ItsGeekToMe.co

Q: When I use my laptop, at times the curser will jump around on its own, particularly when typing emails.  I will look up and be typing in the address bar or nowhere.  It doesn’t always happen-sometimes it is worse than other times.  I have a Toshiba that is a little over a year old.  […]

Q: Can I remove the older MS Visual C++ Redistributable files (2005 to 2008) that I find in the Control Panel? – Terry P. Fort Walton Beach, Florida  A: These “Redistributable files” are software written by Microsoft, that is used by other software that was built using a Microsoft programming tool.  Microsoft gives permission to […]

Q: I just found that my laptop has 18 Rootkits. Tried Google for help, but not sure which advice to follow?  I understand that these are serious kits. Any help you can suggest will be appreciated. – Jerry B. Fort Walton Beach, Florida  A: You sound like you have almost everything you need to get […]

Happy Memorial Day, Geeks!  To those of you lucky enough to still be employed in this economy – enjoy your day off, but please don’t forget the real reason for the day is to remember and pay homage to those who have served, and continue to serve our country and who defend the freedom we […]

Q: My granddaughter performed in a musical program and the video is on YouTube. I wanted to download to a DVD so I emailed it to myself and put it on a flash drive, then put it on a DVD, but it won’t play.  Is it possible to do this? – LeRoy T. Navarre, Florida […]

Q: Several friends, much more computer savvy than I, have said to leave the computer turned on, in sleep mode, rather turning it off when not being used. They said this helps the computer last much longer.  Other voices say, turn it off when not being used–otherwise it is vulnerable to being accessed by hackers, […]

Q: As a non-geek and an old one at that, I really enjoy your column, and I’m glad to know I can access some of your past columns on the web.  A few weeks ago, something popped up on my monitor as if it was from Google, so I clicked on it and downloaded it. […]

Q: I use McAfee Total Protection as my antivirus.  I’ve tried to run other anti-malware products but the McAfee product tells me that they interfere with it and have to be removed.  I’ve used AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Malwarebytes in the past but always see the popups from McAfee.  When I once had […]

Q: I enjoy your newspaper computer Geek section–very helpful.  Question:  What could have happened regarding my ability to ‘post’ a comment to an online newspaper story?  I must have changed a setting in Windows because, the comment block is no longer showing at the end of each story to write a comment using Facebook. It […]

Q: I have a laptop and desktop, both running Windows 7.  Windows Live Messenger has an icon on the taskbar of both. I can run MSCONFIG and take it out of the startup listing. Upon reboot it is gone. But, at the second reboot it returns.  Do you have a suggestion where else to stop […]