My computer is acting wierd all of a sudden HELP

[Guest_imported]

I have an HP (unfortunetly) Pentium II Intel 450Mhz Windows98 and whenever I go online my pointer starts flickering really bad and sometimes at a point were I cant even see it. And addition to that I have noticed an incredible change in speed performance (esp. when Im online) its running very slow. This weekend I bought a 56K modem because I have been getting an error message when I sign on that says " Port has been disconnected due to hardware failure" so I took it down and had them install it. But anyway does that have any effect on it, it was running fine this morning.

 

[AjIsCoool]

Cindy thanks for replying and for the hints for using msconfig

I did not understand what you meant by put a test drive!!!
and waht do you mean if it deson't work strip the system down!!!! What doesn't work? Is striping the system on hardware level and software(uninsatall drivers then install them back) or only hardware?

Thanks

Note: the original RAM was 512 then i added extra to make it 768, at first i had a problem with fixing the new memory because the originals were 100mhz but the new ones are 133. so the message was memory out of rem... but after fixing them correctly they worked just fine, thanks to help from tek-tip in NT forum

 

[AndyHo]

Sounds as if you have enough ram. The overheating idea is worth following up. I had a similar sounding problem when a ribon cable blocked the fan to the cpu. That type of problem can be hard to pick.

Alternatively the new ram could be behind it. Can you put your old ram back and see if the problem goes away?

Andy Holden

 

[Cindy1]

I meant to tell you I picked up the May issue of "Smart Computing in Plain English" magazine it was very interesting and told you tricks on cleaning out the junk in your computer. When I said to strip the system down that means only connect the bare minimum to make the computer run. For you that would be the power, cpu, video card (if you have one), motherboard, and hard drive. The rest of the parts connected to the computer should be disconnected. Like the modem, network card,cdroms and anything else that would hold the system down. Try it with just that connected and see if it bogs down on you. The other thing was if you have an extra hard drive around the house you could disconnect yours and put that one on and see if that bogs down. If you feel it is progressivly getting worse then if it's your hard drive you need to backup your important data, because something could be dying but not dead yet. Does your mouse lock up sometimes? Check out that magazine tell me what you think.
Keep us posted.
Cindy

 

[AjIsCoool]

Thanks for your fast reply again

I will try to place the old ram.
I did check the fan and it is working fine, by the way Is there is a way to have a software that checks system heats(RAM,CPU,....)?

"Smart Computing in Plain English" magazine where can i get it because i checked the 3 libraries and none have it. Is it on the web?
I will try your Long Long Long way Cindy

 

[fasttoon]

Hey AjIsCoool,

try motherboard monitor 5, it will monitor your fan speed, cpu temp, mobo temp, etc., you might also check your hsf to see if they haven't come loose, chipsets as well as cpu, clean out your case and fans if they are dusty, use a software hlt program like vcool, also your question if you should upgrade cpu, you can only upgrade based on the type of cpu you have, ex: slot to slot, socket to socket unless you buy a converter like a slocket to go from slot to socket, the p4 will not fit unless you buy a new mobo, which may not fit in your current case. If you decied to go this route (which probably is preferable to what you have) you should go the whole route, etc, new case, new hsf, new ram, etc. most of the other parts you can reuse such as drives, sound, video, modem, etc.

On why you computer is so slow, have you checked bios settings to see that all is correct? such as DMA or Ultra DMA enabled?, video set to PCI or AGP? etc., also check to see your device manager if there are any conflicts, switch over to controllers and see if you have any running in pio mode, switch them over to dma mode, as someone else said go to msconfig and shut down all programs that you don't need, RealPlayer, AOL, Screensavers, etc. And turn off that norton av, use it only for maintenance and/or file checking, running it in the background will slow you down significantly, you want a good av that doesn't slow you down try AVG or TrendMicro, as the other posters advised get adaware and clean out your system from spyware/adware/etc. and free up some bandwidth that way, get a good firewall, zonealarm, tiny are a couple of good ones that you block programs from getting online and sucking up bandwidth as well as installing/monitoring/tracking you, your hard drive, and your websites.

I would also clean out your hard drive, much as another poster suggested, you can do it manually (not suggested if you don't know what you're doing) use a program like window washer 4.5 or so, cleans out excessive webpages, cookies, junk files, etc, and erases them securely, or go to langalist.com and search for a freebie called clean all.bat, it does as much if not more and for free, no secure erase, however if you've never cleaned your hard drive then this could free up quite a bit of space (maybe gigabytes, definitely megabytes).

Also uninstall uneeded programs, clean up your registry with regclean, regcleaner, etc, lots of freebies for this, compact your registry with scanreg\opt switch, this will enable quicker loading of windows and faster performance because registry doesn't have to load junk/nonexistant programs, dlls, etc and will be smaller.

After all this do you system maintenance and you should see a significantly faster performance, will this solve your specific problem? Maybe, maybe not, but it will make it easier to dx and will give you a performance boost.

Keep in mind these are just the basics, theres more tweaking you can do, also problems that you need to resolve. You might want to put in a more descriptive question to get a more specific fix.

Good Luck!

 

[Cindy1]

Aj
In answer to your question about the Smart Computing in Plain English magazine, I bought it at Staples. You can get it at Barnes and Noble sometimes food stores or drug stores. They also have a website smartcomputing.com On page 52 it has a list of software programs that clean your hard drive, the pros and cons, and price. On page 42 it lists the programs that you already have that you can use. Has it always been a little slow or has it gotten worse as of recent?

Cindy

 

[AjIsCoool]

Thanks GOD


Sorry for not replying soon, i had a presentation from 75 pages to finish in short time

that is why i did not rreply

I did something weird, while i was going in the process of formatting my HD, my mouse felldown behind the my desk, so i navigate using the keyboard, Suddenly using the arrow keys, i had no problem, Starnge because usually it takes time to response but when moving the arrows key it acted normally, So i said why not deleting my mouse driver( i had a new mouse Genius and it software) then restart my PC

THANK YOU GOD

It was the MOUSE DRIVER that causes the problem, I solved it by coincedent,

So it is was very stupid of my that costs me a whole 2 months and almost formatting my PC

All i have to say to all of you, that a million words is not enough to thank you

Take care

 

[Cindy1]

I'm glad things worked out. I'm a pc technician and when I get stumped I hate to admit the amount of times I have solved problems by coincedence. Except in my case I have to act like I knew what was going to happen next. Little do they know that I'm doing cartwheels inside. That usually happens with a Compaq they are a pain to troubleshoot. I still would suggest that magazine it is very informative. Smart Computing in Plain English magazine is great.

Thanx for keeping us updated,
Cindy

 

[AjIsCoool]

Thank you Cindy1 and everyone else

you are so humble that is what makes you great

I just want to tell all, Don't format your pc because of system performance droping down, you should start to uninstall all the newest app to oldest installed app

i hope it is clear what i am trying to say

question: Is there is a way to make my explorer always view files in details rather than thumnail,tiles,icon,and list views
I want details to be the default


take care

 

[Guest_imported]

Change your Explorer view to the way you like it. Next, click on Tools|Folder Options. In the View Tab, choose the button labled Like Current Folder. woohoo!!!