A full hard drive on your computer can be very irritating. There’s a few things you can do to free up space which we’ve covered in the Speeding Up A Computer post.

The CCleaner tool is really good for tidying up the hard drive so we’d recommend running that. Just make sure you’ve backed up any data first.

You may find your hard drive is simply full and there’s not much more you can do with the existing one.

It is possible to upgrade to a bigger drive but given the cost of computers and the labour involved in moving data to the new disk often make it cheaper to buy a new system so it’s worthwhile checking your options.

While the Crucial website tool is useful, it’s best to keep all your computer’s memory slots consistent. Sometimes motherboards don’t like mixing different types.

In your case, you’re looking at swapping out all the memory and given Dell installed DDR400 memory to start with, it’s probably safer to stick with it.

Play it safe and go with the DDR400.

I have updated my drivers, scanned my computer for malware and viruses using Malware Bytes and Trend Micro Titanium 2012. I have also performed a clean up of the system using CC Cleaner. I have also performed a system tune up with Trend Micro Titanium 2012.

I have searched for various solutions predominantly the MS website – knowledge base, solutions etc. One solution I found was to do a clean boot.

When I typed in misconfi.exe & misconfig – no such file was found. Is this the source of my problem and how do I fix it?

The program is MSConfig or the MS Configuration tool. You can see what’s slowing the machine down there.

Website Tech Republic has a detailed description on how to use the MS Config tool in Windows 7. It’s worthwhile looking at the non-Microsoft programs starting up with the system and working from there.

First PC late 2006; first 2-3 years of use, no problem with spam –  received almost nothing at all. Against better judgement, downloaded a free office WP package. Some time after started to receive quite a lot of spam. Eventually I connected it to the ‘free’ download, figured out how to remove software and  spam ceased.

After several years of ignoring invitations to download the latest Adobe update, decided should take advantage of all my computer has to offer and hit the ‘download now’ button for Adobe.  Now I receive masses of spam (several a day) offering ‘to enlarge my penis’, continuing for several weeks; this has recently changed to offerings of ‘bonus wins’ – none of which I open or delete.

Do I have to remove Adobe to get this to stop?

Cheers for the New Year.

Thanks for the new year greeting.

Unfortunately removing Adobe isn’t going to fix the spam problem. What’s happened is your email address has somehow found its way onto the spammer list, possibly through the free software you downloaded.

All you can really do about this sort of spam now is to make sure you have a good spam filter on your email program. If you’re using a web based service like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail they should deal with it automatically. Programs like Microsoft Outlook need the feature turned on.

If you let us know which email program you’re using in the comments section below, we can give you the instructions on enabling the spam checker for your service.

Updating Adobe is really important as they have had a lot of security problems in recent  times, so don’t hesitate with installing any legitimate upgrades.

The fwcore.sys driver is part of the eAcceleration StopWall firewall product which is a program we wouldn’t recommend.

Removing it could be a problem. If you can, start the computer in Safe Mode and follow our instructions for removing a program to uninstall anything associated with eAcceleration.

If you are able to uninstall it, we’d also recommend running a check to remove any viruses or trojan horses.

Should you be unable to run the system in Safe Mode, you could try to use Window’s Last Known Good Configuration feature then remove the eAcceleration program.

Failing that, you may need to call your local IT support company who should be able to disable fwcore or restore the system to an earlier date.

If you are running the 32 bit version of Windows7 then it should be no problem as IBM’s Support Site describes in their post Information about SmartSuite and Organizer working on Microsoft Windows 7

When you insert the Smart Suite disk, you may have to run setup.exe directly from the disk rather than run the installation program automatically.

To do this, open the CD in My Computer and find the setup.exe file and double click on it.

You may find some of the Smart Suite functions won’t work, but most of the program’s features should be fine.

Computer doesn’t load Yahoo Mail with graphics or hotmail with graphics(u know pretty butterfly etc) and on Facebook some of my friends pictures cannot be seen only the tiny red cross icon.

Also now pages of games I play won’t load. I have been using Trendmicro and yesterday did a Malwarebytes scan which initially seemes to improve, but today things are worse.

I tried using IE ( this is the worst) and Firefox  to see if that made a difference. Very frustrating.

This sounds like your system’s preferred program for showing images has changed. To fix this, you’ll need to select the right program as we describe in our Wrong Program Opens My Pictures post.

It could also be that your hard drive is full and Windows can’t store the images in the cache. You can free up disk space by following our Cleaning Up Your Computer instructions.

The screensaver times are controlled by the display feature settings in Windows. Go to the Control Panel, select Display and you can change the time out settings there.

On some laptops there may be differing power schemes depending on whether the system is plugged in or running on batteries, these profiles may have to be changed in the Power settings.

If you are using an Apple Mac the screensaver settings are found in the Desktop and Screensaver preferences where you can change the times to suit your needs.

The Intermittent beep is what’s called a POST (Power On Self Test) error. When you turn the computer on it runs through a set of tests before trying to load up the operating system, in your case XP.

Because the computer has found an error before the video system started, it has to use beeps to communicate what the problem is and your motherboard manual should tell you what the POST error codes mean.

Often an error like this is due to something like the RAM modules or one of the expansion cards working itself loose so it’s worthwhile getting the local computer tech to have a look or – if you’re confident – pop the box yourself and make sure all the cards are firmly seated in their sockets. Remember to ground yourself first.

It is possible to run most XP programs on Windows 7, a service for this is Windows Virtual PC.

Spammers can get into your account through a number of ways and if your computer is up to date with security patches and anti virus protection then it’s unlikely your computer was hacked to carry out this spam campaign.

What has probably happened is your Yahoo! mail account has been hijacked, which could have happened from any computer.

Your first step is to change your Yahoo! passwords then those of any accounts that use the same password. You may also want to take the opportunity to download a copy of your online address book.

On your own computer, visit the Microsoft Update website to make sure you have the latest Windows security patches installed and the Symantec Security Centre for the latest security definitions.

It might also be a good idea to send out a message to your friends, relatives and colleagues to tell them you’re not really in the business of selling viagra or other pills.