July 19
Don't do as I do, do as I say!
Sometimes I learn the hard way not to take shortcuts and yesterday I had it brought home to me.
I 'know' to turn off all running programs including virus scanners when installing a program. I also 'know' it is much better to uninstall an old program and then install an upgrade.
However, just because I know better, doesn't mean I did it that way yesterday! SpySweeper, my very most favorite spyware scanner, has a new program upgrade. I downloaded the upgrade and proceded to install it.
Not finished with real dummy stuff, the same day I had gone to the Windows Update site and updated Windows. (I think I should have waited!)
All of a sudden, my system seemed to be dragging. Some programs would open, but not run. In order to close them, I had to do a hard boot. No Task Manager would come up. I could open some programs that worked ok, but one of my games caused a blue screen when I exited. What the heck is going on? Maybe System Restore would work. So I did a restore from the day before the troubles all started.
Things seemed to be working ok, so back to Windows update and updated again. No more problems, the updates seem to be ok.
So what was causing the problems I had earlier? Memory failing? Harddisk problems?
After a frustrating entire afternoon of trying to troubleshoot the problems, the 'Great Light' dawned. There was a problem with the new SpySweeper install. Since I had done the System Restore, I needed to upgrade it again. Then I figured out I needed to do what I have always said to do, uninstall and then reinstall, never upgrade over a previous version. I looked for the license code and couldn't find it. I ALWAYS put the license code in a text file in the download folder for a paid program, but not this time! I had to go to Webroot's site and request the license code be sent to me. (Sigh!)
As soon as I got the code, I uninstalled SpySweeper and rebooted the computer. Then I stopped the virus scanner and installed the new version of SpySweeper.
The computer was like new again, running oh so fast. Programs opened, ran as advertised and closed with no problems.
Lesson learned. Even though some upgrades say you don't need to uninstall to upgrade, my advise is this: Unless the program upgrade specifically says "Do Not Uninstall the old version", uninstall the old version! Be sure to disable your virus scanner as well. When they say to close all running programs at the beginning of an install, they mean it and don't forget the virus scanner!
(And make sure you know where your license codes are for downloaded programs!)
Oh, yes, the reason I couldn't find the license code for SpySweeper in the download folder, I originally installed it from a CD I bought at Fry's. The license code is on the CD envelope. Duh!
Martha
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