Time for a new free virus scanner - advice?

[Buster's Uncle]

Wow.  No kidding that I'd made an idiot oversight.

I read an anecdote when I was a kid about a chimpanzee that has being raised indoors like a human, allegedly science - and one day, they were having trouble with a lamp that wouldn't come on.  Changing the bulb didn't work, nothing they tried worked.  And the kid chimp came over and picked up the cord, traced it behind the couch, and plugged it in.  Then the lamp worked.

I call that the Chimpanzee Lesson -make sure it's plugged in first, check the basics- and I just failed a pop quiz, after all the times I've showed my mom how to run scandisk and defrag.  I just did my morning driveby of the other sites in our circle in under half an hour, and I couldn't tell you the last time all three were loading pages for me at a decent rate.  I had a key bad sector on my disk, apparently, and I feel stupid. 

-I guess now before I get caught up in doing something else -I definitely will- see if defrag is working now...

[E_T]

Don't say that...

Consider this:  computer user calls tech support because the computer is not working.  After several steps of Q/A, the tech thinks that the power cord might have been knocked out and asks the  person to check if they can check to see if the cord is plugged into the wall outlet.  The person replys that they can not, because it is too dark back there, as they only have the outside light from the window to currently see with.  After the tech asks if turning on the lights might help, the person states that they will have to wait until the power outage they are having to work through to be over with...

True story...

[Buster's Uncle]

Defrag has been claiming C: is 0% fragmented all along, but has taken this long, since my post 46 minutes ago, to get 60% analyzed.  There's also something called "System" I've never seen before that purports to be 30% fragmented, but zips through a defrag attempt and does nothing.  I'm going to have to leave this on running, assuming it's merely slow and not broken, and do other things.

-In my own defense, I've never in decades seen a disk scan make this much difference before, and it's normally the second thing I try when addressing basic poor/slow performance-type stuff.

-Correction: it finished the analyze while I was typing and now has begun a defrag pass...

[Buster's Uncle]

It raced right along between beginning actually defragging and the middle of pass six, which is progressing very slowly.

[Buster's Uncle]

Defrag finally finished pass six in the last half hour, progressing more quickly on pass seven so far, which has increased five percent consolidated, to 17%, while I typed this...

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay - it finished defragging while I was AFK for an hour anna half.  -It still wouldn't do anything with System, and D: Factory Image should be in the state it left the factory, so I didn't touch it and just closed Defrag.

I'm not sure what to do next, 'cause I scheduled a walk with my perfect niece in about an hour - later when I have more time open, I'll continue to make system maintenance tasks a priority over this and that I'd rather do - too much of my time has been stolen lately by letting things get this sloppy.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, got screwed over on the walk appointment w/ little Buttercup- now to go to page one and see what to do first, if the thunder storm brewing don't put its foot down.

-In case Draz looks in, about an hour ago, I was able to successfully use the mass upload for two screenshots with this account and browser - and I didn't get logged out.

[Buster's Uncle]

-Actually, I think I'll shut down and go watch the storm for a while - there was just a scary spark noise came with a lightening strike.

[Buster's Uncle]

...Actually, the storm was already over when I posted that - but no way to know that before it was too late.  -And the damage to the local ISP server was done; took forever to get back online.

-Shot my nerves even worse than they have been, actually - I need to do nothing useful for a while and unwind...

[Valka]

Just for the hell of it, here's a screenshot of what this topic heading looks like to me, with my XP laptop, and the zoom on ('cause otherwise everything would be too small for me to read):

[Buster's Uncle]

I wouldn't stand for them charging for the viruses - that's like getting spammed on your cell phone.

You're even blinder than I am.

[Valka]

I think the screenshot is actually a bit bigger than it really is on the screen (I don't have my favorite image editor bookmarked on this computer, so I just took the screenshot and attached it), but honestly, the topic heading really does end with the word "virus". It's like that in my email, too.

[Buster's Uncle]

So that's the white at the top you mentioned this morning?  Huh.  Maybe I should try cranking the zoom in ff...

[Valka]

No, that's not the white I meant. This particular white is just due to my not cropping the screen shot. The white I was talking about was something completely different, like you were tweaking the forum background and were between images.

I did restart, and it's not a problem right now. The hard-to-read font still is, but I think I'd better try to deal with a screenshot for that on my other computer; it's easier to access Photobucket on that one.

[Buster's Uncle]

The white probably was a bad page load getting cached like I guessed, then.  The legibility is just a color tweak from a fix, once I know just what to look for...