General Chat

I am on windows 7 running Firefox.

The past few days I have had several periods of problems first the Pc starts to run very slowly, then when I access Gmail, Facebook and GR I can't get the screen to hold at the top of the pages so can't do anything. An hour before there were no problems and I was working ok on word and picass.

Firefox seemed to be doing a big update according to task management.

Neither of us are PC illiterate but wonder if AVG is doing something.
Sorry this is a bit vague. The PC was like it last night so we closed it down and now it is the same this morning.
I have AVG, IOBit, CCleaner on the computer, are any of these now incompatible? i have had them all a long time with no problem. Would any of them be the cause of the problem? Is there a better free anti virus I should change to?

Hope you have a clue what is possibly the problem.

Have to go out soon but would be grateful for your help. Many thanks, be back soon.

Above written on the Ipad.

We wonder if it was IE that w as updating. It is back to normal at the moment. :-S

You're lucky. We have Windows7/Vista with Firefox as our browser. Tried IE, but that's no better. Chrome won't download. As far as we can work out, our PC is too old to accept further updates as its run out of 'space'.
Ancestry is on such a permanent go-slow that I've given up with it.

Windows 7, Windows 10 made huge improvements compared to Windows XP. Stuff such as CCleaner, IOBit are at best harmless but may well kick off assorted obscure problems. It is worth running malware bytes once a month but let it update its definitions each time.

AVG works fine but tends to take up too much memory. Avast is not quite as thorough as AVG but is not such a performance hit. If you have Intel i5 or better this will not matter.

Chrome, Opera have built in support for Flash. Mozilla .org is pursuing a vendetta against Flash and this has been known to cause problems inc black screens in iPlayer. The only thing you can do is to keep yr Flash addin up to date AND go here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5
and opt in.

Mozilla have a brand new browser created from scratch which was supposed to have been released in August. So far due to dissent within Mozilla it has not been released.

Apart from Flash other things which are known to upset Firefox so that it behaves weirdly include: mouse drivers esp Logitech (fix: remove the mouse will work without custom drivers), mouse/keyboard battery nearly flat (wireless devices), video drivers (mainly high end), old true type fonts inherited from XP and before. Then of course there are plugins and addons - keep these to a minimum.

If you are getting these sorts of problem with all apps not just Firefox the most usua; reason is a dying mouse. Try another one. If that doesn't work then suspect malware.

Well, we uninstalled all sorts of things that looked as if I didn't need them. Changed the mouse battery now showing healthy for both mouse and keyboard (Mouse is wireless keyboard is not as I had a problem with the wireless one). Ininstalled the driver, ran Iobit, C Cleaner and Malware fighter. I has improved but still showing high CPU usage. We noticed that Flash has downloaded recently, wondering if it is that arguing with Firefox. However, without flash I won't be able to view videos. Confusing this technology.
thanks for your help rollo I will see how it goes, have left AVG on for now although considering AVAST.

The current releases of Firefox AND the current developer release are poor performers. It takes so long to start that it leaves a big module running EVEN when firefox is "closed" and it really kills performance on i3 and Duo machines.

There are lots of Flash videos that Firefox will not render. At this time chrome, opera ( a custom version of Chrome) are much better for rendering Flash than Firefox esp BBC iPlayer. Chrome will install on VISTA machines but there are no updates. Opera won't install at all. Windows7 is fine with all browsers.

If you want a Firefox browser without all the performance hit and Flash problems go here:
https://www.palemoon.org

Don't run both IOBit and CCleaner choose one or the other. I never use either. All thse fussing about klutz in the registry and temp files dates back to Windows9x. It really is a waste of time. Run a decent AV such as AVG or Avast, malware b. now and then and it's all you need. Windows 7 needs min 2GB RAM (32 bit) and 4GB RAM (64 bit) or performance will be dire.

Nearly all adware/malware installations are a result of installing "free" software or mail attachments. There is no reason for people to send mail attachments any more 'cos they can just drop the file into a shared folder in Dropbox or similar which will be protected by yr AV program.

Sometimes attack software is on a USB ley. That is usually more of a problem for business BUT some cheap USB drives (and phone microdrives) sold on eBay etc come with a virus such as Superfish. Thus stay with safe branded stuff.

Hilary Clinton's mail server was hacked using a banal program on a USB Key NOT some genius cyberkid hiding in a cellar the Kremlin as TV and the movies will have you think. 99.9% of people over 40 have zero understanding of computer security.

Thanks Rollo that is very useful