Sounds liek you've pretty much got the bases covered. I would recommend using malwarebytes anti-malware... as always, it's freeware, but it is significantly better at rooting out crap than either of those. Personally, I still use both AVG and spybot for most things, and for daily protection. [at least on my family's windows boxes anyway]. Don't run anything else much at the same time, it plays nice with other programs, but it'll run as slow as treacle on pluto if you do!
I'd also advise looking around for some freeware systems monitoring programs. With the popularity of overclocking, there's some pretty good ones out there, making use of the machines own internal sensors.
As for the partition problem...that could be windows doing a sneaky hidden partition which it will do when upgrading some bits..and screwing up somewhere. I would recommend a full back up and reformat..just make sure you've got your systems disc and licence key [yes, that is the voice of painful experience!]
Failing that.. have you thought about going to linux?
no subject
yes.. that would rather load the system somewhat.
Sounds liek you've pretty much got the bases covered. I would recommend using malwarebytes anti-malware... as always, it's freeware, but it is significantly better at rooting out crap than either of those. Personally, I still use both AVG and spybot for most things, and for daily protection. [at least on my family's windows boxes anyway]. Don't run anything else much at the same time, it plays nice with other programs, but it'll run as slow as treacle on pluto if you do!
I'd also advise looking around for some freeware systems monitoring programs. With the popularity of overclocking, there's some pretty good ones out there, making use of the machines own internal sensors.
As for the partition problem...that could be windows doing a sneaky hidden partition which it will do when upgrading some bits..and screwing up somewhere. I would recommend a full back up and reformat..just make sure you've got your systems disc and licence key [yes, that is the voice of painful experience!]
Failing that.. have you thought about going to linux?