Help selecting new computer

[DavidF]

My current computer (dell insprion) has aparently picked up a virus that is eating up hard drive space. I cant figure out where the bugger lives so I think its time just to do an upgrade. What would be a good computer to get now a days?? keeping 3d cad and printing in mind for selection...

[astroboy907]

Wiping the hard drive would be easier... but it's too far gone for that, right?

Likely anything quad core and above would be great for modeling. Make sure you get a higher end graphics card... Looking for a desktop I assume?

[DavidF]

Wiping the hard drive would be easier... but it's too far gone for that, right?

Likely anything quad core and above would be great for modeling. Make sure you get a higher end graphics card... Looking for a desktop I assume?

Yes desktop. Im not sure what to think of these new all in one computers, and there are brands out there I have never heard of.
Wiping hard drive not an option...

[mhackney]

As a long time iMac user, I can say that there is nothing inherently wrong with an all in one. It is very convenient and takes up minimal desk space. I haven't looked at the windows equivalent but would suspect any of the name brands would make a nice machine. I have the latest high end iMac with the Fusion drive and I run Windows in VMWare. I run Rhino CAD both the mac beta and the Windows version on VMWare and I can not tell the difference in performance. I have a 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator and it screams in both cases.

I also have an Ubuntu linux VM on this machine so I can run Mac, Windows and Linux software. I can control my printers from any of these OSes. Pretty amazing when you think about it!

Cheers,
Michael

[geneb]

Run the free version of Malware Bytes. If there's a bad actor in your system, it'll find it.

g.

[DavidF]

Run the free version of Malware Bytes. If there's a bad actor in your system, it'll find it.

g.

Down loaded and running, looks like its going to take some time.....

[DocHogan]

Run the free version of Malware Bytes. If there's a bad actor in your system, it'll find it.

g.

Down loaded and running, looks like its going to take some time.....

MBAM is a great suggestion, and usually my first stop in diagnostics and cleanup. My second stop lately has been AVG PC TuneUp (free edition), which has been a very impressive piece of kit.

[Mac The Knife]

I bought a refurbished workstation off of ebay to use with my printer,,, around 500 bucks. Win 7 professional 64 bit. My only beef with it is that it came with only a 256 Gig SSD, and the SATA III drives won't work, unless I get them through HP. So installed a USB 3 card, and plugged in an external drive for storage.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171332171372?ss ... 1423.l2649

[DavidF]

the malwarebites found 650 files that it quarrantiened. Still my HD space was very low, so I started searching each and every file. Found one that had 4 gigs in it, N360_backup.
apparently norton has been backing up my hard drive to my hard drive "thats interesting" LOL so sometime later today it should be done removing all its hard work. Im feeling like a dunce right now......

[Mac The Knife]

I am not a fan of the anti-virus programs that insist on doing more then anti-virusing.

[DavidF]

holy crap!! make that 30 gigs!!!! GRRR!!! well atleast I found it...

[DavidF]

UMMM its still going.....over 100 gigs now.....WoW pretty insane

[teoman]

Norton is a very low technology virus. It has to be installed manually.

[DavidF]

212 gigs..... if you dont hear from me in the next week or so it because my computer is dead!!

[DavidF]

398 gigs, it finished, and im still here!!

[teoman]

Glad you got is sorted out.

[radicaldev]

I'm seriously enjoying my System 76 Gazelle.

Quad core i7, 16 gigs of RAM, terabyte secondary drive, 250gb solid state OS drive, awesome wifi card.

Most of my 3d development needs are supplied by open source utilities, but for some of them, the Gazelle is more than capable of running a windows virtual machine.

https://system76.com/

Don't have to worry too much about viruses, either.

[Nareikuk]

There is a fantastic company called Windows Technical Helpdesk. They call you automatically when they spot that your computer has issues and fix it for you through a helper application they can talk you through installing so they get remote access to your PC. Really good value for money, they can even log into your PayPal account for you so you don't have to do that yourself. All you do is tell them your PayPal username and password - simple.

Alternatively you can install any of the Norton suite and you'll get similar benefits.

Either way, your PC will be unrecognisable compared to before they got involved.

For some reason they even called me on many occasions even though I use a Mac

BTW, please don't take any of the above as a recommendation to talk to the sh*tholes that cold call you claiming to be from one of those types of companies...

[BuckeyeVolunteer]

Clamwin is a pretty good for finding virus's and trojans just before you run it you have to tell it to either quarantine them or delete them or it will just let you know you have some problems!

[Jimustanguitar]

Format it and install a copy of Win10 while it's still free. If the nasties are more resilient than what a format can wipe, at least you didn't spend anything to try.

I've been using 10 since August, and I don't have any complaints. It caught a lot of guff for its privacy defaults (i.e. what Microsoft can remember about you) but most of those are changeable settings. Everybody loves to hate windows, but this one actually is pretty decent. That's how I saved one of my own laptops that needed an OS reinstall (new computer, but Best Buy botched a warranty HDD replacement and I lost my recovery partition and couldn't install a fresh OS without purchasing the install media from the manufacturer).

[geneb]

If you have Windows 10, this is worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1kGMCfb2xw

The guy is a riot (most of the time) and he's damn smart. Ex-Microsoft guy.... Check out his other videos. He's printed a First Order Stormtrooper armor set on an Ultimaker.

Found the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3gcfT9ACK0

g.

[DGBK]

I'm seriously enjoying my System 76 Gazelle.

Quad core i7, 16 gigs of RAM, terabyte secondary drive, 250gb solid state OS drive, awesome wifi card.

Most of my 3d development needs are supplied by open source utilities, but for some of them, the Gazelle is more than capable of running a windows virtual machine.

https://system76.com/

Don't have to worry too much about viruses, either.

That place looks a little overpriced. I took a look at the Meerkat. It's just an Intel NUC with an engraved top plate (but they don't mention that part.) I decked one out with the exact same specs as a Hackintosh I just completed. The Meerkat came out about 200 dollars more expensive. It seems the only value they add is installing Unbuntu for you, but it's possible the other machines are better deals.

[Eaglezsoar]

I bought a refurbished workstation off of ebay to use with my printer,,, around 500 bucks. Win 7 professional 64 bit. My only beef with it is that it came with only a 256 Gig SSD, and the SATA III drives won't work, unless I get them through HP. So installed a USB 3 card, and plugged in an external drive for storage.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171332171372?ss ... 1423.l2649

May I ask what HP does so that a non HP drive will not work internally? That is really rotten!

[geneb]

Mac, as far as I know, there's nothing proprietary about the SATA interfaces in _any_ workstation. You should be able to drop any SATA drive in there and have it work.

What SATA drives have you tried with that system?

BTW, I have found that some BIOSs don't like some SSDs. I've got a Z97 board with an i5-2400K CPU that wouldn't boot from a brand new Samsung EVO SSD, but it had no issue with a Corsair SSD with a similar capacity.

g.

[Mac The Knife]

Mac, as far as I know, there's nothing proprietary about the SATA interfaces in _any_ workstation. You should be able to drop any SATA drive in there and have it work.

What SATA drives have you tried with that system?

BTW, I have found that some BIOSs don't like some SSDs. I've got a Z97 board with an i5-2400K CPU that wouldn't boot from a brand new Samsung EVO SSD, but it had no issue with a Corsair SSD with a similar capacity.

g.

Old topic, but I've since figured out the problem. The information I had about my problem was based on HP literature, and forum searches. I stumbled into the solution after I replaced my desktop with another workstation, and tried installing the old hard drive in it to retrieve files. It worked, and after further digging, I discovered that to format the hardrive, I had to right click on "Computer" in the Start menu, and click on "Manage". First time I've ever formatted a hard drive in WIN 7, I recall with XP you could format it in the explorer window, with Win 7, the drive wasn't even visible.

All is good now.