Rich-M

Of course that is true and is suggested in the instructions but it is also true in installing anything these days. We advise folks to go to the source wherever possible when downloading IE download Adobe Flash Player from www.adobe.com not Softonic or Brothersoft because those guys make money by loading up your systems with bloatware. More and more it is true even from originators as Piriform and Auslogics have some worthwhile programs to use but also get paid for loading you with bloatware you don't need as well. It is called making a living. That is one of the reasons I take a very simplistic attitude to free software. My first thought with FREE is why would someone I don't know and am not related to give me anything of any value to me? The most obvious answer is it is equally valuable for them so now we have to look at the why! I have been in this business too long to recommend something to anyone on a public forum that would harm their systems. I am here to protect them as my main mission from that. In almost every instance when asked I define our job as to read and reread our posts to protect the newbie and casual user from blowing away their systems with poorly worded responses that can be taken more than one way. Anyone who knows me knows I am the champion of the unsuspecting inexperienced user, they define my behavior. If the software itself were in any way harmful I also would not be using it on any of my systems either. Instructions given were to download from Paltalk, never to choose anything but "custom" or "advanced" and to take only the Paltalk software and not allow it to run in startup. I have been doing it this way for 15+ years and never lost a system yet if the user followed instructions (and actually even if they didn't).

My first invitation to you to attend Paltalk was a bulk email sent a month ago.Since then I have sent almost 12 email announcing the hours and the purpose of the room. I personally asked you to attend last week and you responded you would. There were 15 there at the height of the evening, none of whom were from Free PC Help Forum. Now you could say that DSTM, Gimbo, Snowgoose, N3, Cindy, Elliot and I are from Free PC Help Forum and were all there but I am counting us as Paltalkers because we have all been there for years and years. What I am talking about is new to Paltalk chatroom.

They are stuck in the last place and they were not thousands they were 117 so let's be accurate. Dougie already told you he is finding the same thing where it was so easy before, now its not. Look at yourself and Paltalk. How many weeks have we advertised emailed then personally asked you and James yet neither of you showed up after promising to be there. That is the same thing friend so don't try to pass the ball to me quite yet! What you are doing in bringing in users is great but it is way more difficult for us especially if in management positions, and especially since I got them to follow me before. People are reluctant to change when what they are doing seems to work for them. Where those 117 people are is still there and the people were approached many times. Many of them are on the weekly email already and have been from day 1 yet like you do not show up for Paltalk, even though they came from there originally.

Friends will follow you but people you help mean more. And I am not sure you understand so let me say it another way. Being a manager on a major forum makes an individual somewhat valuable while there, but pming someone even with a suggestion of another place to find tech information could mean the end of that management position and is clearly not worth the risk long run. The Linkedin Biz Owners Forum is a different situation and there since nothing is considered spamming and I have no ranking any more, I have begun to attempt to pull over members....the problem is they are techs and generally what we found in trying to populate other forums it is more users with problems that we need, not really techs and they are the toughest ones to pull in. I wish I could explain that. I have over 400 clients and every invoice I give to a client has a message suggesting "24 hour free tech support" and possibly 10 have seen it. When I point it out to them they go "that is great, but never sign up". In the 13 years of my business I have one who lurks on my forums but won't sign up so contributes nothing and 3 users who have signed up but none have ever posted. I wish I had the answer but I don't. The only thing I have ever seen bring people in in over 15 years of doing this is helping someone with an issue and then suggesting it to them while the iron is hot, or dragging them in from Paltalk. If you watch TonyD on the other forum we are all on he will often post a problem for one of his clients. But nothing he has ever suggested and I have the same experience will make them post it themselves, even though they have the problem and it seems to me would want an answer they still won't post. It makes me wonder if they really want to solve the problem or would prefer just to complain about the issue. If I saw 24 hour free tech support on an invoice with an address, I would at least go there and see what it meant so I am not a good one to judge why others don't.

Interestingly the only one of those forums that makes any sense is the smallest as simply bringing in people to sign up means little, it is bringing in like minded users that we seek and the rest of those forums wouldn't give us those! As a manager I would get in worse trouble pming people to here because as a manager, it could be viewed as intimidation Gary. If I were simply a user as I was elsewhere it would be easy. Even trying to help a user by PM or worse yet offerring to help pric=vately is grounds for immediate dismissal in management.

Agreed. Unfortunately I wear several hats!

Leaving links is allowed on some forums but most do not allow it and staff will remove the links...I am a manager on a 3 million member forum and it kills me that I can't use a link there....

Lenovo today is the number one computer producer in the world. For goodness sake they put in some bad software, something Dell and HP have been doing for years. They have kept up the high standards that IBM always had and to my mind make some of the best hardware ever. Any frequent flyer can tell you that when a plane hits an air pocket and drops, only the Lenovo laptops stay on. I think they deserve a second chance. I don't hear HP apologizing for installing Weather Bug in all their systems for the last 15 years or Yontoo.

Toshiba I would never recommend as there are so many issues and Dell well the Small Business Division is still fine but Consumer Division I cannot believe you would even consider indulging in that. Their tech support is almost non existent and their quality rivals Acer and eMachine. Lenovo will always be number one. Get over the fact they all load malware enablers in their systems and the ones who have done it forever are Dell Consumer and HP. Asus and Msi would be my next recommendations.

Actually I was talking about other Paltalk Chatrooms Gary as there are full time 24/7 chatrooms for computer tech support, not other online tech support forums. Had you come there you would have seen what I meant. What is there today is less than half what we used to see as I note attendance is way off from what we used to see Over the years I have belonged to many online forums and yes there have been some where the staff is very cliquish and can be most unfriendly to outsiders but I would not say most myself, whereas with Paltalk Chatrooms "most" does fit. But now that we are back at least our room is a haven for others running away from that and that is what we are counting on to help populate this forum.

Paltalk is one good place as in the past we pulled quite a few people off Paltalk to another forum we were at and that is part of the reason we started it up again. Help someone on Paltalk and then explain to them we are the live tech support of the Free PC Help Forum Forum. It doesn't seem there is as much natural traffic there as there used to be but I am sure in time it will work. I once counted 127 members pulled in from Paltalk in 5 or so years. And the good thing about it is they were all active, they didn't just join. Of course we enjoy doing it too which helps and it comes through to whoever joins us. Most of the other Computer tech rooms are so unfriendly once people get to us, they tend to stay with us. The more of you from here who come join us the better we will do because the rooms with the most traffic will get the most visitors and that is where we are failing. We have almost everyone who used to come to those sessions still there, but have attracted not one from Free PC Help Forum to show up and this forum is so much more active than that one is today!.

Nice Gimbo thanks!

I agree with Dougie and seldom ever do beta but like I said in this case I want the very newest so I chose the Maximum Protection Beta anyway. I don't look at this protection the way I do any other because there is no other problem with anywhere near the destructiveness.

Well I never saw it.

No question Dougie Emsisoft is a peanut but it is growing quite rapidly. Nod32 was always number 1 in my book but they discourage resellers so they will never be that big.

From what I have been reading Avast is on its way out and talking to the people at Emsisoft there has been a big influx of resellers lately giving up Avast and moving over to Emsisoft. One thing that is really annoying about the free version is the yearly registering where they try everything on earth to force you to buy it!

Went right through for me Gary.

I never saw an issue using Pale Moon and Bob, you need to try this Mozilla browser because almost everything you write about FF is why I have been on it almost a year without issue once I solved the pdf problem.

I just found something out that is really important here and that is the free version of MBAE does not protect Office documents, .pdf readers, or media player files. Those are some of the first targets of any encrypting ransomware. That omission pretty much negates the use of the free version, in my opinion altogether. Now is this crew going to spend $24.95 a year to protect itself from a few specific things? "The free version of Anti-Exploit will protect against exploits in browsers, their add-ons, and Java, while the $24.95 premium version will also work in Microsoft Office, PDF readers, media players, and software selected by the owner. Anti-Exploit for Business works in conjunction with the Malwarebytes Management Console for enterprise deployment."

Image files are great but do you want to make them everyday? That is the only way image files can help you I think the real solution is file and data backup as you don't need to reinstall Windows, the virus is easy to remove, but its the files and data you will lose. I spent the $15 because this is the one problem we cannot get around the effects of for over 2 years now so it is special and different and I cannot afford it being in my system. My advice is use your favorite AntiMalware program for normal Malware prevention but for this one incurable situation spend the $15 unless your files have no value. I don't use 9 or 15 other products though I do use Ad Muncher and WOT + Emsisoft and Win Patrol, all of which functions do not duplicate each other Gimbo.

Actually I am or have been a user of everything on that post with the exception of RAR, which everyone knows and most of them are currently installed on my pc which is why I failed to question a few of the links on ones that have been there forever.

I am a strong believer in HItman Pro and they have been in the forefront with solutions to Ransomware from day 1 James so I would be a believer just remember choose 1. For myself I have already done Crypto Prevent and I like the fact it auto updates, something none of the free ones do that I can tell so I would stay where I am.The "no virus etc" I have never heard of and that doesn't make it bad it is just not fair for me to comment. The worst part of all of thjis is we have no way to prove anything stops this scumware and no one I know is about to go try to get infected with Crypto Locker to prove any one of these is better than the other. So for me its an intellectual judgment, has to be so here is how I arrived at it. I am a big believer in Nod32 and brought it to all these folks who now use it but I have left from time to time as I found they fell asleep at the switches a few times and the product became flawed. Sure they recovered but..... I am a big believer in Emsisoft and I resell it. But it too is untested. That is why I chose Crypto Prevent. I only am looking for one thing and that is to stop Ransomwhere and that is all this does but because it auto updates I would bet it is always on top of newness which Anti malware has to be. Hitman expressed process as behavioral and Crypto says it knows Crypto Process and finds it by that. That means more to me. But this is me.Hope this helps.