I had a call today claiming to be from Microsoft. The person showed me (by phone) the event viewer and then I saw all the errors and warnings under Applications and System.To be honest, I was a bit suspicious of this person and when he wanted to get someone else to remotely enter my PC to fix the problems it concerned me. I could not connect to the internet whilst he was on the phone and he said he'll call me back in 30 minutes and never did!Anyway, can someone inform me? Was this likely to have been a genuine call from Microsoft? I do have loads of error and warnings in the event viewer and my PC takes ages to start up. Should I get back intouch with Microsoft so they can fix it or is there another way I can do it myself?Thank you very much for any advice Adam 1 person got this answerI do too

Hello DebleenaI am working my way through the article on improving performance. I am at the part about Autostart Items and going through my System Configuration Tool. So far I can't really tell if the PC is much better as I haven't been timing it yet, I'll comment again when I go through the whole article. It's taking a while as I am juggling other things too. Jose mentioned some free software that I can download to measure startup time accurately. Can you recommend a link for such a tool? JoseIbarraThanks for your info on the event viewer. I am printing it off now and will comment on it soon. Apparently someone is visiting us on Monday with some special maintenance CD for Windows. I don't know too much about it but for all I know this CD/person will sort out many issues with our PC. I am actually not a PC person (it is my mother's PC) so I am not really planning to get too studious about XP, I just want to get it moving faster for her. Thank you both of you, Adam

My PC details: Windows XP Home Edition, Version 2002, Service Pack 3. Packard Bell Computer. Norton 360. Hello DebleenaThanks for your help. My mum and brother made comments that they noticed the PC running a bit faster now. I am not through the entire list of startup items in the System Configuration Utility as I am checking each one in Paul Collins' Startup Applications List (I'm going to take my time with that as there are loads of startup items). Anyway, so far it seems things have improved and likely to be even better once I've been through all the startup items! Thanks again for posting the link to that article!JoseIbarra Thanks again for your advice on the Event Viewer. To be honest, there is that many errors and warnings that I am not going to paste each one here otherwise you would be preoccupied with me for ages! However, this is an example of a recent error in System. I noticed that many errors are actually the same problem reoccuring rather than loads of different individual problems.Event Type: ErrorEvent Source: SideBySideEvent Category: NoneEvent ID: 32Date: 01/02/2011Time: 10:34:47User: N/AComputer: Description:Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC80.MFCLOC could not be found and Last Error was The referenced assembly is not installed on your system.

I had a call today claiming to be from Microsoft. The person showed me (by phone) the event viewer and then I saw all the errors and warnings under Applications and System.You may have the errors, but the call was a scam.

Warning! This is a con. The call was not from Microsoft. Microsoft sometimes makes call backs but they don't call you first.Everybody's event viewers have all kinds of events flagged with red and yellow symbols. It is a safe bet that if you tell someone they have errors in their event viewers they will see some there. And they will think you are psychic or something for knowing about them.Few people have ever looked in the event viewer and so panic at the first sight of a couple of yellow or red symbols. Perfectly sound systems have them. Usually these events are tempory delays and conflicts that the system resolves just doing its business. But the system dutifully notes the event and these can be very useful for troubleshooting.Did the caller want to sell you a good or service to deal with these?Here are some similar scams going on.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/18/phone-scam-india-call-centreshttp://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/081009-windows-event-viewer-phishing-scam.html Colin Barnhorst Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on DIY with 6GB ram.

I will try to refrain from meddling in the "is it working faster now" parts because if you do not measure things, who knows what "working faster" really means. What is "a bit faster"? How do you know what that means?I would recommend using some tools to actually measure your startup time in actual minutes/seconds/tenths of seconds on your system before making your performance adjustments, make your adjustments and then measure things again after making your adjustments and you will know for sure and exactly how things are improving (or not improving) and eliminate any subjective analysis (that would be how things "feel").You can determine exactly how long your system takes to start and how long every single startup item factors in to the total startup time and decide what to do about it. There is no trying things. I know that today my system takes exactly 22.03 seconds to boot and I have zero startup items. That may not be right for everybody though.You could also post a list of all your startup items and then someone can help you figure out what is taking so long, but first, I would figure out exactly what "too long" or "too slow" means exactly by measuring it.For your Event Viewer SideBySide error, go to your Add/Remove Programs list and from the Currently installed programs list, tell us which of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable items you have listed:You could have none installed/listed or you could have several installed/listed. They will look something like this:Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 RedistributableMicrosoft Visual C++ 2008 RedistributableMicrosoft Visual C++ 2010 RedistributableTell us which you have (or none). Do, or do not. There is no try.I decided to save up points for a new puppy instead of a pony!

My Event Viewer does not have all kinds or events flagged with red or yellow symbols. My Event Viewer has zero red or yellow symbols. They are an abomination to me.If you have some that you need help figuring out, post them up and maybe someone can help fix them.An occasional one may appear on some systems when XP is starting up, but it is my contention that after that, you should have zero.Do, or do not. There is no try.I decided to save up points for a new puppy instead of a pony!

Congratulations. You are a hero. Of course, that is not generally true that event viewers are clean. That is why the current scams going on work so well. It is common to have flags in the event viewers and that is what makes these scams work. 99.9% of the users out there have no idea what an event viewer is and when the con artists call them on the phone they are easy to gull. The point of my reply to No Mo was to avoid the telephone scams, not to worry about whose event viewers are pristine.Colin Barnhorst Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on DIY with 6GB ram.

I know it is not always practical :) but all kinds of events flagged with red or yellow to me indicates problems that could be fixed (and some people may not even know about such things). Eliminating them all would be part of my additional adjustments I would make on a system that came into my care. It will be clean when I get through with it.I think that if somebody calls you on your telephone or sends you an email and they know you have a computer (or anything about you), they must have gotten that information from somewhere and that somewhere is probably you, so who's fault would that be? Such calls are always a consequence of handing out one's personal contact information to somebody somewhere, signing up for something somewhere and it may then be exploited. You avoid the scam type calls by not blabbing your personal information in the first place.Just this week in a doctor's office waiting room, several people freely bestowed upon my ears the following information (and I was just sitting there). This is while they are talking amongst themselves or on their cell phones.(It was just so much amazingly free information from so many complete strangers, I did jot down a list)First, middle and last name and how to spell itSpouses first, middle and last name and how to spell itAll the names and ages of their childrenThere complete current address and how long they have lived thereDo they rent or ownTheir previous addressTheir telephone numberTheir cell phone numberTheir spouses cell phone numberTheir mortgage company, interest, terms, monthly payment and guesstimated value and balanceHow much alimony or child support they provide or receive and how oftenWhere they bankTheir checking account numberTheir bank routing numberAlmost always their credit card information (type, number, expiration date, name on the card, CCV code)What kind of car they drive and what their car payment is.Their automobile insurance company information and policy numberTheir birthdayTheir spouses birthdayTheir home, work and cell phone numbersTheir work addressTheir wageTheir email addressTheir spouses email addressTheir spouses work addressTheir educationTheir SSNTheir spouses SSNTheir childrens SSNWhere their children go to schoolThe city and state of their birthTheir mothers maiden nameTheir current health afflictionsThe names of their doctorsTheir list of medicationsWhat is for dinner tonightWhat is new with Linsday LohanSo it would be easy for one to take advantage of all that information, but they would have nobody to blame but themselves.What was that SideBySide problem? Oh yeah... This thread is already marked as answered and has exceeded 10 posts (that is about the limits of sensibility).Do, or do not. There is no try.I decided to save up points for a new puppy instead of a pony!

JoseIbarra Thanks for your help. I measured my startup time from the button press until when all the icons are visible on the desktop (it goes on making noises and loading things after that point but I thought it will do stopping measurement there). To that point it was 01:50:41. Like you said, now I have something to compare against!I think with the startup items (pasting them here) I'll just carry on going through them one by one for the time being and return here if something really doesn't make sense. Thanks.As for the SideBySide error. There were no Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable items in Add/Remove programs.

That's good and if you want, someone can tell you how to measure accurately without using your eyeballs and ears and view every single startup item you have in a nice timing graph so you can see the entire startup process from end to end and see what is taking up that time and what things you can do without. Then you will know exactly how long every single startup item takes.SideBySide is a technology that allows different versions of files and libraries with the same names installed on your system at the same time. Since you can't have two files of the same name in the same folder at the same time, applications you install will dynamically pull the files they need from separately installed folders.Different applications need different sets of files, so XP puts them in separate folders for you. For example, .NET Framework products might require one version of a file, Visual Studio another and Adobe products might require even another version of the file(s) with the same name, so they need to be installed into separate folders and XP will take care of that for you.When they are installed, XP will put them in separate folders that look like this:C:\windows\WinSxSDepending on the applications you have installed, you could need several versions of the libraries installed and many folders under your c:\windows\WinSxS folder.For your SideBySide problem, it looks like you have some application installed that needs the Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) from the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package which you can download and install from here:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=32bc1bee-a3f9-4c13-9c99-220b62a191ee&displaylang=enAfter installing it, reboot and see if you still have SideBySide errors and if you do, post them.It is possible that you need other C++ Redistributable packages installed (I have 5 different ones right now), but you can start with that one.Do, or do not. There is no try.I decided to save up points for a new puppy instead of a pony!

Well, Folks,In spite of the OP's topic heading, the orignal question was about a telephone call and whether or not it was a genuine call from Microsoft. It was not about performance. The caller's references to the Event Viewer were incidental to the scam being perpetrated. The caller was a faker and it was all a phishing scam. It is a tribute to Microsoft's improvements in the security of their software that the crooks have turned more and more to human engineering like this. Telephone calls are just a new wrinkle.But thanks to the general lack of good reading and comprehension skills among our forum users the thread was quickly taken off topic. I suggest that when you review a thread you first read the body of the post and not just the title and know what the original question is before you start answering the most recent reply. Colin Barnhorst Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on DIY with 6GB ram.

Hello JoseIbarraI think Cbarnhorst has a point. This thread has now gone on a bit and I have had my questions answered sufficiently.I installed the Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) from the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package as you suggested. I rebooted and there are no errors in the event viewer! It looks as though that Redistributable Package has done the job! Thank you very much for your help, I've actually learnt quite a lot since this thread began. Maybe I should thank the crank caller otherwise I wouldn't have given a damn! Haha. If any other issues arise obviously I shall begin a new thread.Adam

That's good.These kinds of problems are usually easy to fix. Do, or do not. There is no try.I decided to save up points for a new puppy instead of a pony!