HELP .......needed for laptop

[baseballcoach]

I have a Toshiba laptop that needs to be upgraded and the software fixed . Im an analog trapped in a digital world and its all I can do not to put this POS under my truck tire.

Im in huntington beach, does anyone know a reputable computer guy in my area. Ive been to a couple of hacks and Im real gunshy of dealing with idiots who dont know what their doing.
Thanks

[Peter.Steele]

What kind of toshiba laptop, and what exactly do you mean by "upgraded?"

99% chance the sort of "upgrade" that would make an out of date laptop relevant again is not the sort of thing that's possible to do, without opening up your own chip and board factory.

[ElDub1950]

I have a Toshiba laptop that needs to be upgraded and the software fixed . Im an analog trapped in a digital world and its all I can do not to put this POS under my truck tire.

Im in huntington beach, does anyone know a reputable computer guy in my area. Ive been to a couple of hacks and Im real gunshy of dealing with idiots who dont know what their doing.
Thanks

If by 'upgraded' you want upgrade your hardware, for get it, buy a new one. There are few laptop hardware upgrades other than maybe adding more memory (often not possible) or a new DVD player.

If you just mean you want to install the latest OS updates that will be easy to find someone. "Software Fixed" can be a whole new bag of worms. Would need more details of what your problems are.

[baseballcoach]

I tried to load a webroot antivirus disk that came with my wifes new laptop and it seized the entire computer. this is 2 years old, its a satellite a505-s6005 and Ive had so many virus & spyware issues infecting this pos . I tried taking this to the geek squad and it never worked well after that.

I figure if the software was loaded from scratch, get rid of the viruses and add memory it would be improved. I hate computers, i have no idea what Im doing and i have to rely on others not to bend me over.

[Peter.Steele]

Okay, that's not a particularly awful computer. You don't really need to do anything with the hardware on it.

Your problem is that you tried to use software on it that shouldn't have been used with it, apparently.

When you turn it on, there should be something on the screen about booting from the recovery partition, or maybe "factory reset", "restore to factory defaults," etc. Something like that.

If you can see something like that, then you should probably be able to fix things yourself. I just ran the recovery mode on a Toshiba laptop last week - slightly newer model, but still probably the same process - and it's incredibly simple. Very hands-off. It wipes the hard drive and reinstalls back to the way your computer was when you took it out of the box in the first place.

Down side: you'll lose all your data.

[tdyoung1958]

When you turn it on, there should be something on the screen about booting from the recovery partition, or maybe "factory reset", "restore to factory defaults," etc. Something like that.

Down side: you'll lose all your data.

^^^ YUP ^^^

Pretty much start over

I would suggest you invest in a external hard drive for all the important stuff you don't want to loose in the future

I think you should also look into your browsing habits if your getting that much spyware and viruses

[bbguns44]

Copy all of your important files to an external hard disk or USB drive. Then reinstall the
OS completely. That'll wipe out any virus. Then install Microsoft Security Essentials.
Free & works well.

[Andric]

Copy all of your important files to an external hard disk or USB drive. Then reinstall the
OS completely. That'll wipe out any virus. Then install Microsoft Security Essentials.
Free & works well.

This.

[stilly]

This.

I second that, AND, make certain that you are CAREFUL about your important data files, I.E. NO EXE,SCR,COM,DLL etc files that can not be redownloaded again, they COULD be infected on your comp.

[stilly]

LoL, For a new bottle of H-110 I might be persuaded to pay you a visit and tell you what needs to be done. Heck, I might even bring out my magic disks and hardware and do it myself...