₦airaland Forum

first off-KAV 6 is not as you call it-'fairly new'. it was released last year.
secondly, Kaspersky regularly blacklists illegal keys for ALL versions of their software.do you actually think they aren't aware of the illegal keys and cracks floating around?

as to if it aint broke why fix it- if developers thought like that we'd still be using windows 3.1. if i thought like that i'd still be using norton antivirus -that system resources hog.

heh heh, i update kaspersky manually. i looked in my update folder and found an encrypted file black.lst. I suspect thats the source of the blacklist info. i'm thinking opf a few ways by which i might circumvent it. in any event, you should never update a warezed product online. my blacklisted key was 'china'. I'm sure 95% of the rest of the world was using it.

when i updated my kav 7 yesterday, my key (warezed) was blacklisted.
luckiliy i found another.but now every update is rife with fear that the new key will be blaclklisted
maybe i'll have to buy it. . . . . .

one of the main points of showbiz is ATTENTION

I do not support what is going on in BBA, but consider this-

there have been so many editorials on the negativity of BBA.All that leads to is more public awareness of the show.(which is the producer's goal)

how many other reality shows have garnered so much attention from the media? as long as we keep on commenting about BBA, we are simply fulfilling a mantra producers and advertisers have learnt a long time ago - smut sells

its called the fine print of fame/celebrity.

besides, there's no such thing as bad publicity in showbiz

note that seun pasted a link. i'm not sure those are HIS opinions.

more on halo 3
warning - spoilers included.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_3

its probably 2 late that for now, but in future ENSURE YOU HAVE ALL YOUR APPLICATION INSTALLERS AND SERIAL NUMBERS BACKED UP to an external medium.

you're better off partitioning the hard drive and installing xp on a second partition. you can then dual boot.before you do that, though, you're probably beter off downloading Vista SP1, and all other updates. the issues may have been adressed.

also, you can try running the programs in 'windows xp sp2 compatibility mode' .that works for everything outside graphics apps.

zigam:
@Lanko, oybv1.01

I followed this thread, but I can't understand all these attacks against Osisi.  I hope everybody is entitled to make his or her view, no mater how foolifh it may sound.  I didn't see Osisi insult any person here.  Let us stop keeping malice, it help us all.

@ zigam you'e obviously  new here.

take time out to check the profile of 'babyosisi'

+osisi is babyosisi's new incarnation on nairaland. 

you will find that my comments are justified.

If 95% of my posts were dedicated to denigrating christianity and ibos nairaland would be up in arms, calling on seun to ban me.

so you're reading my 'garbage'?

actually, you can

http://board.iexbeta.com/index.php?showtopic=69712

I need to do 1 of 2 things-

get hold of a vista ultimate 32bit OEM

or alternatively, confirm, that my vista dvd is d full retail(not upgrade) version.

This is a variant on a post i made previously.
I'm in the process of buying a new laptop.i intend to use it for work, so i configured it with XP pro. however I have a genuine version of MS vista ultimate(OEM) 64 bit. if it were a retail version, it would have shipped with both the 32bit and 64 bit dvds.

my plan is to create a 40gb partition and install the vista on it.theoretically, i should be able to work and (when i feel like) play with vista. however, 64 bit windows is trouble some. i've been doing some thinking.it appears(I'm not sure) that a vista ultimate serial numbers will work for both 32bit and 64 bit editions. i picked up a pirated vista ultimate cd in pc village. My plan is to install it with my 64 bit OEM  serial number.  

so do yall think that would work? has anyone tried it? (if i had a retail version of vista, it would be no question-but i don't really understand this OEM. . .)

+osisi:
oyb, I have no time to read your long garbage.
Sharia can never reach Igboland you hear.

big suprise there.better get back to your islam bashing websites .(i doubt if you have time for anything else)

+osisi:
Igbo muslims are 419ers,a 419er would use any means to achieve his aim,(I don't endorse them)

ibo muslims, watch out !osisi is starting a new campaign- to fob off the all the misdeeds of her kinsmen in their mad pursuit of money to muslims. first its 419ers. next it will be those onitsha drug sellers,next we will hear that chris uba is a closet mulsim. next we will hear that the creator of the salt bridge(chimaroke nnamani) is also a muslim.

maybe you could get away with saying massob are muslims-since they have also started kidnapping. (not for a cause-for ransom)

like your kinsmen-oyinbo dey make am-we dey sell(or should i say post) am!please paste the link to your so called 'fact'.I'm sure its some toilet paper newsrag.

the next thing you'll be saying is that all muslims are 419ers, because you saw it in a vision.beter focus on rehabilitating your kinsmen's madness for money, instead of trying to pass it off to a muslim minority.

+osisi:
The lunatic youths should be arrested and dealt with.
We don't live in sharia land where the loonies run amock and harass innocent citizens.

the return of the oxymoron.
you're losing it .so who ran amok here? the sane youths? Peace to nnaland-home of massob kidnappers, chris ubas state burning political thugs ,  theieving governors( chimaroke-enugu is working-Nnmamani) and the newest addition, vicious chanuvinists.

+osisi:
_{now for the last time run away,if you call me again,you'll be in hot ewedu}

for a while, i was beginning to think you read veterinary medice(your castration threats).who you be? please go right ahead. there's nothing you've posted that we haven't seen before. i have to wonder about the state of your soul.i recently read-in time magazine(not some obscure rag like the sources of all your garbage) that mother teresa did not feel the presence of God in her life for her last 50 years. you obviously are nothing close to a saint, but i' suspect its the same principle, maybe if you knock islam/muslims/prophet muhammed just a little bit more, the emptiness inside you will go away.ndo. you'll have to wait a little longer for your 'miracle' .

better get back to your islam bashing websites.

PS I'm waiting for the next version of wikiscanner. I know you and your crew have been tweaking entries on islam in wikipedia.(no depths to which scum like you can't sink) .who knows, one  might even trace  your home address and true identity.wouldn't your colleagues and neighbours be interested in knowing that osisi is  bigoted . . .tribalist . . .religiously intolerant etc.

anyway,I'm eagerly awiting your garbage.don't root too deep into the sludge of the net.The smell actually permaetes nairaland.

oyb, brace yourself. . .here comes the bite of the wise serpent. . . and the spatter of the dove s--t.

meant to post this last week. . . (from time magazine)


Technoculture
The Man in the Mask
Thursday, Aug. 30, 2007 By LEV GROSSMAN

Unknown soldier: A space marine from the far future, the Master Chief never removes his helmet.
Microsoft Game Studios & Bungie Studios

Correction Appended: Sept. 5, 2007
Kirkland, Wash., is a leafy suburb of Seattle, on the shore of Lake Washington. A banner hangs over the main drag reminding visitors that Kirkland is the home of the 2007 Junior Softball World Series. Not far away stands a large unmarked building. It's oddly shaped, with a domed roof; it used to house batting cages, and before that, it was a hardware store. A security guard sits at the front desk, but he doesn't have a lot to do, because nobody ever comes in--though if there were a sign outside, the place would be mobbed.

There is an invisible subculture in America. Those who belong to it love it with a lonely, alienated, unironic passion. Those who don't belong to it walk right by, uncaring, just as people walk right by that unmarked building in downtown Kirkland. It is the subculture of hard-core video games, and that oddly shaped building, which houses a company called Bungie, is one of its temples.

Bungie makes a series of video games called Halo that are among the most revered in the gaming canon. It's doubtful that many people reading this could say exactly, or even approximately, what the Halo games are about. But when Halo 2 came out in 2004, it did $125 million at retail in the first 24 hours. Since then, gamers have logged almost a billion person-hours playing Halo 2 online. Because it's exclusive to the Xbox 360, Halo 3 is also Microsoft's weapon of choice in its struggle with Sony for supremacy in the multibillion-dollar game-console market. "We're not just dealing with a game here," says Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, which owns Bungie. "We're dealing with a great entertainment property, one that has the potential to be a cross-media property like a Harry Potter or a Star Wars."

For video-game aficionados, the entertainment event of the year has nothing to do with Harry Potter or Jack Sparrow or Spider-Man. It happens on Sept. 25, when Halo 3 will be released, starring a faceless and all-but-nameless space marine called the Master Chief. He's a new kind of celebrity for a new and profoundly weird millennium.
It's difficult to explain the story of Halo but that difficulty is in itself worthy of note. This isn't Donkey Kong. The Master Chief is not an Italian plumber whose girlfriend has been kidnapped by a gorilla. His story is rich and complicated in ways that we're not used to in video games. The Master Chief is a supersoldier, the only one of his kind, equipped with--encased in, really--powerful battle armor. He lives 500 years in the future, at a time when humanity is fighting a group of alien religious zealots known as the Covenant. At the beginning of the first Halo game, the Master Chief crash-lands on a strange space artifact, a planet that's shaped like a ring instead of a sphere and known as Halo. There he slugs it out in a running three-sided battle with Covenant troops and a monstrous, mutating race called the Flood, which happens to be imprisoned there. He also learns about a mysterious and ancient race called the Forerunners, which built Halo .

And so on. The Halo universe is clearly the stuff of pulpy space opera, and the Master Chief is as hard-boiled as they come. Much of the action consists of the Master Chief shooting alien antagonists while swapping Eastwoodian one-liners with his sidekick, a computer program named Cortana who appears as a sexy hologram. But the Halo games also have a curiously lyrical quality about them. They're full of literary touches and evocative phrases--the Master Chief travels in a spaceship called the Pillar of Autumn. The Halo universe is rich in lore--gamers love to be there the way some people love to pretend they're in Jane Austen novels. The action isn't nonstop; instead it includes dramatic beats and even moments of melancholy solitude, with Romantic weather effects and sublime vistas and soaring Gregorian chants. The game has a moody, Wagnerian quality--the Master Chief is dwarfed by towering alien architecture that recalls Piranesi. Halo takes itself seriously as, if not art, certainly a spectacle. But art seems more apt.
The face of the Master Chief is never revealed. His visor is solid reflective gold, like the faceplates of the Apollo astronauts. Halo 's designers see the Master Chief's facelessness as a dramatic device, a way of allowing players to place themselves in the game's leading role, to map their own faces onto that of a blank protagonist. "If he takes off the helmet, he should be you," says Marty O'Donnell, Halo 's audio director. "I mean, that's the big deal. Taking off the helmet is unacceptable." Engineering lead Chris Butcher agrees: "It's your experience. You have to be able to pour yourself into that icon." When nongamers look at the Master Chief's helmet, they see a forbidding, anonymous mask. But when gamers look at it, they see a mirror. They see themselves.

The cliche about gamers is that they're antisocial, if not sociopathic, but Bungie is very much a community. There's a foreign-legion quality to it, as if the company had been created as a refuge for smart people who wouldn't or couldn't fit into more conventional professions. Environment artist Dave Dunne started out as an architect. In a past life, O'Donnell wrote the We Are Flintstones Kids vitamin jingle. Designer Paul Bertone was a structural engineer who inspected bridges. "The people who play Bungie games tend to sense that there's something behind the games that's attractive to them," says O'Donnell. "Then they become fans of the games. And then they become rabid fans. And then they become employees of Bungie."

In return, they give Halo most of their waking hours, which vastly outnumber their sleeping ones. For the past few months, shifts at Bungie have run from 6 in the morning till 2 in the morning. One manager confessed that he was so strung out on caffeine, he had to drink a Diet Coke just so he could kill his cravings enough to fall asleep. The Bungies bring a grinding, jeweler's meticulousness to what most people consider an unhealthy amusement for children. To give me an idea of the level of detail (which is a term of art at Bungie, known as LOD), an audio engineer demonstrates, one by one, the sound of the Master Chief's footsteps, which change when he walks on ice, on gravel, on wood, on rubber, on grass, on sand, on glass and so on. Whenever the Master Chief fires his weapon --he tends to do that a lot--his gun ejects a shiny, jingling shell casing. "We actually are insane," the engineer says, "because we track the impact of each shell casing on each surface. Literally. We ought to be locked up."

This devotion is fueled by a belief, not shared by the world at large, that video games are an art form with genuine emotional meaning and that Halo 3 will be the premier example of that art. But there is, as it happens, a whole lot of money at stake too. At launch, Halo 3 will run only on Microsoft's Xbox 360 gaming console, lending the Xbox, into which Microsoft has sunk billions, huge credibility in its costly death match with Sony's PlayStation 3. "We're a platform company," says V.P. Kim. "It's about driving sales of Xbox 360. Sony has no answer to that. We have a really big chance to put Sony back on its heels."

There's an opportunity beyond video games, too, for Halo to break out of the ghetto and become a mainstream, mass-market, multimedia entertainment property. Other parts of the culture are catching on. Marvel publishes Halo comic books. There are five Halo novels in print. The Halo sound tracks are released as albums. Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings movies, is working with Bungie on a hush-hush Halo spin-off project, and he has signed on to produce a Halo movie (though a deal with Fox and Universal fell through last year). "When we were launching Halo 2 , you'd spend half your meetings with brands educating them on the video-game business," says Chris Di Cesare, director of creative marketing at Microsoft. "People still thought, 'Ah, it's this thing for kids.' Now my partners are Pepsi, Burger King, Pontiac, Comcast. And it's not me selling them anymore." There's an opportunity, in other words, to decloak the Halo subculture, to turn it from invisible to visible.

Not that the Bungies care. They don't need to legitimize Halo by associating it with other, more respectable media. They sell enough units and make enough money. They're happy in their invisible geek ghetto. But that's the logic of the marketplace: it can't leave subcultures alone; it has to turn them into cultures. It may be time for the Master Chief to come in from the cold and join the party, with the popular kids. Just don't expect him to take off his helmet.
The original version of this story mistakenly said that Halo 2 is Microsoft's weapon of choice in its struggle with Sony. The correct game is Halo 3.

Download sequoia view.

http://www.win.tue.nl/cgi-bin/usr/sequoia/download3.cgi

this application will create a visual mage of your hard disk and the files taking up space.

you will proably find a 20gb .tmp file.
if you use kaspersky , you may find that its the kaspersky log file(this has happened to me before- you will have to trim th file from within kaspersky)


before deleting any file, google it to make sure you are not deleting a critical system file. (do not touch any file with a .sys extension.) you can try moving the files to the recycle bin and restarting your system. if you restart successfully, you can probably delete the file.

you may find that you have to 'run in compatibility mode for xp sp2 to install and run the app.then again, maybe not.

once i tried to force an install of windowblind_public and the same thing happened-8gb vanished!.

Perhaps I am wrong, but i beleive denex was being sarcastic/ironic. refer to his comments in previous similar threads on benue and on lagos.

runtimes getdataback
getdata recovermyfiles

+osisi:
These muslims are smart people.
They use money from Saudi to lure prominent Igbos
Who doesn't know Alhaji Onyeagocha in Owerri and all the scandals in his alhajiness.

thank you for clearing that up.its nice to know that ibos will sell their souls for money.(he probably had his bible in his back pocket the whole time . . .like your other compatriot-chris ngige.).


we probably need to start another thread on the delusions of babyosisi-the self described 'fairest of them all' who us muslims cannot seem to stop salivating over. on a lighter note, since you've confirmed that peeps from your village will do anything for money, how much will it cost for me to make you my second wife? _{i want to find out why u think you're hot cake. . .}let me know, with options included ie marry u as christian, marry u as muslim - _{all on the down low -madam must not know}


i wonder how come oprah didn't include this delicious tidbit about 'igbo muslims' in her show on nigerian 419, and the fact that its perpetrated by 85% ibos.maybe you can write her , and all those other news agencies, so that next time, they will inlude that info.

oprah - believe it or not, most of these ibo crooks are muslims.they actually send their illgotten  gains to al queda. its how muslim terrorists raise funds these days

i should have known- those guys who attempted to assasinate dora akunyuli were muslim ibos too.

+osisi:
There were other previous threads on Lagos arresting women in trousers and we found out the Lagos state governor was a Muslim and another  "rumor" of the same thing in Benue state but there were no articles to prove it.

any lagosian could have told you what you were too filled with hate and sharia paranoia to see- that fashola is a 'lagos muslim' and unconcerned about what lagos women wear. you  actually went as far as allegging that he must be related to northerners

perhaps you should go back to the thread.the fact that it was a rumor did not stop you from foolishly jumping in to engage in your only pastime-slandering muslims/prophet muhammed/islam. it didn't stop you from starting a thread about  'blal blah muslims will kill us all'


all in all, its good to see that your compatriots in abia are as  backward, chauvinisitc, mentally retarded ( all the other adjectives your motley crew of islam bashers used in those threads are applicable) as northerners and lagos muslims.

I wonder how you cope in the us, a multicultural society. thats probably why you spend somuch time on nairaland-to blow off steam.(if you showed your true colours, a tribalist secterian bigot) they' d politely ask you to leave whichever institution you work in. who knows what you might get up to -preaching  to sick muslim children instaed of attending to them?

like i said before, the world needs less people like you.I am much more wary around ibos and christians than i have ever been, because i have a sneaking suspicion, that so many of them are like you - frothing with hate behind a smiling mask.

options

goto my documents.there should be a folder there named webshots (or something like that) the picture should be there.

it may also be in c/documents and settings/all users/application data/webshots

use the search faeture to search for all files with .jpg extension.

set the picture as wall paper,clear your screen, and use printscreen.

in future ,configure webshots not to respond when digital media are connected to your system.


hope this helps
@ralvy, there's nothing wrong with webshots.ave used it 4 years.the problem as always is the user, who leaves the application with default settings enabled.

+osisi:
The Igbos who convert to Islam are mainly 419ers.
This story is about touts harrasing innocent girls.
The day you hear of sharia in Igboland,know that Muhammad has set up his throne in Abakpa Nike

my my my, you are a queen of double standards, aren't you?

when it happens in lagos-'fashola must be related to hausas' your words
when it happens in benue, 'the muslims will kill us all'
but when it happens in nnaland, its touts.
_{(who would have thought -those wonderful, industrious ibos have touts.one would think that its only other tribes that have malcontents-almajiris, area boys.thank you for clearing that up.}


'the igbos who convert to islam are mostly 419ers'
wonder wonder wonder!shame on you!what nonsense! where did you get this latest tidbit from? your warped , tribalist secterrian mind?

perhaps the ibos selling fake drugs in onitsha, smuggling cocaine, and selling fake goods are also 'converted muslims'
back in the days of night browsing , your tribesmen would gather (at 10 pm in the cyber cafe) and engage in group prayer to jesus for successful business before commencing forwarding their scam mails.

anyway, what would one expect from nairaland's poster child for tribalism, jingoism and sectertianism?


instead of casting aspersions on islam(the only thing you seem to be proficient at) why don't you explain why your tribesmen are behaving like backward, illitearte mediveial scum? perhaps you will need to wear a wrapper when next you travel down to igboland. otherwise, your chivalrous compatriots just might molest you.(after the muslim ones have magaed you out of your dollars )

the world needs less people like you. .

if you go through the notebook reviews on notebook forums, what you'll often find is peeps swearing for the so called customer care.and thats in the west.In naija, if you're not a corporate customer don't expect anything!

@ poster-Maleeq has said it all.I also think it may be a flaw in HPs proprietary monitoring software, because a colleague's HP had the exact same problem.our IT guys did everything to it, but it just kept coming.

what you may consider doing is buying an external hard drive(USB) and getting hold of cobian backup(its a free backup application-just google 'cobian')

you can configure cobian to backup any files of your choice to your external hard drive.

considering the state of crime in naija, its a MUST DO thing.keep an external hard drive and regularly back up your data.My boss' laptop was stolen over the weekend, and the man was not himself for three days . My windows XP crashed on tuesday(thats what deploying cracks will do to you ), and i was not myself until i reinstalled . Fortunately all my application insllation fiiles are backed up to my external HDD.

C/Windows/System 32

if you use the search feature and search for files with .scr extension, you'll find them
you can often install screen savers by simply copying scr files to the system 32 folder

cheers

reinstall windows.
its a virus
there are supposed to be some workarounds.
i had the same problem once.
None of the workarounds worked.
i had to reinstall .
you might get lucky though( i didn't)

damned if you do , damned if you don't
Govt closes down 'miracle finance houses' -bastards they want to stop the poor from becoming rich! It's a conspiracy!

Govt does nothing, and houses fold up of their own accord: We have an irresponsible government! this can never happen in a civilised country!


anyone who lost money should face up to the facts- your greed got in the way of your good judgement. this is the same principle behind successful frauds since the beginning of time. a promise that is too good to be true.

theres virtually no difference between these miracle financiers and roadside money doublers.in fact its probably the same principle- set up your stand, have some agents in the crowd whose money you 'double' (the equivalent in this case are all the faceless nairaland champions of these houses) and everyone without a head goes wild!


even with all this, during the next cycle(some five to ten years from now) people will still fall for it

Warren Buffet-the world's greatest investor stated that he would never invest in a business he didn't understand(ie in which he could not make sense out of how it made its money)
in the late 90s when it was all about dotcoms and everyone was going crazy, he kept out of the fray.there was a brief loss of faith in his ability. but in the end, he was proved right.

all most people have chosen to look at are the outrageous promises-
'we will turn 50k into 800k in two weeks'(beans!)

what kind of legit business gives returns like that in the short run?

warren buffet also said something to the effect that 'in any game there's always a patsy/sucker.If you can't see who the sucker is, that's because the sucker is you.'

thats ultimately what happened here.

we are all matured adults(at least i want to believe we are).It is up to us to take responsibility for our financial freedom, rather place it in the hands of a handsome smooth talking man in an expensive(rented) suit, working from a lavishly furnished( and probably rented) suite of offices.

everything good comes at a price.there is no easy path to riches(even for criminals).

whatever you do, pls do not listen to the above quack.
_{its people like that that make me hate pc village. . .}

i wish you all the best in repairing your screen.
in future DO NOT BUY german products.i'm saying this beacuse in my experience ,their equipment is often incompatible with standard equipment.I hope you will be able to find all the spare parts you require locally.

to everyone else-
don't buy german it products!am not hating on them, but i've been in the incompatibility wilderness. you may find that the simplest accessories-eg serial cable will not work with your siemens laptop- you have to buy the siemens serial cable.

if you have deep pockets and peeps in yankee, i suggest you browse ebay or siemens for the screen, order it, then get it sent down to naija.what i see in pc village are dells, hps, toshibas, acers. i havent seen a fujitsu siemens.

another option-i did my it at siemens nigeria(lagos).back then they had an it repair office. for laptops.you may consider contacting them.i wont lie- it will probably cost u plenty in time and money(maybe not time, if they have the monitors available-though i doubt it)

hello,

i have a digital camera-a Creative PC CAM Slim. one day,i switched the batteries in it and it essentially stopped working. I have absolutely no idea how to fix it. does anyone know any reliable repairers of digital cameras? would appreciate any links.Thanks.

hello brume,
this is oyb v1.01
sorry we couldn't reach a firm agreement on the mobile workstation thing.(a lot of number crunching made me  eventually conclude that it makes more financial sense to let a friend over there buy the laptop and ship it over)-I eventualy settled on a dell precision M90.
-_{the cost-dont ask.}  

we didnt conclude the last time
what lapop do u have for 80 to 100k? it does not have to be high spec .


min config
40gb
xp home,
15.4 inch ,
intel graphics(eew, did i say that?)
1.5ghz (no celeron pls!)
cdrw/dvd
512mb ram
do u have any model that falls within that price range?thanks.

another possibility
i have a toshiba satelite
theres a design issue with the fans. is your laptop hot.dos very hot air blow out of the fan vent?
if you run process exploere, do u see 'DPCs(deferred procedure calls) ' taking up to 70% CPU?
does the laptop shutdown at random.?
if so, you need to fix your fan

the following tools should help
CCleaner.this tool does two things(removes invalid registry entries, and cleans up your HDD) the registry changes are reversible, as it saves all deleted registry entries.if you've never used it b4, u might find over 1gb of unnesscary files in your HDD)

alternatively navigate to\temp and delete all the files there

i would advise you to steer clear of all registry cleaners other than registry mechanic.
especially if you have a lot of apps on your system.i used one xprepairpro the a forthnight ago.it f, ked up several of my apps.i had to do a lot of reinstallations.


download autoruns from sysinternals.this will provide you with a comprehensive list of all the apps that startup when you start your system.you can disable from here.

alternatively, you can download advanced windows care personal. this will scan for spyare, immunize your system, clean your registry, optimize your settings, startups and disk space.if you use it , i recommend you deselect the
registry cleaning option.

you can also opt to increase your virtual memory.apparently virtual memory should be at least twice your existing ram.go to my computer -properties ->advanced -> performance options -> advanced->virtual memory.
if your ram is 256, set to 512.if its 512, set to 1024

you can go to control panel ->administrative tools -> services ->
if you kno what you're doing, you can disabl some services.its odd, but some service apps are left behind after uninstalling their parent programs. i had an instance of sql sever using some 3-10MB of ram running even though i had uninstalled its parent app.i simply disabled it.

norton antivirus, mcafee virus scan, bit defender all of these are system hogs.they will SLOW down your system.your best bet is kaspesky or nod32.

you can also download the following tools to monitor your system

free ramxp .this automatiocally frees ram.it also indicates how much ram you are using a any point in time

process explorer.
this is a process manager.you can zero in on any app that is eating up cpu.sep if you enable the icon in the taskbar.eats up ram, though.

glarysoft process manager.supposed to  do the same thing.

other recommendations:
if your ram is  256, you'd best upgrade asap.
if you have any bling bling apps (eg windowblinds) u'd best uninstall them.

cheers.