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 needs an answerI do too

Hi Adam,What error code/messages you receive in event viewer?For more information, refer this link: How to view and manage event logs in Event Viewer in Windows XPCybercriminals have started calling people on the telephone, claiming to be from Microsoft, and offering to help solve their computer problems.Microsoft will not make unsolicited phone calls to help you with your computer. If you receive a phone call like this, hang up.For more information, refer: Don’t fall for phony phone tech supportFor slow performance of the computer, you may follow this link.Restore Your Computer's Performance with Windows XPHope the information helps. Please post back and let us know.RegardsDebleena SMicrosoft Answers Support EngineerVisit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

It is a safe bet that anybody's event viewer will show lots of alarming looking entries. That does not mean the computer is in trouble. It is expected behavior. If a background task is delayed starting because a resource is temporarily unavailable, the event description will be ominous. Yet it happens all the time. Literally. It is a no brainer that if someone calls you and tells you to look at your event viewer, you will see red errors and yellow warnings. As you are suspecting, it is a sucker play.Colin Barnhorst

Hello DebleenaThanks for your helpfull response. To be honest, this person on the phone sounded as if something was wrong with his voice, it had like a robotic tint! At one point I offered to call him back and he didn't want that. When I couldn't connect to the net he said he'd call back but didn't! All of this and now what you have told me points to the fact it was a scam. I did wonder why Microsoft would make such a helpfull call when they charge for it on Microsoft.com.Anyway, in event viewer under Applications there are quite a few red circles (with white crosses inside). There are also quite a few yellow triangles. Under System there are even more red circles but no yellow triangles. By the sound of what you are both telling me, this is just normal! Yes, my PC is running slow and I shall follow your links in the next days and let you know if performance improves.Thank you both very much for your input, Adam

Hi Adam,· Is your computer working faster now?· Have you tried the steps provided in the link to improve the computer performance?Please post back and let us know.RegardsDebleena SMicrosoft Answers Support EngineerVisit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

Maybe someday the XP forums "Ask a question" dialog will ask these questions automatically when a new thread is started so I do not have to ask them every single time. It might even be possible to resolve an issue in a single reply when enough information is provided.Please provide additional information about your system:What is your system make and model?What is your XP Version and Service Pack?Describe your current antivirus and anti malware situation: McAfee, Symantec, Norton, Spybot, AVG, Avira!, MSE, Panda, Trend Micro, CA, Defender, ZoneAlarm, PC Tools, Comodo, etc.If your system takes ages to start, you should first measure the current startup time down to the tenth of a second, take a look at the resulting measurements, see what is taking so long and why that is and fix it. Make your adjustments and measure it again until it doesn't take ages to start. I can tell you that my system takes exactly 28.03 seconds to boot from pressing the power button. That may not be practical for everyone, but until you measure it, you may not get a good result.You can't just say it takes "too long" or it "seems faster" - you need to measure exactly how long it takes with some free, easy to use software tools designed just to measure your boot time so you will know exactly how long every start up item takes, and then when you see it, you can see what you can do about it (or you could just start trying things).If you need help interpreting the events, you need to post the events so somebody can see them. I prefer to have zero warnings (no alarming looking entries are allowed in my Event Viewer) or errors in my Event Viewer and if I ever see one, I am going to figure it out and fix it if it is within my power.No event in the Event Viewer should defy explanation.Here is a method to post the specific information about individual events.To see the Event Viewer logs, click Start, Settings, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Event Viewer.A shortcut to Event Viewer is to click Start, Run and in the box enter:%SystemRoot%\system32\eventvwr.msc /sClick OK to launch the Event Viewer.The most interesting logs are usually the Application and System. Some logs such as Security and Internet Explorer may be completely empty or have only a few items. The default settings for XP is not to log all that activity unless you need to troubleshoot some issue in those areas. If you enable the logging for them the logs fill up quickly and could negatively effect your system performance with all the extra (usually unnecessary) activity.If you have Microsoft Office installed, it has its own logs and they may be empty or occasional boring activity or very little activity if there is no problem with your Office applications. This is normal.Not every event is a problem, some are informational messages that things are working okay and some are warnings.However, no event should defy reasonable explanation.Each event is sorted by Date and Time. Errors will have red Xs, Warnings will have yellow !s. Information messages have white is. Not every Error or Warning event means there is a serious issue. Some are excusable at startup time when Windows is booting. Try to find just the events at the dateand time around your problem.If you double click an event, it will open a Properties window with more information. On the right are black up and down arrow buttons to scroll through the open events. The third button that looks like two pages on top of each other is used to copy the event details to your Windows clipboard.When you find an interesting event that occurred around the time of your issue, click the third button under the up and down arrows to copy the details and then you can paste the details (right click, Paste or CTRL-V) the detail text back here for analysis. Remove any personal information from your informationafter pasting if you are compelled to do so.If you paste an Event, it will look something like this boring system startup event:Event Type: InformationEvent Source: Service Control ManagerEvent Category: NoneEvent ID: 7035Date: 7/14/2010Time: 5:54:18 PMUser: JoseComputer: ComputerDescription:The Remote Access Connection Manager service was successfully sent a start control.For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.To get a fresh start on any Event Viewer log, you can choose to clear the log (backing up the log is offered), then reproduce your issue, then look at just the events around the time of your issue and troubleshoot the events that are happening when you have your issue.Do, or do not. There is no try.I decided to save up points for a new puppy instead of a pony!