Potential Problems With My M11X

I'm just back from travelling for the year. My friend has been minding my M11X the whole time. I got it back yesterday and I'm having some problems with it. For starters, I'm finding it extremely hard to connect to the internet on it. Our home connection has been acting up a bit lately but everyone else's computers seem to working fine. Safari does not work at all and even chrome struggles to sign in to my account. Most of the time it just says it timed out. This morning is the first time it has connected for me.

Secondly, everytime I turn on the laptop this small error box appears on the desktop screen:

'Runtime Error 2 at 00004AD4'.

I constantly keep receiving these error messages as well with variations in the number:

'Successfully blocked access to a potentially malicious website 89.28.42.120. Type: outgoing, Port:34243, Process: mediaget.exe'.

The thing is, these errors keep appearing when I'm not connected to the internet so I'm not quite sure how it is successfully stopping anything.

I only had my M11X 3 weeks before I left to go travelling so I never installed anything on it. I'm sure my friend has done so ie antivirus etc but I've no idea what. I'm thinking that I should just completely wipe and start again?

Does it sound like I might have a virus? I know that he used it to downloads movies throughout the year....and God knows what else. He's not the most tech savvy person in the world. He didn't even know if he had bought an iPad 2 or 3. Dear Jesus! Now, either am I, but I know how to respect and appreciate belongings and I wish now that I hadn't loaned my laptop to him.

If anyone can help me identify what the problem is and also walk me through what software etc I should install, that would be great.

Finally, if I want to install the free version of Windows 8 from their site, do I need to burn it to a disk in order to install it? (no disk drive).

 

I would do a clean install as you have mentioned. Only way to ensure 100% clean operating system...than get a good antivirus.

 

Done. It's completely wiped. What software protection should I download?

 

I only have used Norton 360 for the past five years or so...yes you have to pay for it but I've never had a single problem. Plus it has other features such as registry cleanup which is real nice. It'll scan every program that you download before it's able to launch to ensure it won't cause any harm...but it may use more memory than you like. I'm running 8GBs in my M11x and don't notice it's there, but if you have 2BGs or less you will notice.

 

Cool, cheers. In terms of gaming, hoe capable is my machine nowadays? It's an R3 with 2GB of RAM and an i3-2357m processor. Steam are doing a sale at the moment but not sure what this can handle. WHat games in it's current state could it play really well and what could it play even better if I upgrade the ram to 8/16GB and install an SSD? I'm guessing Max Payne is out of the question.

 

What video card does your system have...540m?

 

Very capable for gaming although the I3 will cause you a few issues in some of the newer games like Skyrim and Battlefield 3. Someone Youtube'd Max payne 3 on your model with the I3 and he got an easy 30-40fps at medium settings. See here. Do not underestimate her these are powerful little models at 768P.

It did indeed sound like a virus, to add to the software I use AVG Free 2013 been using it for years and never got a Virus if you are looking for a free one that is the best IMO.

 

Cheers for that about AVG. I'll give that a whirl now. I downloaded a few demo's from Steam and I'm trying them out at the minute. Arkham Asylum was first up and had to be pretty much stopped a few seconds in. Wasn't playable whatsoever. Sleeping Dogs seemed to worked perfectly (not sure what the FPS' were) although it did crash at the first fight scene. I'm going to put that down to the fact that I've only got 2GB of RAM. The scene itself didn't look too taxing and the previous scene involving some intense street running seemed fine. I also tried Sonic Generations but there was some considerable lag. Sniper Elite V2 is stuck on the opening screen so I guess that's a no go. I think I'll use my 360 for these games.

 

It sounds as though you have not whitelisted the games and they are running on the integrated card. Forget the 360

Nvidia Control Panel - Manage 3D Settings and find the exe on program settings and force it to Use Nvidia High Perforance Graphics. The HD3000 is not enough for those games.

The batman games are pretty much made the M11x you might want to check your settings because they run mint on mine at 1080p high. Forget AA with these models and make sure you do not have HBAO or anything high processor turned on but if the game is not starting you are certainly using the HD 3000 chip because the 540M GT will run anything.

Check your drivers as well make sure you have the latest. 2GB Ram is low recommend getting your 6-8 in this day an age I use 3GB just with League of Legends.

 

Does the extra ram and ssd affect gameplay performance? I went into Nvidia control panel and selected high performance for both global settings and program settings. Is there something else I should change? I found Steam in the drop down menu in program settings and made sure it was set to high too.

 

That should sort out your problem and games should run fine Batman should be rocking it does on mine as long as the game is whitelisted it will use 540M GT but you can set the global setting to Nvidia and that should sort it too.

Extra RAM does not affect the gameplay unless there is not enough to run the system and game at the same time. 2GB is a minimum amount and you really need 4GB for gaming these days I see most games use over 2GB so it could be having an effect on you. 6-8GB is a sweet spot to future proof and if you like things running in the background.

 

I'm downloading the Batman demo again to test out the new settings. I'd say the SSD makes booting up really fast.

 

You can only really see the difference by going back to a HDD after using an SSD for a while, the noise and drab responsiveness are horrendous SSD is the way forward for sure.

 

My R1 runs Arkham Asylum on medium settings smoothly with only 2GB RAM - I don't think RAM is the issue.

 

How do I individually select programs to use the 540 gfx card in the Nvidia control panel? I can only seem to be able to change the general program or global settings as a whole. Steam is covered under that but I was wondering if it was possible to select a specific game etc.

 

Its the options next to were you select the global option program settings and then you can select the installed program and change it manually to either integrated or Nvidia GPU.

 

On the antivirus front I've been using Microsoft's security essentials exclusively for a couple of years now. No infections so far and the price is right.

 

Under manage 3D settings, I only have the option to click on global settings or program settings. I've selected both for high performance and Batman works now (a tiny bit of stutter in some cut scenes) but Sonic Generations won't load. When I configure the graphics before the game launches, the game itself won't give me the option to choose the 540. Sorry for the stupid questions. I'm new to this. I can't seem to see an option to individually select Sonic and tell the computer to always use the 540.

 

You may have to add the exe for Sonic and then in Program Settings force it to run on the GT it should work, otherwise right click on the exe and select graphic processor and click Nvidia. Changing Global settings to Nvidia should cover the lot but already installed games may not. Never had a problem myself but Optimus has been known to be a pain sometimes especially in games which require you to setup the settings prior to launching.