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The bloat is why I switched my customers to Comodo IS and Avast, Avast for the "little old lady" types that need lots of hand holding and Comodo IS for those that are needing a little more heavy duty protection as by default it sandboxes the browser.

What really sucks is the "TuneUp" its referring to I'm sure is the once great TuneUp Utilities which used to be my go to tool for keeping a home users system maintained, it was IMNSHO a spiritual successor to the DOS/Win9x era Norton Utilities, but AVG came along and pulled a Symantic and ruined it. It was a great little suite, would automatically clean and defrag the unit every 3 days, turn off all the extra Windows background crap when you were on battery to save power, just like Norton back in the day it just put everything in one nice neat little place and made it simple to understand for the home users.

Finally for those suggesting MSE? Yeah....no. While MSFT has gotten better their detection and blocking rates are still pretty poor, you look at any of the AV tests and you'll see Avast, Comodo, Anvir, ESET, Ad-Aware Pro and always right near the bottom? MSE. This really isn't surprising as MSFT simply bought Giant Anti-Spy which was made to compete with Malwarebytes NOT to be a full fledged AV solution.The only users I recommend MSE to are to those that already know best Internet practices and simply need an on demand scanner similar to ClamAV but which does the file scans on download, for that role? It does fine but I wouldn't want MSE to be a main defense as its scores are just too lousy.

For those Windows users that want a similar battery boost (something I've been enjoying for a couple of years now) just pick up a copy of Tuneup Utilities which has "Economy Mode" which does the same thing, and just like Battery Saver you can tell it to only run when on battery or you can manually turn it on and off.

As for TFA? I'm always for MSFT adding useful features and so far running the previous build on my netbook Windows 10 is shaping up to be what Win 8 SHOULD have been with the OPTION to run Metro if you are on a tablet (or using it for an HTPC, as I've always said Metro makes a good 10 foot UI) while the desktop is Win 7 with speed increases. Thanks to 8GadgetPack I even got to keep my fav gadgets. Now if only somebody would figure out how to copy DVD Maker over from Win 7 it'd be perfect, otherwise I'll have to keep one system with Win 7 just for turning customer's vids into DVDs. But otherwise 2 thumbs up for Win10.

What you are describing is known in the biz as "WinRot" and is caused not by the OS, but by software that refuses to clean up during an uninstall. Ever wonder how some programs can take a good 10 minutes to install but only seconds to uninstall? Its because it isn't actually uninstalling, its just tossing the folder under Program Files while leaving all the keys and .DLLs it crapped all over the system.

There are several free tools that can fix WinRot but personally I prefer Tuneup Utilities as it takes care of everything automatically and is pretty much a "one stop shop" for Windows. I like it so much that I use it on my home systems and even though my Windows installs are several years old they boot just like a fresh install. As a bonus it has a "program deactivator" that fools all those programs that insist on being run at startup that you haven't futzed with them by silently flipping them between active and disabled when you launch and close respectively. Its pretty sweet and they have a trial so you can see if its something you'd like.

The last good version was the one released just after the sale, I can't remember if it was Norton 99 or Norton 2000. The tools were still damned good although it really wasn't made for NTFS so no you really can't use it on anything newer than XP and then it needs to be on a FAT32 volume.

But on Win9X? It was the fricking bomb, it was bundled with what was then Roxio GoBack which gave Win9X a kind of system restore which considering how easily a third party program could just write over critical system files Norton Utilities was a "must have" piece of software. I remember we had a ton of Gateway Astro PCs (Apple iMac ripoff) and we ended up selling a copy with every Astro because it took unstable vanilla Win98 and made it grandma proof, really great software it was.

For those that want something similar there are a few freebies out there but I swear by Tuneup Utilities. Sure you could do a lot of it by hand...but why would you want to? It can also do things that would be a PITA to do manually like enabling and disabling software that demands running services (like say iTunes) so that it only runs when you use it, and a ton of other great tools. Best of all its "one click maintenance" will take care of everything either every 3 days or whenever you want. Its low resource and takes the hassle of maintaining a PC.

You are most certainly welcome! Having to fix Windows boxes 6 days a week one tries to find ways to make them easy to use, hard to break, and reliable. Not always easy, especially with certain versions (Vista oh how I hated thee) but with a handful of tools one can make Windows a nice reliable OS.

The easiest way I've found is to use a combination of WSUS Offline so you don't have to wait on Windows Updates (If you have a server with a Fat32 partition you can just keep it there and update it once a month, easy peasy) and Ninite which makes it easy to give users, even if they are in another state, clean and malware free software. I would recommend Avast and Sumatra and Klite, the rest according to your users interests, and finally although it isn't free I can't recommend highly enough TuneUp Utilities as it is even more handy and useful than Norton utilities was in the days of DOS. Nice thing is its automatic, every three days it'll clean the cruft and make sure the drives aren't fragmented.

With these handy dandy tools it is easy peasy to setup a clean machine and keep it that way. For a browser I would suggest Comodo dragon, as it is based on Chromium but has some nice extra security features like better SSL validation. Finally if you DO come across one already pwned MSFT has a nice free system sweeper that will give you a CD to boot from that will wipe out the latest bugs. But if you added TuneUp (truly awesome BTW) and a nice selection of software from Ninite along with Avast Free you're talking maybe an hour and a half from start to finish, and after which they shouldn't need you for anything. I have customers running 8 years now, the only thing I do is hardware upgrades and blow out the fans. The key with Windows is a little time at the start saves a LOT of time down the road.

I don't know about him, but as for me /pulls up list of most played/ Rammstein, Zombie (both White and Rob), clutch, Korn, W.A.S.P (especially Crimson Idol, WAY underrated IMHO), and if I'm feeling nostalgic some hair metal like Warrant, Crue, Ratt, etc.

As for TFA, that is why it is important to know what and where your kids go on the web and to lock down and keep your PC clean. I suggest to my customers they use either Winutilities Free or my favorite Tuneup Utilities which automates the chore of cleaning out cookies and other junk, and of course to keep kids on low rights accounts. One of the first things I did for my GF was set up her niece with a low rights account and voila! All the spyware laden game junk magically stayed away.

But is anyone really surprised by TFA? Hell watch childrens TV and it feels like nothing but one giant commercial. Advertisers learned a long time ago if you get the kids you can get the parent's wallets, just look at how all the stores just about skip Halloween and go straight for Xmas these days.

Of course i forgot the end > so here you go http://www.tune-up.com/download/tu2009/