OH's new laptop is flaky - any ideas?

[MitchT]

The OH bought a new laptop in December, described on Amazon as follows:

ASUS Zenbook UX330UA-FB025T 13.3 inch Notebook (Intel Core i5-6200U, QHD 3200 x 1800 Screen, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, Windows 10, Bluetooth 4.0) - Grey/Metal + Microsoft Office

She's installed Norton Antivirus and Office 365 but nothing else.

It's causing her no end of problems. Typically she'll boot it up and then nothing will load. She clicks on something to load it but nothing happens - she just gets the spinning circle of eternal misery. Internet Explorer will load (though she doesn't generally use that) but again she just gets the spinning circle if she tries to search for something. After re-booting a few times it starts behaving as it should.

Is it the machine a dud or is it an OS/software issue? I've only ever worked on Windows in a medium sized company with dedicated IT support so I wouldn't know where to begin looking for a solution.

[MitchT]

Thanks everyone. She's been on the phone to someone that she reached via Amazon and they took her through a few things which may or may not have solved the problem. It's intermittent so we're not sure yet. For the record, it came with Kaspersky installed but she also has Norton as it was part of a bundle that had Office 365 in it. She bought the bundle as there was no information to suggest that the laptop came with any anti-virus pre-installed. She installed Norton so it has that and Kaspersky installed. Could it be that?

[MitchT]

It's doing it again. I've told her about the most recent post. She's just done some some digging and it was McAfee that was already on. The person she spoke to earlier said they'd heard of the problem before but not so much on Asus machines. They gave her instructions for doing a factory reset which is apparently the next step.

[MitchT]

It's confusing.

She bought the Norton & 365 bundle because she didn't think it came with any antivirus software installed. It appears to have McAfee pre-installed but she can't work out if it's active or not.

[MitchT]

I've told her this. I think she's just reluctant to uninstall something she's paid for.

[MitchT]

King Herald said:

I just bought an Asus PC, which was offered with extra 'deals' of Norton and 365, even though Macafee is already installed. I didn't take the extra deals just let the Macafee do its thing.

That would have been the sensible option with hindsight, but she wanted 365 and in the absence of any indication of an anti virus being included with the laptop she logically took a 365 and Norton bundle that would have cost less than buying 365 and an AV separately.

[MitchT]

moleamol said:

Can you not take it to a friendly (well, approachable at least) one of your IT people and ask them to have a look?

Well, I can't 'cause I binned that part of my life last year. The IT people where she work are unlikely to touch it as the whole company is like a cat on a hot tin roof where security is concerned and they do everything remotely so no chance of a physical bod having a look.

[MitchT]

TonyRPH said:

Well, I've worked in corporate IT for 20 years, and have dispensed advice earlier in this thread.

If your O/H brought the laptop to me at work, I'd only do what I (and others in this thread) suggested.

So if you (or your O/H) cannot follow this advice (and that of others on here) then there's little point in taking it to work is there?

<dragons>I'm oot</dragons>

The McAfee that came on the machine threw up a window yesterday saying it's a trial version which has to be paid for after a couple of weeks, so hopefully she'll uninstall it (having already paid for Norton) and that'll be an end to the aggro. Otherwise I'll buy some noise cancelling headphones and she can moan to herself!