ctrl-alt-delete question & free anti-virus question

[Shroomster]

FIRST QUESTION: help me troubleshoot:

ctrl-alt-delete does not bring up the task manager. pressing the three buttons does nothing, pressing them consecutive times gets the soundcard/internal speaker to beep once at me.

TASK MANAGER still comes up with right clicking on the task bar and going through control panel

buttons work on the keyboard.

not my computer, and I don't remember if it ever came up before.....


WHY DOES C-A-D not bring up task manager? is there a setting that lets you turn that function on/off?




SECOND QUESTION:

PLEASE DO NOT MAKE THIS INTO A 'BETTER-THAN' flame-a-thon.


I'm torn between two (ok three as I'm used to the darkhorse) right now and need to figure out which FREE ANTI-VIRUS I'm going with.



I'll put a poll up

and hopefully people with either one of these will chime in

I've got about 9 hours or so before I need to install. fun huh?

SPECIFICATIONS:

approx 1.8 ghz processor single core AMD ATHLON (IIRC)

running windows XP

>1mb/s internet connection speed

USER specs: email (hotmail) , games (already downloaded to hard drive no online gaming)

VERY LITE BROWSING to well-known sites.



OPTIONS:

-AVAST

-AVIRA

or darkhorse AVG


THANKS FOR THE HELP!!!!


by the way if you must know,

I'm using bitdefender to clean the computer then uninstalling it and putting one of these 'light-weights' on as BD is too interactive for the ol' mother.

[goku87]

Avast FTW

[tk-421]

I think the best anti-virus you can use is NONE. Just switch to Linux and forget about all of that. :biggrin:

Of course, if you must use Windows, then I would tell you to use either Avast or AVG, since I've used them and never had any problems. I believe I used Avira once and it wasn't very effective, but that was many moons ago...

As for the Ctrl+Alt+Del question, it is hard-coded into the OS, and AFAIK there's no way to disable it. Something screwy must be going on, like maybe a rogue app is catching that combo before it gets through to the OS layer. If this is the case, open up the task manager and look at the "processes" tab and see if you can find anything wrong there.

Hope that helps! :thumbsup:

[LtNoogie]

Are you comfortable mucking around in your Registry? If so, read the link below. If not, find someone who is comfortable with RegEdit.

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/WindowsTips/WindowsXP/UserTips/Customization/EnableDisableTaskManagerinWindowsXPHomePro.html

[Bob Dog]

Have you tried doing a system restore: work backwards until you find a time prior to this event? Youmight try running Adaware it it gets rid of cookies and malware that are possbly the source of the problem

[yarisitis]

Use ctrl+shift+escape since that's also the command to bring up the task manager (in Vista, it brings up the task manager directly instead of ctrl+alt+delete which brings up a bunch of options with task manager being one of them).

Like tk-421 said, you could have some malware on your computer that's preventing the task manager from loading so whichever anti-virus software you choose, choose it quickly so you can catch anything unwanted on your computer.

[eTiMaGo]

I use AVG Free, it's unobtrusive and does a fine job.

I personally hate avast... forget to turn down the volume and you get woken up at 3AM by the blaring "YOUR VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED!" :mad:

[gokartride]

I think the best anti-virus you can use is NONE. I have heard this, too. My buddy the computer geek/website admin shudders when he considers what anti-virus software does to his computer. He advocates simply turning off Active-X, Java, and a few other things. That said, this is the same guy whose exeriments w/ rockets yeilded a hole in his roof...and an insurance claim...and a restraining order. On the upside, though, he now has friends in the Department of Homeland Security.

Not sure how bullet-proof this approach is, but that's all I do and have had no computer problems for years.

[Shroomster]

thanks for all the input!

as far as malware goes, ad-aware found nothing, avg found nothing and BD found a few erroneous things,

I will give the Ctrl-shift-esc a tray on her computer. I just think it's weird that it is blocked the normal way. and I had to remove all the most recent restore points to clean the pc. (restore was maxed @ x mb it was allowed to use)

[goku87]

I use AVG Free, it's unobtrusive and does a fine job.

I personally hate avast... forget to turn down the volume and you get woken up at 3AM by the blaring "YOUR VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED!" :mad:

haha. been there before.

[JumpmanYaris]

Well maybe if u stop going to porn sites u dont have to worry about a virus ;) lol j/k j/k

[Bob Dog]

those bad boys are fishing for whatever they can catch and they sure do have some nasty hooks......

[supmet]

I use AVG Free, it's unobtrusive and does a fine job.

I used to believe this, but its gotten to the point where I only run it once a week in safe mode(along with ad-aware). After a fresh install with all options from free AVG, it was taking up to 250 mb of ram, and the link scanner was making google searches take 4-5 times as long.

To the OP, any of the anti virus suites suggested should do the job, just make sure to run them in safe mode, as they are pretty useless in normal mode.

As for the ctrl-alt-delete question, are you sure all 3 buttons work separately? Have you tried the left ctrl and alt instead of the right ctrl and alt? If you have another USB keyboard laying around try it on that one. If none of that works, I would run a windows repair disk, this usually fixes standard registry, driver, and service problems.

[Shroomster]

I am going to take my keyboard over, all the buttons on it work. and running a repair disk would pretty much ruin the whole day for me. if it comes to it I'll just have to do a clean install on the pc. (I'm doing mine on Thursday)

[Kaotic Lazagna]

I'm using both AVG and Avast on my laptop. Both are great stuff. Avast will sometimes pick up stuff that AVG doesn't and vice-versa.

[Bob Dog]

probably won't work, but wise disc cleaner is free and sometimes helps me find something

[tk-421]

I'm using both AVG and Avast on my laptop. Both are great stuff. Avast will sometimes pick up stuff that AVG doesn't and vice-versa.
Are you running them both at the same time? If so, you will probably get lots of false positives. I would advice you to completely turn off one antivirus while the other one is running, and to whitelist each other's sandbox (aka "quarantine") in their settings in order to avoid screwups as much as possible.

[Shroomster]

well ctrl-shift delete worked. next time I'm over there I'll have to try running avg in safe mode.

[Bob Dog]

good to know