My laptop died.

I bought a new one. A basic Toshiba running Windows 7.

A few issues:

1. It has McAfee on it. (It came within the price.) There is no point removing it, is there? Anyone like to give an opinion on how good McAfee is?

2. I have a Netgear wireless router. However, I can only cannot to the internet using an ethernet cable. The router shows the signal is excellent. I had this problem with the previous laptop. I cannot access the router page at 192.168.0.1 (I have also tried 192.168.1.1). Anyone have the answer for this?

3. I am using Google Chrome that came with it (as I write) but it appears to customize it I have to buy from their webstore? Is this the case?

I have been offline for 24+ hours and it feels like a lifetime!

I got rid of McAfee. I had an "active subscription". I went back to AVG Anti Virus 2012 free trial. I have a lot of experience with AVG. In AVG I trust.

Get rid of McAfee directly or after its trial expires, which you already did.

No idea about the router

Your 3rd sentence is a bit phucked up. Google chrome is free, so you do not have to buy anything. I would just uninstall it and get SRWare Iron, which imo is a Chrome clone that is better than Chrome itself.

You have been posting in this forum a couple of times with malware problems. With a new computer, makes sure you hasve ways to reinstall the OS. Usually laptops have the OS preinstalled and no disks are supplied with it, but there will be the option of burning recovery disks. Do that.

You will also have a recovery partition, usually and a customized MBR that provides a startup "Restore to Factory Settings" option. Make a backup of your MBR, because if your MBR is infected, you will lose this functionality.

Thanks for your post.

I am doing just what you suggest in relation to burning the MBR to disc.

I found that Chrome allows the Bookmarks bar to be shown under the address bar. I like this. Don't remember being able to do this with Firefox or Opera. I am going to give Chrome a go.