is connecting to some computer in Ukraine or Singapore or similar and downloading your info.

This why the 'experts' are always telling us to get good anti-virus software installed 'cos it seems to me once the attack has got past your anti-virus software there's nowt you can do, so just as well you've changed your computer

There's plenty that can be done with an 'infected' machine. There's an app called Malwarebytes which is usually the first port of call for a cleanup job. By the same token there's still plenty a 10 year old machine can do. Assuming the hardware is still OK. On both of these points, most retailers would like you to think a new machine is the only option....

On the copying of old files thing, I can't imagine what the blue screen business was! If I were to try to copy files from one machine to another, it'd either be over a network or using an external drive. Either way, the machine would look perfectly normal. If the motherboard were fried then you'd have to take the internal disk out to retrieve anything because the machine would be dead in the water!

BTW, hope you're enjoying your new shiny thing!

Thanks Lou, and I hope you're enjoying yours

Thanks H, all points noted there xxx

Thanks Rich, I don't know what the bloke was doing, but I didn't like the fact that he used something of his to actually WIRE the old pc up to this sparkly new one quite honestly, when he had already got them to talk to one another to transfer my docs and pics!

This Windows 7 is just fantastic,. and as for this new touchscreen (I've got the TouchSmart 300 HP one!) well, it's to die for and everything is so crystal clear. I love the face that I always have a little slideshow of all of my pics up in the top right hand corner, along with some other gadgets I've put on here, such as a big clock and a calendar, and then when it goes into screensaver mode, it then puts the slideshow up on the whole screen, and it does collages of them all and everything, oh it's sheer heaven!!!

One problem I do have is, I think he's done something wrong with AOL (yeah I know it's rubbish but I'm used to it!) in that you have to clear the aol browser cache separately,.. whereby you go onto the little icon in the task tray, right click onto system information, then go into utilities and you see how many mb's are loaded onto it and you can clear them,. BUT, it won't let me use it, it keeps coming up with a message saying "error parsing document" nor can I see my bills, it says I don't have any previous bills and yet I've been with them 10 years I tried ringing them but I think they're now talktalk and they don't want to know and said I need the technical department, but I'm not going there, I couldn't stand the stress quite honestly. What I might do is uninstall aol and do it again myself perhaps? Dunno, still pondering on it! At least I've got AOL and everything that goes with it and can send e-mails etc. so maybe I should let sleeping dogs lie methinks!