Probs with Win98SE laptop
 

Hi

I'm trying to help my mother-in-law who has a laptop running Win98 in anther country. Despite me setting up the laptop a couple of years ago, she has ignored all updates since then & now the laptop runs at a crawl. We are talking 20 mins from opening a new mail to being able to type something.

The laptop has McAfee Virusscan 4.5.1, Lavasoft Adwatch, Win98SE.

So far I've got her to do the following:
McAfee running at latest engine & DAT files
All Win updates installed
Adaware updated & full system scan run
Downloaded & run McAfee Stinger which found 3000 infected files (I don't know what they were infected with)
Run full McAfee scan in Safe Mode

The computer is now a little better, but still very slow & about 10 times slower when connected to the Internet.

I've now asked her to download & run Hijack This & send me the results

Any other ideas please?

:eek2:I would say to back up work and rebuild provided you have the win 98 disk, also when rebuilt, make sure net connection is firewalled:)

could the laptop take xp? or too old

Have you tried installing spybot to see if any spy/adware is causing the slow down? I would try that first before the re-build.
Also 4.5.1 isn't that great as a anti-virus detection, without enabling scanning all files on the system scan and enabling Download, e-mail and Active X portions as well.

Thanks guys, but the laptop is in another country. It is not viable for me to travel there to fix it any time soon. It's running Virusscan 4.5.1 because later versions do not run on Win98.

I've suggested she tries a few more things:
Download & run Ewido anti spyware - it's pretty good with trojans
Download & run Process Explorer - which should show up any processes jumping in.

See if that improves things by all means, but I think to be honest if it's THAT badly infected its past the point of no return to be honest, the scanning packages are bound to miss something that could be lurking in a folder somewhere, but as it's in another country it could be a little tricky. If stinger found 3000 infected files thats shocking and stinger if my memory servers me correctly checks for common viruses not all types. Does she know anyone around that area that could help? also, how does it connect to the net? what spec is the laptop?:)

as an example to assist my mam she has a laptop running XP pro, Behind a router (Draytek 2600G) remote desktop is open to MY IP address only so I can assist her when need be. Dont get me wrong this would be impossible to set up from another country but may help you out when you next go to see her

would you be able to talk her through a rebuild if need be, if it would take XP id rebuild it with that.

Can you're mother not package it up and send it to you via Courier? So that you can rebuild it for her?