Quote: hey_nonny @ April 29 2009, 11:39 AM BSTI just use evil cunning plans to get people to page one of Google now, it's more fun than pretending to laugh at geek jokes about variables and arrays.
Never.
Calling all computer geeks Page 3
The paid version of AVG has got somewhat bloated and has a firewall with an interface fit only for the highest IT Admin gurus in big organizations. It's far too complex for an average home user. Also with AVG I began to see mystery slowdowns like Lee eventually and there were other non-standard things happening from some malware that I had not managed to eliminate completel. I got fed up and decided to re-install from scratch, but rather than trust that I had indeed backed up every thing relevant I invested in buying a new (bigger) hard disk. So I put that in as the prime disk and the old one as slave.
Then I re-installed from scratch and now have a relatively clean system with no significant problems. I ditched AVG on this computer and decided to try Avira with which I am well pleased. It has a sensible firewall with intelligent understansable popups when a program tries (first time0 to access the Internet.
And yes I had forgotten to backup something, the "Inland Revenue CD-ROM" data for doing my PAYE, so I was able to retrieve that from the old disk.
I'm now confident 
that my old disk now has nothing more significant, so I will be zapping it soon and re-using it for website backups and for DVDs in-the-making.
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So to recap: Always be prepared to do a total re-install of your system, make sure you have all the CDs/DVD that you used over the years to install it. Keep them all in one place say a dedicated box folder or an old briefcase. Write a log on paper in a bound book when you install anything, so that you know in the future exactly what you installed and how you overcame any installation problems.