Need some computer help.

Get hold of CCleaner, you should know the site by now.
The free version is enough to be used for this following.
Locate the directory that the program you wish to "loose" is located in....
Delete it.
Yes, just delete it....
This is the long way round, but this does work.
And rather than tun buggy uninstallers that always leave some of themselves behind, this cleans ALL traces out....
Run CCleaner in "Registry" mode.
That will now find all the registry parts of that program you just deleted, and ask if you want them removed...
Do that with extreme prejudice.
CCleaner also has options to run uninstallers, if you wish to run an uninstaller, CCleaner is a good host, as it will clean up as well after the uninstaller....
But use that registry issues part for at least two runs...
Then run it again, and again, until it reports no issues found.
Then let it loose on cleaner mode as normal, it will get rid of your junk.


As Always, this program comes beyond suspicion, it is good, clean, and 100% safe unless you tell it to go berserk....
But...
I must add a word of caution, whilst installing it, it is "Sponsored" to nag you into installing Chrome as your default browser, and that is not good.
"Apparently", [<<my way of saying this is more than likely true without attracting a law suit for slander?...It is to the best of anyone's knowledge, so saying, people know its true, but google will neither conform or deny....] "apparently" google chrome is inherently spyware, as it reports your browsing history back to Google who sell it on for profit?....

Anyway, also, CCleaner will purge cookies.
Firefox will purge cookies if you ask it to.
Mine is set to purge on shutdown anyway.

www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download on options always try to download from Piriform themselves, as some people have had problems with File-Hippo and other such sites with the program arriving packaged with "Visitors"?...
I believe File-Hippo is working on that to try and clean up the act.

I need to get my hands on an external hard drive to finish the process of backing everything up.

that system mechanic seems an expensive repackaging of exactly the same thing ccleaner does, not to mention, it won't do much of the same functions mbytes or spybot do.

There are some good pay solutions out there, such as kapersky or f-secure, but m-bytes, spybot and ccleaner will bring you to 90% of the same for nothing.

Add win7 security+firewall and you should be fine as long as you don't do something stupid

I've been using the free version of Avast for about 6 years now. Never had a problem with it. I have it on 6 machines. The only negative thing happened about 6 months ago. I downloaded a new version and after that it started putting an Avast advertisement on the bottom of all my emails. Something to the effect that the email had been scanned and found to be virus free with a link to the Avast website. Buried way down deep in one of the settings menus was a check box to turn that off. It took a while to find it.

I like the pirate talk option.

Spybot search-and-destroy, if run in "Immunise" mode, will set certain parameters in your computer that will prevent malware attaching....
I cant go into details on that as the know how is sensitive, bus simplified, if someone tried to hide a box in a chest of draws, but the draws were locked shut?...
Malwarebytes is a run on demand as specified.

Microbodges own anti-malware suites are exactly what they are, Micro$oft, and therefore attract their own brand of chaos and attacks just the same as Windows.
As in, they are useless unless you are constantly updating.

Paid-for internet security suites...
Does the program have any benefits over a free version?...
Well, no, it will detect and remove the same threats.
But the paid for version will self-update more often, give free support to issues where the program may fail to remove something, and provide other system tools, like mine has a disk-keeper that does background defrag of all drives.
Mine also has a "Quick-scan" option, where if it detects a file has not changed since it was last scanned, it will ignore that on future scans unless something changes that.
Min also has updates to "Latest version" built in.
On your free version, you only get definitions updates, you dont get software updates, unless you go to the site and allow yourself to be nagged into buying something.....

Mine also has comprehensive anti-malware on the same par as spybot and the like, but I run both, because I "Test" both now and again....

Yes, beta testing sometimes involves going to known nasty sites allowing something to download and then running a stopwatch to see how long it lasts before something steps in and terminates it.


Finally, System Mechanic.
BEWARE!
I have spent many many many hours sorting out problems caused by that program.
Admittedly, a LOT were caused by someone playing with the wrong settings, and making a right mess of it.
Make a full system backup before you start tinkering with anything.

It does not much more than CCleaner?...
Yes, but even with CCleaner, you can make a mess?...
Admittedly, if you are about to chicken it up with CCleaner you get nagged to death with "Are you sure" anbd "Do you want to make a backup first" messages.
Plus CCleaner is a lot more gentle, it will only remove stuff that its KNOWN is junk.


If you want something that will brillo-pad your system, Baku.
Baku is dangerous, its designed to be dangerous, but in the right hands will search for all inconsistencies.
Just read the warnings and get advice before you run it....
And dont ask me, because its one of those programs I will only run if I can see what its doing, therefore wont accept responsibility for advising anyone else to run it by message board....
But its a damn good program.

...and my computer just decided that it doesn't want to recognize one of my USB keys. I was in the middle of editing a document I had on said key when the system decided not to recognize it.

Oy.

Never work directly from a usb key. they aren't very reliable for longterm storage/safe keeping.

But yea, try putting it in a different port, preferably one that's straight on the board(usually on the back of the machine, near keyboard/mouse and sound connections.

Ran Eusing last night, and it pulled off a bunch of crud.

This morning, I got "normal" mode to work up until I went to check my e-mail. Hotmail worked just fine, but when I went to log out (which triggers a script that either defaults me to MSN's home page or a generic advertisement page from Microsoft) my browser choked.

This is something of a ray of sunshine IMHO, as it's leading me to think that the issue might just be software-related.

Actually, if you move files, the computer actually performs a standard copy action unless you move within the very same partition where just the index is moved and not the actual data. After a successful copy process, the original file you "move" is simply deleted.

Only if you unplug the USB drive in the middle of the process.

Knoppix would be "THE" OS which is supposed to run on USB drives, but you can have others. The only reason for cloud computing is that you can access your files from anywhere and you can use the same data on different devices.

USB is a pretty poor design. It was just meant to have an alternative to Firewire where Apple demands 1$ per port in licenses. So they came up with that bus which isn't a bus which requires Hubs which are in fact Switches. Also USB can differ between just 255 Vendors which can have a maximum of 255 products each.

This is true for all methods of data transfer, USB is just more fragile because it's "user serviceable" so the user can tamper any time with it. PATA/SATA/SCSI isn't meant to be user serviceable so those are extra fragile when the user plays with them, e.g. using eSATA.

There are available for decades! They just became "state of the art", that's all. They are now even used in "blackbox" flight recorders because they are more reliable than any other form of data storage. Their only disadvantage is that if they break due to high voltages, the data is "toast", in case of a common HDD, you can retrieve the data by installing the discs into another drive.

It's just a matter of price per Megabyte. They are just more expensive but they are already worth the extra money in mobile applications.