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My mom thinks I'm addicted to the computer. Then as soon as she comes home from work, she hijacks my PC and plays Maple Story for hours on end, whining if someone else in my family wants to use it.

I'd be perfectly find with not spending so much time on the computer if I actually had something to DO otherwise.

At this point, I'd take almost any job I can get. The problem is that Western NY is low on job openings right now. I went around the mall collecting applications the other day, and everyone said that their weren't any openings but they'd keep my application on file for a year just in case...

I also am wary of getting a job while my boyfriend remains unemployed. He's putting very little effort into his job hunt, and while I love the guy to death, I don't want to end up supporting him while he sits around playing games all day.

We have 4 computers in my family right now. Two of them belong to me: a custom built PC and the MacBook that I'm using right now.

The custom built PC cost me 2K and is a piece of junk because my worthless ex-boyfriend built it for me. He built it with shoddy used parts that he bought online and wasted my money on ridiculous things like appearance (he bought a super expensive cordless keyboard and mouse, which is useless for me because I hate batteries and the mouse is too big for my hands). The speakers on the monitor and several USB ports were broken when I got it, amongst other things. Even worse, he wired it all wrong and fried the motherboard the moment he turned it on, forcing me to buy a new one because nothing he bought had a warranty on it. It also messed up my sound card and a bunch of other things.

Right now the computer barely runs and constantly overheats. When I try to browse through my documents, every folder I load causes the computer to freeze for 2-3 minutes.

He also took my external hard drive out of my casing and put it inside my computer because he wanted the casing for one of his own external hard drives. Now I can't access any of the files on it.

One of the reasons why I dumped him.

My mom and boyfriend use that PC exclusively now because it runs the programs they like using. So even though it's MY computer, They're always arguing over who gets to use it and don't give me any say in the matter.

The other two computers belong to my mom and dad. My mom's computer is broken from viruses and spyware because she refused to listen to me when I told her not to open every single e-mail she gets. Now she's doing the same thing to my PC and thinks she's allowed to because the money I spent on building it was the inheritance money I got from her mother.

My dad's laptop has a story of it's own which is even more ridiculous than the rest of them.

The hard drive still works, it's just that the file system on our computer is so painfully slow, it's impossible to actually get to it. It's a desktop-sized hard drive and I got it before I decided to try a mac.

I have no idea where he got the parts from, but he ordered them after we gave him the money and has all the receipts, so I don't think I can return them even if I did know where he bought them.

And so, the story of dad's laptop:

My dad is a musician who's very serious about his band. He set up a recording studio in is basement and wanted a computer with professional recording/mixing software on it.

Even though my dad has some computer knowledge because he used to work on military computers, I was still wary about him buying it himself, and offered to pick him out a computer with the software he needed and enough power to run it.

But as I was looking online for something good, he tells me not to bother because someone he knew had offered to sell him a computer that had been used in a recording studio before and had the programs he wanted on it already installed.

This is where the trouble starts.

You see, my dad's best friends has a brother who, by an unfortunate coincidence, lives across the street from us. He suffered an injury a long time ago that messed with his brain. Our family is forced to put up with him because everything he does is apparently "not his fault", and because if he's bothering us at home, he's not bothering the customers in my dad's music store.

This guy, who we refer to as "the creep", was the one who told my dad about this computer. Since the creep used to be big in the music industry before his injury, dad assumed that he knew what he was talking about. He shelled out 500 dollars for what he assumed to be a top-of-the-line, slightly used computer.

A few days later, Dad received an ancient, no-name brand laptop with Windows 95 on it.

Dad, in his ignorance, assumed that "laptop" equaled "top-of-the-line" and decided to accept it. When he turned it on, he saw that none of the programs he needed were on it. The creep explained that he could get them for free by downloading them from the internet.

In our house, I own the internet. Meaning, the router belongs to me and is password protected by me because the creep had been stealing our internet connection before by sitting on our front porch with his laptop. So when dad comes over to me and demands that I hook this new laptop up to the internet, I'm not happy at all. I try to explain to him that he needs an Ethernet cable to connect to the internet because his laptop doesn't have a wireless card, but he just thinks I'm being selfish and yells at me.

In the next couple weeks, the creep keeps harping on my dad to buy an Ethernet cable. He eventually does, and I'm forced to allow him to plug the laptop into our network.

Suddenly, the creep is coming over every day, "working" on Dad's computer. My boyfriend later discovers that the creep isn't doing anything to help my dad, but is actually using it to download porn and watch videos on YouTube. Which is EXACTLY what he was doing before when he was sitting on our front porch using his own laptop. So the creep isn't really a brain-damaged idiot, but an ingenious scammer who just tricked my dad into buying him a laptop that bypasses my password.

I try explaining that to my dad, but he doesn't believe me. So me and my boyfriend start thinking up ways to combat this without getting in trouble. Eventually, I come up with the idea to set my computer to upload and download massive amounts of data whenever the creep comes over, clogging up our internet connection while I enjoy a nice book or video game. The creep starts whining to my dad about how slow our internet is, yelling at him to fix it.

Of course, whenever my dad uses the internet, it works fine.

After a couple months, my dad finally gets tired of putting up with the creep and asks him how much longer it will take for him to finish installing the recording studio programs. The creep tells him that for only a couple hundred dollars, he can get one of his friends to install them all.

That was the last time dad ever let him touch one of our computers.

*hugs all* goodnight!

Is the desktop computer littered with crapware? If not, and it's still slow, you could probably see a marginal increase in disabling programs that start up (and waste RAM) at boot.

Start -> Run -> MSConfig -> Startup Tab -> Disable All -> Apply -> OK

If it's still slow after that, and you don't have a very small amount of RAM, I'd say there probably is some kind of crapware that's just not being seen.


I can see how things got out of hand, in that story. xd At least you don't have to deal with the creep like during that time, right? Hopefully. sweatdrop Though I will say, it's always smart to admit a lack of knowledge and seek somebody who knows the topic so they can aid you in it. Referring to your father and going on a whim instead of consulting you, since you know more about computers than he does. It did take my parents a while before they started to trust me and realize that I know more about computers than they do, and to let me help them when they want to make a computer purchase.

Goodnight, both of you smile

We're gonna try the disabling thing once my boyfriend's done with what he's doing on the computer. I wouldn't be surprised if the problem IS crapware, since my mom has been using the computer...

I luff my Court (now Tru) tv =w=!