Re: Should we share our new found tips?.
Patsy, I have lost count of the number of times when engaged in conversation with tourists as we sit and admire the view at Portland Bill for example, tat the subject of computers comes up and some folk clearly older than me, amaze me with their knowledge and leave me standing, then there are those folk who say, "I've no idea what to do". So I suppose age isn't the criteria, but I bow to your opinion.
TessA, I too have lots of stuff on my laptop and like you, have no idea what it does and why it's there. If you go into Start>control panel>programmes, you will see everything on your computer and when it was installed. One day out of boredom, I started to remove things that meant nothing to me. Only a few, but in no time at all, things were going wrong so I decided not to fiddle about with them again. As for you using a "cleaner thingy", I daren't, because if I did, and looked at the result, I'd be afraid to remove the item just in case. My point is, you're not alone.
Tregonsee, thanks for your links, I will have a look at them later and if I do anything, I will report back.
and as they say at the end of the news..........and finally, I mucked my laptop up so much once, that I really thought I'd have to dump i for a new one, but decided to do a factory re-set. I asked someone elsewhere and discovered how easy it is to do. I wrote down the "how to do it" in my book but if I remember right, when you turn your laptop on, in the period when it is firing up, it shows the make (in my case Acer) for a few seconds only. During those split seconds, you press two keys and they vatu depending on the make of your laptop. Once pressed, you are warned that this will lead to a complete reset and have you got everything off that needs to be saved, ie photo's, then you are asked to confirm that's what you want to do, you confirm and sit back.
The machine springs into action and you wonder when it will end. Finally it closes down, starts up and there before you are all the things you saw when you switched on for the first time all those years ago. I was given Internet Explorer as my search engine, I installed Chrome and use that. I have recently installed oscobo which I am undecided about.
I would not recommend you or anyone else embarks on anything like that unless you have someone competent watching over you, but is's worth doing and it cleans everything out and the machine runs faster.