My wife's computer keeps asking her if she wants to install a free upgrade. I do not remember installing this. Is it a legit program, or is it something bad?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

who's the provider... it sounds very fishy.. like one of those trojan Virus scan programs.. I'd be hesitant to do anything with it without knowign what it does.

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hum.....
1987 300TD 311,000M Stolen. Presumed destroyed

No Advanced System Care from IOBit is a pretty good cleaner program. Not the best, but it does work, I have it on several of our PCs, including this laptop.

FYI if you need a Defrag, I like Defraggler, works well, seems pretty fast.

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KLK, MCSE

1990 500SL

I was always taught to respect my elders.
I don't have to respect too many people anymore.

I 've been using CleanUp for some time and I love it. When it starts up, you hear a neat sound of a flushing toilet.....all those files going down the drain.



http://www.stevengould.org/index.php?Itemid=69&id=15&option=com_content&task=view

"CleanUp! is a powerful and easy-to-use application that removes temporary files created while surfing the web, empties the Recycle Bin, deletes files from your temporary folders and more.

CleanUp! frees disk space and reduces the "clutter" on your computer helping it to run more efficiently. It also can be used as a way to protect your privacy on the Internet. You can even instruct CleanUp! to securely delete files making it impossible to retrieve their contents using lower-level disk tools - just another way of protecting your privacy."

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62 220sb
67 250S
72 280SE 4.5
74 280C
77 300D
82 240D
85 190E 2.3
86 300E RIP 12/28/09
85 300SD
92 300D 2.5
00 E320 Current
Over 1,000,000 miles in Benzes, Since66

....and a whole passel of BMW 2002 and Tii

Be very careful when adding or installing "security" or maintenance add-ons. Symantec recently wrote a white paper that this is a growing market for computer crime, identity theft, etc. The programs may be legitimate security programs, but they "lock" your computer into buying upgrades or patches by disabling your current software and saying their product is the only thing that can "fix" the virus that their software detects. They may also simply be data-scanners looking for credit card data etc.

Many of these products have legit sounding names, eg. "Antivirus for Windows XP 2009" or "Network Security 2010" and have legit looking fronts for their webpages or re-directs from other legit sites.

I'd recommend against clicking on any pop-up window that offers to scan your system. Also pay attention to trying to shut off pop-ups by clicking on the red X. That is frequently just a hyperlink or a launch button that actually triggers more software rather than closing the window. Closing pop-ups by task manager or using one of the many pop-up blockers is a safer bet.

How do you close a pop-up window with the task manager? Kill the browser?

First Advanced System Care is not one of those rogue programs.
Maybe not the best out there, but it does work and do as it says.
It even easily backed out a optimization it recommended that I tried.

MAINLY THOUGH YES those products you mentioned, I have had to rescue several people. Kill them with task manager, ie Ctl-Atl-Del and end process for the browser etc. Manytime clicking the X to close just installs the "software" then you have to pay them, or me to fix it.
Many times supposedly the software they sell you to fix it is a key logger or ? sending personal info off to ??.

The most recent one, a neighbor, I was able to slide their window out of the way, surf for the fix and apply it. A registry hack.

For those of you more knowledable and with the right setup and version of Windows, I fixed one by editing the registry remotely. This one put up a screen that totally locked out the computer. But from a pc in another office I was able to get into it's registry.

NOTE Editing the registry is dangerous, even worse remote editing.
DO SO WITH CARE DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.

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KLK, MCSE

1990 500SL

I was always taught to respect my elders.
I don't have to respect too many people anymore.