[ShmackedyDoo]

I'm not entirely sure where to post this but a friend suggested this site.

I have an old clunky PC running on Windows XP. I've noticed over the last few months that it's been acting retarded. I run AVG and spybot search and destroy. Occasionaly they will pick up a few things that I take care of but for the most part they haven't found anything. However, I know something is there screwing up the works.

After a while the computer started turning itself off and on without my participation and refused to read any in my USB ports so I ran a disc clean up and a defrag. Directly after rebooting from the disc clean-up/defrag I noticed that not only does it not recognize my usb ports but that both of my disc drives (D and E) do not exist whatsoever. They are just gone. I went to run AVG again and it too disappeared but I found an old 8.0 version on the computer...had to install it and ran that but it found nothing.

Now I am unable to use any of the usb ports to move my data to an external hard drive and, likewise, cannot burn anything onto a disc.

Can someone advise me as to what how I should go about tackling this and what I should do first?

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[dazlia]

helps if you tell people what system spec you have!!

[123Runner]

Hi ShmackedyDoo and

We will need some system specs to help you.
What type of computer? Dell, HP, Gateway, home built, etc.
What model?
System memory?
Hard drive size and free space?

Are you able to boot the computer?
Have you tried system restore?

As a side note we have found that AVG is a resource hog and will slow the computer down.

123runner

[Mikeme]

For your misssing disc drives try this microsoft auto fix found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

[ShmackedyDoo]

Thanks for the aforementioned tips.

I did a system restore and....voila usb/disc drives appear and are functional. AVG is definitely a resource hog. Would you advise a better virus scanner?

[rshaffer61]

Please download Avast from my signature below. Please make sure you do the registration as it is good for a year or more. When it is due simply just reregister it.
Avast in my opinion is better because:
It's FREE to the Home User
It Updates it's Definitions daily
You can scan Individual Files, Folders and Drives
No buying new versions every year

http://www.avast.com...avast-home.html

[123Runner]

Take a look at the following.

http://www.geekstogo...ftware-t38.html

Avast and Avira both do quite well.