Win 98 freeze ups 1

[dan26]

My system keeps freezing up and has to be rebooted. As a symptom, every ten seconds or so the mouse cursor turns busy. I beleieve it is writing to the user.dat file. I tried stopping all the tasks running in the task manager, without any improvement.
What the heck is it doing???

 

[disconockerated]

Cleaning and preventative maintenance

1. Take as much stuff as you can from running in systray. Light off each app and disable them from running in systray.

2. Run msconfig and take checkmarks out of all you don't need running in start-up. Experiment with different apps etc. to see how they affect your free resources.

3. Click on control-alt-delete and highlight an item and end task then look at system resources and it will give you an idea on how much an application is robbing from your resources.

Note: You can right-click my computer and go to properties and click on the performance tab and see what your free system resources are and check as you eliminate some items to see how you are doing!

4. Search your "C" drive for *.tmp, *.~ and *.chk and delete them. You can do this from start\find\files (make sure you have your “C” drive set to be searched)

5. If you are running any Norton stuff (it likes to use resources!) be careful, a very powerful program. (You may want to disable it for this troubleshooting and enable after you clear up your problem or it may be the problem if you are having resource problems).

6. Clear your browser cache!

7. Compact your e-mail folders and empty your deleted folder and send folder.

8. Empty the recycle bin!

9. IMPORTANT! If you see findfast when you hit control-alt-delete then highlight it and end task and get rid of the program per this url:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q158/7/05.asp

Note: It is installed by Microsoft products (Office etc>) and was a bad dream from Microsoft that will cause major resource problems.

9. Run scandisk and defrag!

B. Utilities

1. Run hwinfo /ui (don't forget the space between the o and the /) and this will identify any device or driver problems in red text.

2. IMPORTANT! Do not run this unless you have too! Run SFC (system file checker) be careful and back up and files you may want to restore! This utility can replace files that will cause you to have to reinstall some applications. Caution this file needs to run with care because you may have to load some applications again if you replace certain files.

C. Recommendations:

1. Update your IE5 to either 5.01 or 5.5 if you use these. Note: Reports of bugs in 5.5 are being reported by some.

2. Increasing Your System Performance:
If you have a little extra memory to spare, here's one trick that really helps speed Windows 95\98 along. Changing your File System Performance from Desktop Computer to Network Server (even if you're not on a network) will basically increase the size of the cache that that the operating system uses. Here's how: Right click on "MY COMPUTER" and select "PROPERTIES". Then click on the "PERFORMANCE" tab near the top of the dialog box, and the "FILE SYSTEM" button at the bottom. Change from "DESKTOP COMPUTER" to "NETWORK SERVER", click on "OK", and "OK" again. The changes will take effect the next time you reboot your computer.

Windows 98 Annoyances

http://www.annoyances.org/win98/

System Resources Decrease After Starting and Quitting a Program

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q185/8/32.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0

Computer Speed and Performance Decreases

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q259/1/61.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0

Secondly check for a virus,
This is one of the better anti-virus programs and if appears it is free for personal use

http://www.cai.com/virusinfo/

Also: F-Prot, which is free also for personal use (I think) and updates quite frequently.

These two are the best as far as I am concerned and the only two I recommend to my customers.

ftp://ftp.datafellows.com/anti-virus/free

Virus check on-line

This is an online virus scanner; it will scan all the files on your hard drive for a virus.
Not sure how good it is but worth a try.

http://housecall.antivirus.com/pc_housecall/

http://www.passtheshareware.com/c-virus.htm

It might be a good idea to scan for a boot sector virus before you go any further, or it may all be for nothing.
Download this anti-virus file and extract to a floppy
F-Prot 3.08 On a 1.44 Floppy Disk

http://www.bootdisk.com/virfiles/fpm308.exe

To run F-Prot, simply type f-prot while in the A-Drive.
It makes a folder on your C-Drive called virus and unzips
the program there and automatically runs it.