Expert: Keith Davis - 10/23/2008

Question
I GET AN ONSCREEN POP UP MESSAGE THAT " the action cannot be completed because the other program is busy. Choose Switch To to activate the busy program and correct the Problem." this comes under the heading server busy.
The problem it doesnt go even i hit retry.. it bugs me a lot
pls help

Answer
Sounds to me like a product of some kind of spyware, malware, or trojan. You should try to not click on it. We could go into how to fix the specific problem, but it would probably be short lived. Below I will list my tried and true remedy for staying virus, malware, spyware, and trojan free.

Keep in mind everything below is considering that you have no anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. programs already installed. Some like Norton's or McAfee and Windows Defender and Win Firewall are useless and should be removed. You will have to let me know about what else you may already be using. Here goes:

I use 3 different programs and have been virus, spyware, and hack-free for close to 6 years.
Believe it or not all of these programs are free and are rated higher than programs you pay for.

Anti-virus- AVG Free Edition www.grisoft.com (uninstall McAfee if you are going to use this program)

Firewall- ZoneAlarm www.filehippo.com/download_zonealarm_free/
Make sure you disable Windows Firewall (it is worthless anyway) because they don't work well together. Don't get aggravated with the program. At first it will really bug you because it will be popping up a lot. When it pops up read what is trying to access the internet. If it is a trusted program click the check box "remember this" and click allow. After a short while you will get it set where it only alerts you to things that should not be accessing the internet.

Anti-spyware- Spybot Search and Destroy- www.filehippo.com/download_spybot_search_destroy/
Download, install, update, then run a scan and remove all spyware that is found.
Setup the program like this: Go to "mode" (top left of page) and click "advanced". At the bottom left you will see "tools". Expand tools and click "hosts file", then click "add Spybot S and D hosts list"

A little more safe internet advice:
1. I don't use Internet Explorer. It is not as secure as other browsers. I use Mozilla Firefox. It is faster and very secure.
2. I don't use Outlook email. I use web based email like yahoo or hotmail. Outlook actually loads email on your PC. Web based email stays on a server and you just view it from you PC.
3. Only download free software from trusted sources. There are very few that I trust. Trusted: www.filehippo.com, www.majorgeeks.com, www.snapfiles.com

Let me know how you come out.