So pretty much any computer that has ever come across my bench is going to leave with a little of my own computer 'personality' if you will. That being the positioning of certain icons which are shortcuts to antispyware programs that I suggest using on a daily basis (this is ideal but it would pretty much depend on how clean you want to keep your system). The '5' icons would (currently) be CCleaner, Spyware Blaster, Spybot Search & Destroy, AVG Antispyware, and Adaware... thing is, they should be in pretty much that order, if you are going to run them and simply walk away from your computer. My OPTIMIZING TIPS explain all this in much greater detail. Again, this is not the problem, having them in any order you want is find, SO LONG AS THEY ARE USED!
So imagine my surprise when I am asked to connect to diagnose and repair a problem, only to find old versions of the software installed. Granted these are cleaning tools so it is expected there will be new versions available and in almost all cases, if you do run the program, it will prompt you there are updates available. In some cases however, it will not tell you there is an entirely new version available. For example if you are currently using version 3.51 and there is an update available, it is typically something like version 3.6 or 3.52 but when they come out with an entirely new version number, version 4.0, for example, then this means either the old one will automatically get updated as you install the new one, it will tell you that you first have to remove the old, or you will be installing two versions of the program, this is dependent on how good the software was written.
It is quite understandable in all cases, that you simply want to use your computer and know it is important to keep things clean and tidy and optimized so that no bugs get in and everything works great, but don't want to have to worry about the cleaning yourself, and so having things automated is the way you want to fly. In some cases, you may rather like to do things on your own because you do not trust the automatic features, or quite simply, in order to have the automatic features, you have to actually pay for the program as in most programs there is a 'light' version that is free and may do the basic tools but not all. This is NOT the case with the programs mentioned, although they will perform all the cleaning functions so there is no need to purchase the 'professional' version however if you do want to use the automated and scheduled tasks, you WILL have to pay for them.
But getting back to the version numbers and such... it is one thing to say you are using the icons but when you are prompted about an update available, it is very important that this be done. If you are unsure then drop me a line and ask me... unfortunately what happens in almost all the problems I see, I am being asked these questions when it is already too late... either bugs have managed to get in, because the program you are using is so outdated. I recently worked on a computer that hadn't had anything done for 16 months.. that is, no maintenance whatsoever, other then the things that were running automatically, no updates to the antispyware programs had been done... and the funny part for me is, when I do click on the program and see the version number, it is quite apparent how old it truly is. So imagine how it is when I click on an icon on the desktop to run the program and get prompted of an update available, yes, the program that was installed was 3 versions behind.. so what does that mean? If this had been clicked on then whatever messages were popping up were simply closed and ignored, or the program itself had never been run.
So my rant.... I can't help you if you don't help yourself! My website is chalked full of computer tips, software/support and you can always contact me here. If you are an existing client of mine, then odds are you have remote connection software installed that will allow me to connect quite quickly to your computer ( so long as your computer is connected to the internet ) and I should be able to diagnose things just as I was actually sitting in front of it... so there is really no excuse to have a computer system that is running outdated software... EVER!
