depends what make of laptop and what system....the answer below was spot on and the only way for pain free laptop use in my humble opinion, unless you know what you are dong and are prepared to spend half your life outwitting companies and cleaning up your machine...is get a simple dell laptop running ubuntu..personally I've always had problems with development companies but rarely got a virus or trojan..anyway..try going to microsoft help and support and running FIX-IT automatically(if its vista).. best of all nuke clean it 32 times..reformatt with a proper windows disc (as opposed to windows made for hp or pc world etc etc with a ton of crap added)..put on a good security system...make sure any non windows progs are patched and up to date, keep the thing clean, and unless you dont mind every man jack and his dog in your pc then be prepared to do this on a regular basis
sally anne, November 2009