3 programs installed without my consent, one incompatible....

[nomadreid]

A few days ago my computer crashed due to a hardware problem. I had it fixed at a shop which also, without my consent, installed a few new programs with the good intentions to improve the performance of my computer : Driver Booster 5, Advanced System Care 10, and Glary Utilities. In many countries I could complain, but I don't live in one of those, so the issue now is how to live with the new programs so I can use their advantages -- I could just delete these, but I might be throwing out the baby with the bath water. Also, if for example Driver Booster 5 has installed the update of a drive that causes an incompatibility and so needs to be rolled back, if I delete Driver Booster 5, I might lose all chance of finding out which drive that was. If I reset the whole computer to an earlier date and eliminate these programs, I would then lose the advantages of the updated drives. (I take Driver Booster as an example, because I haven't yet found out what the other two programs do.) So far there has been no major problems that I have detected, but I did get a short notice that one of the functions of Firefox would not work -- that once you have used a certain address numerous times, the address appears in a menu as soon as you click the address box -- due to an incompatibility with another program, but it didn't give me details. I am not too bothered about this particular incompatibility, but I would like to know how to find out, when an incompatibility arises, how to find out (and hence eliminate) the source of the incompatibility. If more details are necessary to answer this question, please let me know what those are.

 

[phinds]

Have you tried an Internet search asking about this specific incompatibility? It's unlikely that you are the only person to experience it.

 

[nomadreid]

Yes and no. In fact after writing the post I did solve this particular problem of the missing menu using a simple Internet search (something I should have done before posting), but although it solved this problem, the solution did not tell me what was causing the incompatibility. (There's another problem that I haven't solved, but I'm working on it.) I am looking for a general method to find the root cause of any future incompatibility, not just solving individual problems. In posing my question more generally on an Internet search, I got sites that indicated how to ask for new settings to solve this or that problem, but I did not find a site that explained how to find the source of the incompatibility. (It's like asking to get a bridge built, hoping to learn how the engineer does it, but all the engineer does is present you with the completed bridge without the blueprints.)

 

[phinds]

"Incompatibility" can have many causes so finding some general solution is unlikely. Good luck.

 

[nomadreid]

Ah, OK. I will stop looking for a general solution, at least as long as I remain a non-programmer. So, problems to solve one by one... Thanks for the advice.