Robbie

yup, just a few miles from where I live and I pass the ground at least twice a week - I'll stick to St James Park though . At least the weather turned out dry for the Take That fans tonight, up to about 1pm today it had been raining heavily for a few hours.

Boo! Hiss! I knew that relegation was coming but I didn't think that Mike Ashley would then make things worse by putting the club back up for sale and leaving us managerless, penniless and hopeless! If we don't get our act together we'll be heading for relegation - or worse - once again...

It seems to be me that's having all the problems with Avira! On my Vista laptop - like JDPower, happened only the once, several weeks ago and have had no problems since. I think it's fair to say that it isn't an issue on my laptop On my XP PC - a different story. This is the computer where I've had problems since day one with this problem of "right click freeze". My solution was to disable the shell extension for Avira (using ShellExView) and then to just re-enable it when I need to use it, which isn't very often. Once or twice after re-enabling, right clicking on a file has caused freezing again. Again this is a random freeze, no pattern to when it will happen. After I've checked what I need to check (hopefully without any freezing!) I then disable the shell extension once again. With the shell extension disabled I have no problems at all. For me, I check so few files using the shell extension (a small amount each month) that disabling the shell extension is convenient for me. If I had to rely on using the shell extension on a regular basis I would have removed Avira from my PC a long time ago. But as I said, on my laptop I have the shell extension enabled and apart from that one time I have had no problems whatsoever. I haven't tried that fix in abu aufa's post, I'll look into that one.

There's a tick box option in CCleaner under Cleaner -> Windows -> Internet Explorer to wipe Autocomplete Form History. From memory I think this option is set as unticked by default. Ticking this box should solve the problem. EDIT: Just checked. The option I described in CCleaner appears to be for deleting passwords and so is probably not relevant to the OP's query.

but doesn't places.sqlite in Firefox 3 combine the history and bookmarks files that were conveniently separate in Firefox 2? It's because of the problems of cleaning places.sqlite that I won't update Firefox 2 to Firefox 3. I think it was a dreadful idea to combine both files in this way. I like to securely clean on demand the history.dat file in FF2 and as this is now integrated into places.sqlite in FF3 this would no longer be possible without deleting my bookmarks too.

I don't think it can be done. But IE has its own cleaner built into it if you wish to use that.

CCleaner works fine with Vista - I use it all the time on my Vista laptop and haven't had any problems.

To the best of my knowledge, no. There is a registry setting that will write the pagefile with zeros at computer closedown but I'm not aware of CCleaner being able to do it. If you know how to change registry settings then http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/441827 will help. If you don't know how to change registry settings then don't do it.

I would leave Synaptics to autostart. As you know, it is the touchpad and if you disable that your touchpad won't work until you enable it. I suggest you concentrate on your firewall to speed up the start of your computer and leave the rest to autostart. Unless you know what you are doing you could cause problems.

One way to check if it is Zone Alarm or the antivirus that is causing the slow startup is to first disconnect your computer from the internet and then startup the computer with one and then both of these disabled. If the computer starts in next to know time then you can decide whether you want to keep these programs or look for an alternative.

Some users (including me) have had problems with Zone Alarm slowing startup of the computer. The problem started for me with a new version of Zone Alarm in May 2006, from computer switch on to the desktop being ready to use was always 5 minutes plus and sometimes up to 10 minutes after this new version of ZA appeared (running Windows XP, Service Pack 2 as it was then). Prior to that it had been 2 minutes maximum to load the desktop. The problem was caused by a component of Zone Alarm called vsmon.exe which was causing the CPU to lock at startup at close to 100% for some considerable time, hence the slow start. Many people didn't have this problem though. Vsmon.exe is an essential part of Zone Alarm and has to run for ZA to work properly. Whilst that was May 2006, the last time I did a trial run of a new Zone Alarm version, about 18 months ago, it was still causing the same problem and there were posts from other people about the problem at the Zone Alarm forums. So whatever problem there was in May 2006 was still persisting for some people, including me, 18 months ago. I've used Comodo as my Firewall since May 2006, apart from trialing other firewalls (like the newer version of Zone Alarm 18 months ago) and have found it to be fine. My computer starts up with the desktop loaded within 2 minutes again. I have had startup problems caused by certain antivirus programs too. I use Avira and have had no problems with this slowing startup since installing it but I did find Avast slowed down the startup and AVG since it was upgraded from 7.5 to 8 and 8.5 takes so long to startup I find it frustrating. I think my problem is I like a quick startup with only the essentials running, and when they cause a slow down I have to look for something else to take their place...

From what I can see, and my limited understanding of the winapp file this cleaning process (of the Excel MRU list) IS meant to happen by default. Here is the relevant entry in the winapp file: [Office 2003] LangSecRef=3021 Detect=HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common Default=True FileKey1=%appdata%\Microsoft\Office\Recent|*.* RegKey1=HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Recent Files as the entry is there, and this version of winapp is dated 16 January 2008 (so it is not recent) I can only assume that it was always meant to be there as a wiping option. The corresponding action to remove this wiping action via the CCleaner interface is probably to uncheck Office 2003 in Cleaner -> Applications -> Applications I am assuming it is Office 2003 since Office 2007 Excel MRU lists are held in a different directory (Office\12.0 rather than Office\11.0). I don't have Office so I can't check whether the above would work.

Alan Shearer did look over excited! Now we just have it all to do all over again on Saturday...

I remember having a NTLDR issue a long time ago and had to do a reinstallation. I then created an emergency boot disk that contained NTLDR, ntdetect and boot.ini and I think the computer booted fine after running the disk at startup. It's a long time since I used that disk though (it's a floppy disk so it shows how long ago it is since I tried this). Perhaps it makes good sense to copy these files to a disk just in case there is a problem.

I could have done with a few of those drinks tonight listening to the football! Talk about tense...

I run Windows Defender, Avira and Windows Firewall, on my Vista laptop though, but haven't encountered a single problem.

I've also got this problem with IE8 when running CCleaner on my Vista laptop. I posted about this in the CCleaner Bug Reporting section but didn't receive a reply. To be honest, I don't think it is a CCleaner bug but something to do with the interoperability of IE8 and CCleaner on Vista. The problem wasn't there when I was running IE7. My post: http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=21753 I had no problems with Firefox though, apart from a bug that was identified and cleared up with the latest CCleaner release. This IE8 problem doesn't occur on my XP PC though even though it too is running IE8. I'm at a loss what to do to resolve the issue.

I would never dream of installing any program on a work computer unless I had permission - I'd imagine I'd either get sacked or at the very least receive a severe reprimand. I'm sorry to hear that this has happened to you though and hope things work out for you.

I've only ever been to Northern Ireland once, many years ago in the 80s in the middle of the troubles. As I'm a Brit and as I was staying in a Catholic area over there it was a very tense visit, to say the least. I'd love to get over to Dublin, I had the chance to visit last year when Ryanair were doing cheap flights from Newcastle at the giveaway price of ?1 each way but just never got around to booking the flight. I'm not a very good flyer (in fact I'm petrified of flying...) and kept putting it off...

Where did you go? I'm guessing it was somewhere warm and sunny?

Is Windows 7 going to be the name of the OS when it finally hits the streets? It's not exactly a snazzy name and the only reason I can think of for it's name is it's (by my count) the 7th version of Windows starting from Windows 95 (95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista, 7). Have I missed out any other Microsoft OS there? It really needs a better name. Windows 7 just sounds like a temporary name given while the product is in development. Out of interest, what were XP and Vista called while they were in the development stages?

I'm still running Firefox 2 and can confirm that the latest release of CCleaner (2.19.900) is also deleting the equivalent password file in Firefox 2, signons2.txt when "Saved Form Information" is ticked in addition to formhistory.dat (the old Firefox 2 equivalent of formhistory.sqlite). I've just reinstalled CCleaner 2.18.878 and only the formhistory.dat file is wiped with the signons2.txt file remaining untouched.

I've just been offered the upgrade to IE8 through Windows Update and have downloaded and installed IE8. When I run CCleaner a strange thing happens. As the program runs and is wiping the Internet Explorer files two Windows dialog boxes pop up. Both are headed "Deleting Browsing History" and one subheaded "Deleting history" and the other "Deleting add-on data". Both dialog boxes have a progress bar of their own and the boxes themselves are in standard Windows Vista style (hence I assume they are connected with something IE8 is doing, or trying to, at that moment). Some details: Windows Vista SP1 CCleaner 2.19 (but was happening under previous version, just updated to see if problem persisted). Dialog boxes do not launch when using "Analyze" on CCleaner but do when "Run Cleaner" is chosen. Problem only started since updating to IE8. It's a puzzle - has anyone else encountered this or know what the problem could be and how to resolve it? I rarely use Internet Explorer so there's never a great deal to delete anyway but these dialog boxes are popping up each and every time I click on "Run Cleaner".

Internet Explorer -> Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> Reuse windows for launching shortcuts (when tabbed browsing is off) Could that be the setting you need to change? The part in brackets is for IE7+ but I think the actual option itself has always been there in IE if I recall.

I've still only had that one problem with the right click on my Vista laptop but have had continuing problems with my XP PC hanging on a right click. Today I disabled the right click context menu entry for the Avira on demand virus scan on my XP PC and haven't (so far) had any problems despite deliberately right clicking every file I have been opening (and I must have right clicked various files over 30 times so far since disabling the context menu entry!). I'll see how it goes. I rarely use the context menu scan anyway (even when I had AVG 7.5 the context menu file scan only got used once or twice a month) so if it continues to work OK I'll just re-enable it when I have to.