Is There Possibility of Cyber Wars in Our Computers?

What do you think viruses are?

don't forget to mention Skype.

I've never puchased a computer with Vista - mainly because I've heard it's not easy to remove that sack of ****. I'm perplexed that an IE8 install would tell you it's installing forever. Why would it do so if ms ever want you to upgrade to IE 9/10/11....?

For what it's worth, any version of Internet Explorer seems like a crock to me. Something is wrong if you keep getting requests about your default browser. A humble suggestion, but do you have conflicting software (or at least too much stuff that essentially tries to do the same job) ?

My own bugbear is downloads that try to install Mcafee whatever (and will do so unless you uncheck the box).

Mozilla works fine for me, but it seems to have a liking to update more often than I need to get up for a pee in the middle of the night.

Pop the top and see if you hear screaming and shelling.

Yes, it happens all the time when similar but competing products are installed in a computer.

An example would be in the realm of PDF creator/viewers that are embedded in products such as a scanner, installing Neat where Brother Control Center was previously installed will disable the Brother suite and only allow the use of the Neat scanner, Nuance does the same thing with PaperPort.

I have made it a rule to never allow new software to use the default setting, instead always choosing the "Custom" option so as to control exactly what and where new software is installed, it saves a lot of aggravation when new but unwanted toolbars magically appear afterwards.

One more thought, always create a restore point and a system image, then shutdown and restart the computer prior to installing anything.

Thanks for your constructive, practical comments.