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I got microphone problems going on over here.
What's going on with that?
Alright.
Want to try this one?
Ah, okay, there we go.
Alright!
Now we know which microphone to use.
Ken's going to apologize.
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This is your one hour of free tech support that is for the masses.
So if you are looking for answers to questions,
that's what I'm here for.
So I heard at the office,
I stopped by the office on the way over here,
and I was told that apparently I've been talking about phones too much.
So somebody called in and said that I should stop talking about phones.
But it's your show.
Well, I know, but it is my show.
But at the same time, you know,
I want to make sure that the listeners know that I am listening.
Right?
So we're not going to talk about it.
We're going to talk about phones today.
Okay.
Even though I still have Verizon issues.
That'll be next week then.
I did have Verizon issues, but I switched.
You switched?
What did you switch to?
T-Mobile.
T-Mobile?
Okay.
All right.
That's it.
That's all we're talking about phones.
All right.
So now we're going to talk about viruses.
And we do one of these shows about once a year or so where it's time to explain how the viruses work.
Okay.
Specifically what the motivation is because every so often I hear, and this is sort of a quote,
really, why do these people do this?
Are they just getting their jollies off is what I heard yesterday by writing these viruses.
And I will tell you right now that there may be some jolly involved, but not much at all.
Most of it's money.
Lots and lots of money.
Ridiculous amounts of money is really what it comes down to.
It's really, yeah, there's a lot of dollar signs.
How does that work?
All right.
So if you, most of the viruses these days tend to be the crypto locker infections.
They're the ones that are, you know, they take your stuff, they take your information and encrypt it while you're not looking.
Right.
And, uh, you know, once, once you get that infection, it takes all of your documents, your pictures, and it, it makes it so you can't view it anymore.
And then when it gets done with all of that, it's pops up a message on your screen and says, Hey, you want your stuff back?
That'll be two bitcoins, please.
Or, uh, they'll have you get on the Walgreens and get a prepaid visa card where you can pay them with that.
And generally it's not cheap.
I would say on average, it's around.
$800 to get your data back.
And yeah, that's no joke.
Now to be, to credit these guys, they tend to honor their word business wise.
Right.
So if you happen to get the crypto locker infection and all of your data gets, gets taken away from you and you don't have any backups, you know, that every week we go, you need a backup.
You need to have a backup.
You must have backups.
Uh, so if you don't have a backup.
And then you're forced to pay the ransom.
Then, uh, I would say that most of the time, uh, with the experience that we've had with it, where we've directly paid people to get other people's data back, uh, about, um, I don't know, nine out of 10 times we get the data back.
It's not bad.
It's pretty good.
Yeah.
Uh, only one time, uh, have we paid and not.
Gotten the data back, which was kind of unfortunate.
Um, but this is why we, we harp on the whole backup thing.
You must have backups.
You need a backup.
That's just, that's just how it works.
I mean, in, in every aspect of your life, there's, there's a plan B, right?
And you need to have that with your computer as well.
So you either have a separate copy of the data or you synchronize to the cloud.
You synchronize to us over at computer guru.
Uh, we would love to make sure that your data.
Just does not go away.
Get me safe people backups.
So anyway, yes, there's lots of money involved.
In fact, there's, there's websites now that you can go out and it's effectively like, uh, it's almost like a franchise, right?
Where you give them, you give them $3,000, I think is the amount.
And, uh, they basically set you up with your own infection that you can send out to the masses, right?
With the, with this crypto locker stuff.
They set you up with the.
With a, a Bitcoin wallet and they, they tell you how it's like a class.
They teach you how to, you know, put it on the server and how to, to send it out to the, uh, via email usually, or put it onto websites so that you can get, you know, people, you can infect people and you get tech support for the, for basically ransoming people's software, their documents.
And so that's, that's how big this, this money is right now.
It's to the point where.
Yeah.
These people have enough money that they can just basically say, well, we're not going to ransom individuals anymore.
We're going to teach you how to ransom people.
And, uh, I don't know.
It's next to send me some sort of pyramid scheme, I'm sure.
Right.
But it's, these are the big viruses that are out there right now.
These are the ones that are the most dangerous, right?
Cause we hear people talking about all the time.
Uh, yesterday I was having a conversation with somebody and they're like, yeah, well, you know, we're not really all like concerned with people hacking in.
So we don't need this, you know, super fancy firewall.
And I was like, well, yeah, but that's not the part you're really worried about anyway.
Right.
You should be worried about it.
You should be worried more about email infections and email just needs to go away.
But, um, at the very least the zip file extension needs to go away just because so many people fall for it.
They get these infections.
They, you know, they get this message in their mail.
It says your, your package wasn't sent from UPS or, um.
Um, let's see, what are the other big ones?
Uh, you know, any of them off the top of your head?
Have you seen any of them?
No, I haven't.
I just, what was going through my mind is obviously this is very prevalent out here.
A lot of people pray on, or they would not be doing it.
Yeah.
I mean, there is, there is a lot of that.
You, and you have different sort of subcategories of bad people out there that are preying on different demographics.
Um, and those targeted phishing messages.
Are, are, you know, they're the ones that most people will fall for, right?
You're, there's a lot of ones that are like PayPal.
Like, you know, your PayPal account has been suspended or, uh, there's some really good ones from Chase.
I mean, they are convincing.
Western Union.
They don't do the Western Union as much anymore.
Not so much.
Uh, but the, the Chase ones right now are, wow, they're, they're convincing.
Cause I looked at one and I can, I can spot these things just immediately looking at them going, oh, that's, that's, that's.
That's not even real.
And I looked at it and I was just like, really?
You know, and there was, there was like a good five seconds where I was like, wow, this is legit.
Right.
And I was like, this is not even possible.
And, uh, upon, upon further inspection, I mean, yes, it was fake, but you couldn't tell by looking at it.
It was just, I knew it was fake by circumstance.
So there's some really, really good, uh, phishing emails that are out there that are trying to infect you.
Um, but a lot of them have to do with something like, you know, there's a package or, um, uh, right now they're doing a bunch of tax ones.
You know, like you're, uh, you're to collect your tax payment.
We need you to fill out this form or whatever.
And, uh, so just be, be careful, be careful about just if it's in a zip file at all.
Yeah.
Just don't even open it.
Delete it.
What about the rule of thumb?
If you don't recognize the sender?
Well, they're phishing this.
The, the sender.
The sender name.
A lot of times.
I mean, the sender name looks legit unless you, you know, do some investigation.
Um, but what it really comes down to is that, uh, you know, it's, it's about the type of file that they're sending you.
As an example, um, for most of the people we host email for bunches of people in town, um, and all over the world, actually, we host a lot of email accounts.
And for the majority of them by default, we just deny.
We just deny zip accounts or zip files just right out of the box.
Just don't even try because the zip file will never get there.
I'll just say good rule of thumb.
If there's an attachment, be suspicious.
I don't know.
Yeah.
That's me.
And that's, that's a very good thing to be.
Um, and, and luckily Outlook has fixed a lot of the problems that they used to have with, uh, auto opening attachments and infecting the machine and stuff like that.
But there are some things that we're going to talk about after the break.
Which is, uh, ways that we can make sure that you are very safe.
And as usual, this episode, this first segment brought to you by Perfection Auto Works.
If you want somebody who really takes the time to get invested in you, you, the customer, you should get on and see Mike Emery down at Perfection Auto Works.
Listen to the commercials this break because he's in there for contact information.
This is the Computer Guru Show.
We'll be right back.
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If you go to the Listen Live link, there is absolutely a chat room that you can participate in.
One of the questions in there was asking about if we could solder something back onto a motherboard that got broken off.
And the answer is yes.
And just so I don't have to type while I'm in the middle of talking here.
By the description given.
Which is?
That it looks like all the traces are probably okay.
Yeah, I can probably fix that for you.
Bring it on down.
We're open until 5 o'clock today.
And 9 to 6 Monday through Friday.
So once again, give us a call.
790-2040 if you'd like to be part of the show and get some free tech support on.
Now, infections.
There's a lot of people that switch over to the Mac platform because they're trying to avoid the infections.
And I'm glad that works for some people for right now.
And the chat.
This is like, you know, I have a Mac in front of me right now.
And a PC.
But you can't run far when it comes to that stuff.
There's new infections coming out every day for Mac, which is kind of unfortunate.
But they attack in a different way.
They attack the weak link, which is you, the user.
So much like with those phishing emails where people basically click on a link.
Or open a program in order to install it.
Same thing is happening on the Mac now.
Because instead of trying to hack the operating system, which for a long time was really where they were going.
They were exploiting the weaknesses of the operating system itself.
Once they've gotten to the point where that just doesn't work anymore.
Or it's not reliable enough.
Or it doesn't generate enough income for them.
Because they're not getting enough people.
They had to switch tactics.
And so a couple of different tactics.
That they use is they basically emotionally fool you.
So they send you an email that for whatever reason.
Whatever the reasoning is within that email that makes you click on it.
You'll click on it.
You'll open the application.
And suddenly you're infected.
And a lot of times it's so fast.
And it doesn't do anything overt.
You just click on it and nothing happens.
It's already done.
It's already done what it needs to do.
It's just instant.
And basically then it waits.
Now if it's one of those CryptoLocker ones.
It's in the background.
It is.
It's encrypting all of your documents.
You don't even know it.
So if you notice that your machine is just unreasonably slow after opening an email.
Just really, really slow for no apparent reason.
Right.
It used to be run nice and fast.
And then suddenly there's this huge delay.
Yeah.
You need to turn that computer off.
Right.
And bring it down immediately.
Get down to the guru.
That's right.
But that way we can stop it.
Because the encryption process itself is resource intensive.
It takes a lot of sort of horsepower to make that happen.
So it's going to be sucking all of the performance out of your machine while it's trying to do this encryption in the background.
So yeah.
If your machine is just real slow.
Like unreasonably.
Uncharacteristically slow.
Then yeah.
You've got a problem.
And even if it isn't an infection.
Right.
The only other time that your computer is really going to be like that.
Where it's just very, very slow.
Then you're probably have a failing hard drive or you've got a bad RAM chip or something that needs to be looked at anyway.
So if you notice that stuff, then it's time to bring it in.
Now, one of the other ways that you can avoid this is that.
Instead of going the Mac route.
Right.
If you want to pay four times too much for a machine, that's cool.
All right.
If you've got the money, you can absolutely do that.
Just know that you're not completely safe.
And you still have to have some type of skepticism about the things that you click on.
About the places that you go.
And make sure that you keep yourself safe.
And have backups.
Always have backups.
It's like every break I have to say it.
Um.
But there are some things that you can do.
On the PC side.
To really straighten that out.
PCs have a weakness.
Right.
Everybody's like, well, they're so vulnerable.
And the reason that it is, is because back in Vista.
When they decided to not make your machine vulnerable.
Everybody complained.
Right.
They were like, oh, I don't want to have to click.
Okay.
All the time.
We're typing a password every time something dangerous could potentially be happening.
Because it was popping up that there was even a famous sort of commercial that Mac did.
Based on.
That the Mac PC commercials.
Where it was like, are you sure you want to do that?
Yes.
All right.
That is the mechanism that keeps you safe.
And the problem is, is that now Microsoft sort of back that off a little bit.
Right.
For Windows 7.
Just to kind of make people shut up.
They were complaining so much about, well, why do I always have to click on this thing?
It makes the screen flash.
And then I have to click on yes.
And the answer is you don't have to click.
On yes.
Really.
If you use a Mac and you're very familiar with this already, then which is anytime you try to install a piece of software, it pops up a box and says, hey, what's your password?
Right.
It's not just clicking.
Yes.
You actually have to type a password in in order to make it happen.
And you can do that in Windows.
There's some settings that you can.
That you can put in the machine to make it behave just like a Mac when it comes to how you install software.
Which includes infections.
So rather than, you know, you're just surfing around and then suddenly you get a password box that says, hey, enter your password.
And all you're doing is surfing the web or checking your email.
It shouldn't be asking for that.
That should be a giant red flag that says, oh, something bad's happening here.
And and you have the opportunity to stop it at that moment.
So we have a couple of different options for that down at Computer Guru.
Right.
So we can we can basically you can sign up for the GPS package.
It's Guru Protection Services, which basically we lock down your machine.
Right.
It's $30 a month.
You get antivirus and anti malware included and we lock your machine down.
You're not going to get any infections.
And if you do, I'll fix it.
That's just how it works.
Right.
I am confident enough to say that I can prevent you from getting an infection.
And if you get one, I will solve that problem because you're not getting one.
That's just how it works.
So on my machine, as an example, my PC, I use all the time.
I haven't had antivirus on that thing in three years.
Zero infections.
And I go all kinds of places.
I shouldn't because I'm following you guys around as far as, you know, I went to this website and got an infection.
Oh, yeah, let me try it out.
I want to see what happens.
So there there are ways to protect yourself.
There are ways to keep yourself from getting an infection.
And if you've got especially if you've got like kids, right, that are doing the most dangerous.
Thing in the world, which is searching for song lyrics.
Yeah, that is the number one way to get an infection.
By the way, if you are looking for the lyrics to a song, chances are you're infected already.
It's it's that dangerous.
But if you've got kids, it's great because you can set an account up for the kids and completely lock that account down.
Right?
You're not you're not saying, well, you can't go to certain places or you're not saying that you're not.
You don't have to be 1984 with them.
You have to be overly Orwellian, but you can make it so that no matter what they do, they're not going to infect the computer.
And that's that's a pretty good deal.
So we either offer it as a monthly service or we do it as a one time.
All right.
It's just you want to do the one time thing.
It's 300 bucks and I'll make sure that you never get an infection again on that computer.
So if you're interested in that type of stuff, give me a call.
You can either call me here at the show.
790.
2040 or down shop 304.
8300.
Howard's down there today.
He'd be happy to talk with you about it if you want to.
I'm sure he just loves the extra phone call.
So 304 8300 if you want to if you want to irritate him, get ready.
Howard.
Yeah, he's just he wants to, I don't know, get things done.
And then the phone's ringing and I think he's there by himself today.
So yeah, he's the I'm sure he's going to love that.
Let's see chat room stuff.
We're going to.
Oh, yeah, we're talking about song lyrics in there.
I know what you should do is if you're really looking for the song lyrics, listen to the song.
There you go.
No, actually, there's there's some ways there's a couple of places that you can go.
There are like two different easy lyrics is one of them.
Easy lyrics is a good.
Okay site to go to now they have advertising on their site, which is where most of these infections come from.
And a lot of people just don't understand.
How that works.
But basically, it's let's imagine that all the websites are like individual properties and on some of these properties.
They have these big giant billboards on them and they hire another company to come and put things on that billboard.
And so the property managers themselves don't necessarily have any control over the advertising that's happening there.
They're just saying this space for rent and you go ahead and manage that.
So the ad brokers will go out and.
Find advertisers and sometimes those are those infectious people.
I had the people that are causing infections.
So they just buy legitimate advertising.
There was an instance where they heavily invested in PBS and MSNBC and basically millions of people got infected from the PBS website because of an ad banner that was on the website.
Now wasn't PBS's fault.
They don't have any control over the advertising.
But for a while there PBS was a dangerous place to go.
Until they figured out how to get rid of that ad banner.
So no bueno.
Yeah.
So it was it was bad news.
They should have done a whole episode of Sesame Street about, you know, viruses and infections and stuff.
That's how you know the times are changing, man.
All right.
Let's go ahead and take a quick break.
And when we come back, we're going to talk more about ways that you can make your computer go faster and keep yourself safe today in the Internet age.
This is Computer Guru Show.
We'll be right back.
Your computer guru, Mike Swanson, is here to help you tame that beast of a machine.
Join the chat right now at gurushow.com or call in.
This is the Computer Guru Show on KVOY, The Voice.
Mike Swanson, your computer guru, is just a click away.
Listen and watch.
Watch at gurushow.com.
This is the Computer Guru Show on KVOY, The Voice.
Welcome back to the Computer Guru Show.
My name is Mike.
Here to do what your technology needs and treat you like a person in the process.
790-2040.
That's 520-790-2040.
If you'd like to be part of the show, let's talk to Fernando.
Hey, Fernando.
How are you doing?
Hi.
I'm doing pretty good.
Thank you.
So a couple of things.
I have a we have wireless modem, you know, in our office.
And my computer seems the only one that sometimes will turn it on and there's no connection,
internet connection.
Everybody else is fine except me.
And so what we have to do is we have to turn off the modem, let it sit for a while,
and then turn it back on and then I'm connected again.
What can I do to kind of resolve that issue?
And the other question that I had, I caught the end part of the viruses
and how can I solve that issue?
Now, you guys can go ahead and guarantee that, I guess, install something that would prevent viruses
from getting into your computer.
Yeah, and it's not actually an install.
Well, I mean, it's sort of an install, but it's mostly a we prevent installation.
Okay.
So as far as the virus stuff is concerned, we put some settings on the computer that disallows execution
of any program outside of where we tell it.
It's okay.
Okay.
So there is some discomfort if you're one of those users that likes to install lots of software.
However, if you're one of those users where you like the way your computer is right now
and you're okay with it not changing, then that's an excellent way for you to make sure
that you don't get any type of infection.
Okay, and that's me right there.
I don't really like to install apps or anything like that on my computer anyway, so.
Good.
But you're exactly the person I need to talk to you for that, then.
Okay, and where are you guys located?
We're at 510 East Fort Lowell.
Okay, 510.
That's first in Fort Lowell.
So tell me more about your computer, though, as far as the Wi-Fi stuff is concerned.
And it's happened with several of the computers that I've had, but what happens is that, you know,
I turn it off every evening.
I didn't used to do that.
I would leave it on.
But I just started turning off the computer.
And so sometimes when we turn it back on, what happens is that it'll say that it's not connected into the website.
There's no Internet connection.
So then I have to go over there and shut the modem off and turn everything off, basically, for, you know, a couple of minutes.
Click it back on, and then there it is.
And you're saying that while yours is unable to connect, other computers are?
Are, yes.
Okay.
And what kind of antivirus do you have on your computer right now?
Norton.
Yeah.
That's, yeah, baby.
Well, see, that was happening before anyway.
Yeah, well, still, that's not helping your problem at all.
Okay.
So I would say first thing I would do is, especially if it's the Norton Internet Security, is that's got to go.
Oh, okay.
All right.
We like antivirus.
It's just antivirus.
We don't like antivirus that does anything else.
Okay.
As far as we don't like it being a firewall.
Not a big fan of it, you know, basically trying to dominate your online presence.
Just be antivirus and be good antivirus.
That's really the criteria.
Uh-huh.
Is McAfee a good one?
Nope.
No, it's not.
McAfee and Norton both are, basically, kill it with fire.
Right?
Okay.
We just, we don't like either of those.
Okay.
McAfee's problem is that they have just miserable detection.
Okay.
They are a decent antivirus when they are being just antivirus, but they're slow as far as being able to catch infections while they're still relevant.
Right.
Now-
Well, that's what I didn't understand because if I had these, you know, why were they not working, you know?
So that you answered my question there.
Now, Norton is very good at basically first-line defense.
Right?
They catch those infections quick.
So as soon as something's out in the wild within 48 to 72 hours, they generally have something out there for it that's been pushed out to all of their clients.
Uh-huh.
However, the Norton products tend to be overly ambitious, and they like to basically just rule the computer.
Okay.
A lot of times, they are tweaking with settings that Windows is trying to tweak back.
So you end up with a lot of conflict.
Right.
And many times, you'll end up with no internet.
Right.
And that's my big problem with Norton is that it makes your computer really slow.
Okay.
And then on top of which, a lot of times, you'll end up with just no internet access for no reason at all.
Right.
And then you have to unplug the wire or reset the cable modem or the router or something to get back online.
So I'm going to suggest that at least a contributing factor to what's going on with your not being able to connect is some sort of configuration.
Okay.
So start with getting rid of that and putting something else on there.
Okay.
I would imagine that you'll have that problem less frequently.
Now, how old is this machine?
I just got that.
It's six months.
So it's a Windows 8 machine?
Yes, it is.
And I don't really particularly like it, probably because I don't really understand a lot of the stuff.
All right.
So here's what I'm going to tell you to do.
You either sign up for the lockdown service or the GPS, one of the two.
Or you are going to uninstall Norton utterly.
You will, I would say, download something called the Norton removal tool.
Uh-huh.
So after you've uninstalled Norton using the regular uninstall, you run this Norton removal tool.
And it eradicates Norton products from your computer.
Okay.
And all of the settings.
So put your computer back to default.
Then you are going to get the paid version of Malwarebytes.
You can start off with a free trial if you want.
But the paid version.
Is what is required.
Everybody listening to the show should have the paid version of Malwarebytes on their computer.
Unless they're Macs.
Uh-huh.
And that way, you are much more likely to keep yourself out of trouble.
So.
Okay.
I would suggest.
So what's it called again?
The Malware, what?
Malwarebytes.
B-Y-T-E-S.
Okay.
All right.
So you can go to Malwarebytes.org.
And you can get a copy there.
Okay.
Please do not Google search for Malwarebytes and then download the first thing you find.
Okay.
You can also go to my website.
Go to gurushow.com.
And there's a useful link section with links to the Malwarebytes website.
Oh, okay.
Cool.
So that will probably help quite a bit.
Now, the only other thing that I have to ask is how old is this router?
It's probably a couple of years old.
All right.
If it's more than four or five years old, then one of the reasons that your other people may be able to connect and you can't is that they might have older machines.
And it's operating on an older standard.
Okay.
So the only other thing to look at there is you might need a newer router.
Now, the flip side to that is if you get one of the fancy, brand new, stupid, expensive ones.
Yeah.
Your older machines might not be able to connect all that well.
So you want to find something that's sort of in the middle.
The ones that we like, if you're looking locally, is there's these white Asus, the RT-16s.
Mm-hmm.
They tend to be very nice routers that work with just about every computer that we've put them in front of.
And they have very nice reliability.
Okay.
Well, thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
I'm probably going to be swinging by your place anyway.
But, yeah, thank you so much for the help.
I appreciate that.
It's what I do, man.
Thank you for the call.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thank you.
So, yeah, if you have infections.
Infections, you know, and most everybody does.
I mean, that's one of the reasons that you'll notice that we occasionally will say,
hey, guess what?
We're doing basically free tune-ups on machines.
It's because every machine that comes in, nearly all of them, I would say greater than 80% have infections on them.
And a lot of them are sort of innocuous.
They're the ones that are just, like, advertising infections.
Or whatever.
Or things that aren't terrible.
Right?
They're not necessarily stealing your data or encrypting your stuff.
But it's just so prevalent.
And people just get used to it.
They're like, yeah, you know, all that advertising, all the extra spam or the email worm that I have on my computer.
I just got used to it.
So, no need to fix it.
Come on now.
Drives me crazy.
Just fix it.
Right?
And then listen.
Because any time that you bring your computer into Computer Guru.
If you bring your computer in.
When you pick it up, we're going to be like, okay, this is what you need to do to not have this happen again.
And a lot of times, this is free advice.
Right?
It's like, you should install this piece of software.
You should take these cautionary steps to make sure that you don't get this infection again.
You should have a backup.
You should have all of these different things.
And we're going to tell you, this is what you need to do.
But if you don't listen, you're going to get an infection again.
And you just, you don't have to, it doesn't have to be that way.
Your computer doesn't have to be slow.
You don't have to be afraid of using your computer online.
You don't have to worry about your data getting stolen or your passwords being stolen.
You don't have to worry about any of that stuff.
It just takes a bit of planning.
Right?
And a little bit of advice.
All right.
Let's go and talk to Charles.
Hey, Charles.
How are you today?
Hey, good.
Good morning.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Thank you.
Well, my problem's kind of weird.
I've got a new Windows 8.1 machine here in ACES.
My wife likes to use Thunderbird as her mail client.
Okay.
And since we installed it on this machine, it just doesn't play well.
It continually goes into not responding mode and we have to shut it down.
And she can't delete stuff from the inbox as easily.
And so, I'm going to tell you a little bit about this.
I'm just wondering, is that something you've heard of?
Are there better mail clients out there that'll work?
Anytime you use any of the Mozilla products, I die a little bit inside.
So, who's your mail provider?
Well, we have three of them.
She has three of them.
You know, Gmail, Yahoo, and another one.
Does it tend to happen where she's able to delete from one of the accounts but not the other?
No.
So, it's all of them?
Yeah.
It's the program.
And I don't know if there's a fix for it other than just to change the mail client.
All right.
Tell me a little bit more about the computer.
So, typical questions.
How old is it?
About two months.
Oh, it's a brand new one.
Okay.
And antivirus that's installed?
I took off Panda the other day because I was reading where someone said that could be an issue for it.
So, I took it off to see if the problem would go away.
It did not.
It did not, right?
Anything else on there?
The free version of Malwarebytes.
Okay.
Is it in trial mode or no?
It's the free version.
Yeah, but for the first month, it's going to run in trial mode.
Oh, okay.
So, I'm curious.
Is it still in trial mode?
I haven't used it in some time, so I can't honestly say.
Probably not.
Okay.
Probably not.
All right.
And so, since day one, when you put that on there, it's been that way?
Pretty much, yes.
Okay.
The mail accounts that you have, the Yahoo and Gmail ones, are they POP or IMAP?
Both those, I believe, are POP.
Okay.
POP should be the faster one.
All right.
So, IMAP is nicer.
We generally tell people to set your accounts up as IMAP so that there's some type of server-side synchronization.
Okay.
But...
Okay.
The Gmail is an IMAP.
Okay.
Good.
But the Yahoo is not.
Yahoo is a POP.
All right.
Basically, just without knowing anything more about the machine or its configuration, and
you're saying that it's been that way since day one, I would suggest that it's probably
going to be a Thunderbird problem rather than a communication issue or some other type of
infection that's going on.
Because we have to look at those things first.
Whenever we hear, well, my mail client locks up all the time, first thing that jumps to
mind to me is there might be an email worm, right?
Where it's hijacking the mail program in the background and saying, hey, send out 10,000
emails.
However, if you have Malwarebytes on there and you had Panda on there, that's pretty
unlikely, especially on a Windows 8 machine.
Can you recommend a different aggregating mail client of some kind?
Well, I'm a big fan of Outlook myself.
But the built-in mail client for 8, even though it's got kind of a weird interface, is also
an aggregating mail client.
So you can have multiple accounts in there.
Really, if you're looking for a decent email client, all the free ones are kind of terrible.
So there's something called EM client, which is if you're anti-Microsoft is okay.
It's kind of an Outlook clone.
But really, I like Outlook.
If you have Office, then chances are you've got like a 365 subscription.
It's not a big deal.
And you have Outlook.
Just use it.
It's a decent mail program.
All righty.
Well, thank you for the information.
I'll check into that EM one there and maybe even try the built-in one.
I'm going to suggest one other thing.
You have Thunderbird installed, which means that you probably have Firefox installed.
I would say uninstall Firefox and see if it gets better.
Firefox has this weird issue.
And this is the reason I hate Firefox, is that on some machines, for no apparent reason,
whatsoever, it just makes the machines slow for certain functions.
All right?
A lot of times, it's when you're typing.
And I have no idea why it would be that way.
But we find all the time that people will have Thunderbird installed and they're really
like, my computer's so slow.
It can't even keep up with me typing.
And not even in Firefox.
All right?
Firefox isn't even running.
It's just installed on the computer.
All right?
And they're typing in Word or in their email program.
And it's just dragging along.
And it's like not responding.
Or they'll type in some language language language language language language language language
and then the words will catch up to them.
It's Firefox.
And all you do is uninstall Firefox,
the machine goes back to normal, right?
Instant typing again.
So we don't know why it does that with Firefox.
I honestly have not been invested enough to care.
So it's just been like uninstall Firefox
and problem solved.
So I would say...
What's that?
Go with Chrome.
Yeah, we like Chrome.
Chrome's a good browser.
I can dig it.
So I would say go with that and see what happens.
All right.
Well, thank you.
No problem.
Have yourself a lovely, lovely day.
You too.
All right.
So we're going to take a quick break
and then we are going to come back to more phone calls
and more helping you with free tech support
right here on the Computer Guru Show.
790-2040.
We'll be right back.
Whether you're dealing with
hardware installation or heaven forbid,
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