Brian

What "security" are you using? I hope it's not MacKeeper. That program is worthless and EVIL. This stuff gets in via an infected e-mail, a compromised iCloud account, a infected browser plug-in, even from an advertisement from an infected server that is in a radio/music player. I've even seen this type of thing get into a iPhone when the user watches porn from an infected server, jump to iCloud then attack a iMac when iCloud syncs things. It doesn't have to be a porn site either. If anyone in your household downloads illegal music, software and movies via a torrent, it can most certainly get into your computer that way.

That's a tricky subject as with many of the entry-level cameras, they are meant to be outgrown. I feel that your best bet will be some sort of DSLR instead of a Point & Shoot camera. With a DSLR, you are not only buying a camera, but are buying into a Lens System. The two top manufactures are still Canon and Nikon. Sony has made great progress, and so has Fuji...but Canon & Nikon are still the top two brands with the most choices when it comes to lenses. I'm glad you let me know your budget, because that's the first question that I usually ask. I found this pretty good deal with a Nikon D3400. It comes with a 18-55 kit lens and a 70-300 DX lens, plus it comes with a memory card for $596.95. I would also seriously purchase a Nikon 35mm f/1.8G DX lens at some point, as the two kit lenses are the variable aperture type, meaning as you zoom out, your aperture automatically stops down to a smaller value. The 35mm f/1.8G DX lens will allow you to explore and learn apertures from f/1.8 to f/22. For the Canon brand, here is an equivalent kit that I linked to above: Canon EOS Rebel T6 that also comes with a 18-55 lens and 75-300mm lens. As for which one? That's a personal choice. It boils down to how it feels in your hands, how easy the menu system is to work with. Some people like myself are Nikon shooters, others shoot Canon. Personally, I can not stand Canon's menu system of symbols and the way they label things; I prefer the way Nikon translates Japanese to English. The next step I would take is to see if a local camera shop has both models and give each of them a test drive. See which one fits better in your hands.

@Roleen - Hold Up!!! It's Ransomware!! I took a look at your screenshot on my Mac instead of my phone and noticed the "Apple.pass@mail.com." That's not an Apple address and do not email them. They will want $50 in Bitcoin. As Apple's products become more popular, the chances of this type of crap increase. Do you use Time Machine? If so, when was your last backup? From what I've read on the internet, this sucker gets into the firmware on the motherboard, so even resetting the Mac doesn't do much. I would still call Apple, but in reality, setup an appointment with the Genius Bar.

You must have somehow turned on two-factor authentication or your password is messed up. There is nothing that I can help you with. You are going to need to call Apple on this one. I'm curious, did you do any major OS updates recently?

Because they are Apple. Also, there is a program called MacKeeper, which is pure EVIL. Never-Ever-Ever install or purchase MacKeeper! I run CleanMyMac 3 weekly and have been for years.

You might want to purchase and run this program: CleanMyMac 3 from MacPaw.com Right now there seems to be running a 20% off sale on it for a limited time. As far as the screensaver, if the MacOS did some sort of update, like go from 10.12.5 to 10.12.6, it's plausible the screensaver could have been turned on. That said, in reality, who knows?

Hmm... I'd first head to System Preferences >> Click Displays >> Uncheck / Turn Off "Automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes." Let us know if that helps or not.

It's so much better over here. The classes are better and you truly get one on one attention!! Damien moved your thread, which alerted me and I logged on and answered your question. Boom! Done-and-done. Notice how your thread isn't clogged with others' comments & questions with people telling me that I'm wrong and don't know what I'm talking about? I get that FB is convenient. Believe me, I miss it sometimes too. Then I post something on FB in a group and immediately realize why this website was needed, not only for Damien's sanity but my own.

Yep. Yep. Windows 7 & Windows 10 are really good at detecting monitors. Even the built-in Windows generic driver for monitors works well these days. All that driver disk does is correctly lists the monitor make & model correctly in the Device Manager. Doesn't do anything when it comes to a display profile. That is created by your calibration software. Speaking of calibration, you'll want to pull out your calibrator and test prints with your new monitor and go through the routine.

DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE A 1920 X 1080 DISPLAY IS THESE DAYS?!?! Everything is freakin' 4000k and 5000k. That model is IPS based and has a anti-glare hard coating. BUY IT!!

If you really want PS to run faster, have more RAM available, like 32GB+ and have a beefy video card that has lots of its own video memory 4GB+. Adobe's current products are tapping into the video card's processor and memory for a performance boost these days. It's not so much based on the processor and hard drive, though they do play a role. I'm also wondering if the M.2 stick and the way it writes/organizes data may cause issues with PS. It's just a thought and no real evidence to base this idea on. I still say try using a traditional hard drive for the PS scratch disk and see if things work better.

Looks good.

You could add your own RAM, just make sure it matches with the existing RAM. As far as video card, if you get too fancy, you might have to upgrade the power supply. The $799 system is fine it's a base model that the other models are tweaked from.

Look at the specs of your 2715h. That's what you want.

Things to look for: IPS Display Panel. You do not want a TN. A matte screen or one that has a matte coating. You do not want Glossy Displays.

The Benq model looks interesting. What concerns me is all of the things you can do with it, all those bells and whistles and auto-brightness, etc. You want consistency; you want your prints to match your screen. In addition, all that fancy stuff gets in the way of calibration devices, and will more than likely require you to purchase the latest and greatest like a SpyderElite unit to work with that fancy display. Walking into a computer store and buying something. That's so 20th Century. LOL! That's not how it's done these days.

SKIP that display you linked to. It's for gaming, not photo editing. You need a IPS display and one that isn't glossy. As for your monitor, it's toast. Find a recycling center that takes computer equipment. You might have to wait a week, or try Amazon.

I don't like using flash-based media for a device that has a finite read/write limit. Cache files go on a traditional HD. I'm an old stubborn dog who is reluctant to change. If you have an old HD laying around, try it for the PS scratch disk only. See how it works.

That's weird. I was able to customize things like upgrade/downgrade the video card, if I wanted MS Office or not. If you are really looking to customize and build your own computer, the Dell XPS Line probably isn't what you are after. The hardware recommendations still stand and don't think building a super-rig that will be awesome for games will make PS faster. It won't. @Jason - Any recommendations?

I still like the Dell XPS series for what it is. I bought my Fiancé one for Christmas 2015 and it's worked really well for what she does. Here seems to be the latest and greatest Dell XPS 8920 line. The Dell for $949 or $1027.99 (That's on a 24-hr flash sale) would be my choices. Recommendations / Specs really haven't changed. Intel i5 or i7 CPU 8GB RAM at a Minimum. 16GB or more preferred A separate and dedicated video card with its own video memory. 2GB or 4GB is fine. 4GB+ Preferred 1TB HD at a Minimum. Hard Drive, you can never have enough capacity. There isn't THAT much of a performance boost between an i5 and i7 when it comes to Adobe Photoshop. In order for the i7 CPU to really shine and perform at its peak, the software programming needs to be optimized to take advantage of the i7's architecture that makes it so fast. Photoshop and Lightroom are not those programs. In my humble opinion, you are only looking at a 7% performance gain with a i7 over a i5 when it comes to PS. It's better to have more RAM, a super-fast beefy video card with at least 4GB Video Memory and a large HD for the Scratch Disk to stretch out on than worrying about should you get an i5 or a i7. I'd just get an i7 these days just because...I like buying things once and be done with it. I also am thinking on getting into video, in which case a i7 would be a requirement.

You are onto something there. The next step is to see if your SSD drive and M.2 Stick Drive need any firmware updates. The reason that I say this is I had a computer once that I was playing around with, installing Windows Server 2008 R2, etc. It just had a 256GB SSD Drive. Everything would install fine except that it would completely crash, get a BSOD etc., ONLY when I promoted it to a Domain Controller. It would work fine until I ran the DC Promo Wizard. Heck, it even got 90% of the way through the wizard and then BOOM!! BSOD, reformat and reload the whole flipping thing. I went round and round and then tried installing the firmware update as a last-ditch effort and guess what? I was able to finally fully promote it to a Domain Controller after updating the firmware. So the moral of the story is, stay on top of Firmware updates when it comes to a SSD drives and other flash-based media. I would try that next. Second thing, I would never use a SSD Drive or any device that is Flash Media based for the Adobe Scratch Disk unless I absolutely had to. It is highly recommended by me to use a traditional 7200 RPM SATA Drive for that. Even a RAID 0 with a couple of 7200 RPM Sata Drives would be better. 1TB or 2TB is fine. Unless you are doing huge panoramas, in which case 4TB or more is recommended. I like Western Digital Caviar Black SATA Drives.

Apple has taken Mavericks behind the barn and shot it dead. They stopped signing off on it. Sierra is the only thing in your future. PS CC needs at least 10.6.8 to run the basic PS CC, not the newer PS CC 2015.5 or current versions like that. Since you nuked your computer, and it's a fresh install, how about updating to Sierra? Seriously. Since you are just starting things over, it won't be as painful to reformat the HD and redo everything if you have to. I'd be interested in seeing how things go. Macs (and iPhones / iPads) don't always upgrade nicely, sometimes it takes you doing a fresh install to get things working. Also, do you have CleanMyMac from MacPaw? If not, I'd highly recommend getting the latest version and running it. There is a ton of crap that the Mac OS installs on default.

I'm sure you are also going to ask what Hard Drives I recommend. I like G-Drives myself. This WD HD unit also caught my eye. I would set it up in a RAID 1 Configuration (HD Mirroring) and that will give you 6TB storage space. The 12TB rating is for a RAID 0 setup, and RAID 0 is NOT MEANT for long-term backup storage.

Before buying anything, write down a directory / organizational tree on a piece of paper. Think things through and make some sort of flowchart. Throwing money at this problem isn't going to solve much; believe me, I'm very good at spending people's money. Start with one folder, just one folder...don't get overwhelmed with all the folders, and copy images from your main hard drive to a EHD. Then when you are sure the images are intact, delete them from the main / internal HD. I've learned the hard way that it's not good practice to cut/move files, always copy, then verify, then delete. If something goes wrong during the data transfer when you "Cut & Paste," your file might go "Poof" and it's lost forever. I've personally experienced this and it wasn't fun telling my customer that his un-replaceable file was gone. (His files were corrupted and nobody knew it.) Anyway, I'm digressing... There is no easy way to do this, you are going to have to CULL-CULL-CULL. Nobody can do it for you, unless they have been working as your assistant for years and know what you are after. Be ruthless. You do not need 75 photos of your lunch taken at a restaurant from 4 years ago. Use the rating system within Photo Mechanic. Anything 4 or 5 starts, keep. 3 stars is a maybe. 2 or less...delete them. Take things in small chunks, one folder at a time. Breathe. This is a lot like cleaning out an old garage or attic filled with JUNK. How to install Photo Mechanic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycvx3D8M21w

I'd buy either one big EHD or two EHD and split them into categories. If you shoot professionally, have a main folder called "Personal" and one called "Client." From there create folders with the year and then project names OR project names / type of photography and then by year and then by month. You could also have a contest folder, it's really up to you. Instead of sending your whole Mac out to get organized, how about purchasing a program called Photo Mechanic. It's an awesome program that allows you to quickly cull and view images, much faster than trying to use the Mac Finder. The program allows you to set ratings/color codes to the files that you like, then you can tell the program to hide all the non-color-coded images and then you can move those images from one folder to another within Photo Mechanic. It's pretty powerful. Nikon has a free version, if you shoot Nikon, called ViewNX. Nikon's software is buggy and has its quirks, but it's free. Honestly, I'm going to get Photo Mechanic myself in the near future. Here is someone demonstrating on how they use Photo Mechanic: