Sbrideau

I just thought of one thing, if you can go to the task manager and see what takes most memory, it could help here.

Crossfire is the Ati equivalent of the Nvidia SLI. If you go dual video cards, with crossfire, you're going to have to plug both screen on the same card. If you have a 4870, I believe it's already sufficient to play TF2 on dual screens. As for the RAM usage problem, I will think of what could be doing that. It could be a lot of things. Did you only scan with MSE? I believe a scan with Malwarebytes as well could be a good idea.

Paying for 10 down and 1 up, I guess it's not too bad.

XP, Vista or 7? Sometimes it can clash with Windows Defender and screw up if it wasn't able to shut it down properly on install, mostly only on XP. If your installiing an anti-virus you shuldnt have windows defender turned on... That's exactly what indy500fan was saying, antiviruses usually shut windows defender down when they are installed, but apparently with MSE on Windows XP it doesn't always do that.

Sounds exactly like the current scams we see a lot lately, only we're used to seeing it on a smaller scale.

Not necessarily you, but whoever is in charge of the IT department. They did call Dell, or else the motherboards in those 2 computers wouldn't have been changed.

AVG was best 2 years ago, now it has fallen to be one of the worst antiviruses as far as my experience and what I see goes.

I can record later if you like, as right now is not a good time for me, but anyway. To give you a taste, I have a french Canadian accent. With the fact that I'm now living in an entirely English speaking city, I'm slowly losing my french accent on my english, and slowly getting an english accent on my french.

Can you tell us which program picked it up?

Replace Spybot and AdAware with Malwarebytes. Spybot S&D and AdAware both used to be very good, but it's a thing of the past now.

I don't own a Dell, what's the point in calling them?

Hard drives are on RAID, and eSATA transfers are faster than most computer's I've seen. And with 8GB of RAM, I don't think the frequency has that much impact on the speed of the computer.

Yes, the work computers are on a network, but only for the printers, everything else is stored on the computer, nothing is stored on servers, not even the user profiles.

Yes, but so are my 3 own computers.

You can also try updating Java.

Out of that, I think the computer is most likely overheating. Is it a desktop or a laptop? The best way to clear this is if it's a desktop, open it and remove the dust with a can of air, as using your vacuum is potentially pretty dangerous for your computer. If it is a laptop, it would be better to bring it to a computer repair shop, but until then, you can spray some air in the vents with a can of air.

I would strongly advise to stay away from newer Dells. The tend to break for nothing. And to those that are going to bash me because I say that, I'll take an example of my own experience. Dell WAS a good brand, but for a few years now has been making computers that doesn't have quality and that break fast. Yes they have extremely good support, but that's why they have to cut the quality on their computer parts. At work, all the computers are Dells. The old ones still work very well and are still pretty fast. For the new computers though, because I'm part of a new team, out of 11 computers, 2 had the motherboard die on them and one keeps having blue screens. Also they're pretty slow for the specs they have: Windows 7 Pro, Intel Core i5 (can't recall the number of GHz), 8GB of RAM and an ATI card should be faster than my main desktop, which in fact is much faster than the work computers, and has Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel Core i3 2.93GHz, 4GB of RAM (I upgraded that to 8GB this weekend) and a Nvidia 9800GT. Also for my friends, one had a 3 month old laptop Dell at the time, and the hard drive failed. Another of my friends had a laptop screen die on her, and I could continue for a while. Dell is not a company that I would call the Best, considering their pretty high failure rates. On topic: Are you looking for a desktop or laptop? Of course a desktop will be much stronger and cost less than a laptop, plus won't overheat on games after a while. I would say that building (or at least have a shop build one) out of parts that we can make a list here would be the best bet, better bang for the buck as people say. But if you want to stay on prebuilts, out of the ones that have already been mentionned in this thread, I'd go for the hp.

There are no viruses that currently afflict Leopard or Snow Leopard. There are, and nowadays most of them are the same way as this one. That's why in windows you get a warning twice before installing a program from an unknown source. People still click yes and ok and there is no way that the mac users are different than Windows users. Then they are erroneously reported as viruses, as Y_Guy pointed out. The differences are noted here. Java, intrinsically, is allowed to read and write what it pleases under certain conditions. However, there is a clear red warning indicating possible dangers. "Self-signed root certificate" really says it all. The user let the program run on their computer - not a virus. But as it's already been explained, Virus is a term that is misused in a lot of cases, such as this one. Do you really want me to change my habits and write something longer like 'malware' wich in fact it is?

There are no viruses that currently afflict Leopard or Snow Leopard. There are, and nowadays most of them are the same way as this one. That's why in windows you get a warning twice before installing a program from an unknown source. People still click yes and ok and there is no way that the mac users are different than Windows users.

Yeah. Same thing happened for windows a long time ago. It makes sense, if they bundle it with the OS they have to support it - if oracle builds their own mac version oracle has to support it. Windows was very similar situation. Windows had java by default. Hackers/Virus makers abused java as a doorway in. Windows removes java as standard from OS. Since now only java gamers download java a good 98% of windows users no longer have java thus making windows java viruses (outside specific hacks for java games) pointless. Probably for the same reason as Windows as well, it has to be known by now that Macs also have viruses.

Firefox has been opened for 2 days, and I have 5 tabs, 2 of those being on a youtube video. Doesn't take that much resources compared to what you say it would take. Opera is a lot faster than Firefox 3.6. I don't use the turbo on Opera and I wouldn't use Opera just for the turbo (btw I do have Opera installed).

Everything does that in your stomach, it's nothing new. Thanks captain obvious, I didn't say it was anything new, but just disgusting to look at. And it is. I wasn't aware you were able to see inside your stomach that you'd be so desensitized by it. Actually seeing it is odd, to say the least. At least it is for me. I don't know about you, but I don't make a habit of dipping things in hydrochloric acid, so yeah Sorry bout that, and yeah, I've done it a few times when I was in a biotechnology course, although not with food.

Opera is very good as well, but not as fast as Firefox or Chrome. Firefox has been opened for 2 days, and I have 5 tabs, 2 of those being on a youtube video. Doesn't take that much resources compared to what you say it would take.

Weird, I'm using 150k with 5 tabs on Firefox and it has been open all day. I even have a second window open. I think you go with what you like.

Everything does that in your stomach, it's nothing new.