WIN98 SE freeze-ups and stuttering!!

[lerxst]

Can anyone advise me on the following problem I have, having been unable to solve it now fofr weeks.
The machine is:
Intel Celeron 333Mhz
Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard
Pheonix Bios (I think)
Mitsumi ATAPI IDE 32x CD ROM
192 MB sdram
AT1 3D 4MB graphics card
Win 98 SE
MS Office 2000

The machine slows up and the mouse pointer "stutters" with a ticking noise coming from the machine.
Sometimes the pc recovers and other times it just freezes up, with no reaction from the mouse or keyboard. Only hitting the power switch can turn it off.
Running Norton only reports Active x error which it cannot fix.

 

[Philidor]

I have a very similar machine and recognize the symptoms.
Your pc is overloaded and trying hard to do something you don't have the RAM/resources/cpu, whatever to accomplish.
Kill some stuff you have running, even if a program makes computer use more convenient. All you really need is explorer and systray to start.
The worst program I have is the virus checker, even with continuous monitoring turned off. I have to keep mine off to get easy operation of this pc, though I turn it on and do a scan frequently.
A RAM freeing program like RAM Idle does help, but not enough to let me run everything I want to. You could buy more RAM, too. A lot of programs nowadays are written for pc's with a lot more power than ours. We have to figure out how to live with what we've got.

 

[Kento]

Click start--run--type msconfig--ok. Open the startup tab and tell us everything that's checked there. Or do this. Click start--run--type msinfo32--ok. Then doubleclick on software environment then doubleclick on startup programs. Then at the top click edit--select all--edit--copy--then come here and right click in your reply window and select paste.

 

[jackha]

I also have the same system " except I have a 440ex board" and Phil is right you have to keep it lean and mean. I have system tray on start and all other programs that I want frequent on the tool bar for quick access, history=1 day, temp internet files=1 Mb,,,,lean and mean and it's faster that a friend of mine that had a 2 yr old HP with XP that he still don't know how to use...jackha

 

[jackha]

I also have the same system " except I have a 440ex board" and Phil is right you have to keep it lean and mean. I have system tray on start and all other programs that I want frequent on the tool bar for quick access, history=1 day, temp internet files=1 Mb,,,,lean and mean and it's faster than a friend of mine that has a 2 yr old HP with XP that he still don't know how to use...jackha

 

[Philidor]

Yeah.
I noticed he has Office 2000 in the list, for example. First place, Office 97 was contemporaneous with 366 cpu's, and 2000 expects more cpu. Second place, Office starts a number of .exe's that are supposed to make the program marginally faster, but hog a lot of a pc's capacity.
And if he's running anything from Norton he has another hog.
Like us, he's going to have to find out what starts when the pc does (msconfig under Start/Run, StartUp tab) and kill almost everything, then put back only what's essential. Learning about what's on the pc is interesting and useful, and doing it himself is better than being told what to do.
I think.

 

[lerxst]

Microsoft Office Startup Group "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\OSA9.EXE" -b -l
Watch Startup Group C:\WINDOWS\Twain_32\A4CIS600\WATCH.exe
Norton System Doctor Startup Group "C:\Program Files\Norton SystemWorks\Norton Utilities\SYSDOC32.EXE" /STARTUP
CleanSweep Smart Sweep-Internet Sweep Startup Group "C:\Program Files\Norton SystemWorks\Norton CleanSweep\csinsm32.exe"
ScanRegistry Registry (Machine Run) C:\WINDOWS\scanregw.exe /autorun
TaskMonitor Registry (Machine Run) C:\WINDOWS\taskmon.exe
SystemTray Registry (Machine Run) SysTray.Exe
LoadPowerProfile Registry (Machine Run) Rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,LoadCurrentPwrScheme
Atikey Registry (Machine Run) Atitask.exe
AtiCwd32 Registry (Machine Run) Aticwd32.exe
LexmarkPrinTray Registry (Machine Run) PrinTray.exe
StillImageMonitor Registry (Machine Run) C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\STIMON.EXE
Norton Auto-Protect Registry (Machine Run) C:\PROGRA~1\NORTON~1\NORTON~2\NAVAPW32.EXE /LOADQUIET
Norton CrashGuard Monitor Registry (Machine Run) "C:\PROGRAM FILES\NORTON SYSTEMWORKS\NORTON CRASHGUARD\CGMenu.EXE"
LoadPowerProfile Registry (Machine Service) Rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,LoadCurrentPwrScheme
SchedulingAgent Registry (Machine Service) mstask.exe
CSINJECT.EXE Registry (Machine Service) C:\Program Files\Norton SystemWorks\Norton CleanSweep\CSINJECT.EXE
SymTray - Norton SystemWorks Registry (Machine Service) C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\SymTray.exe "Norton SystemWorks"

 

[lerxst]

Thanks alot for the replies.
What do all those things in msconfig do?
Time to get a Windows bible
Kento particularly helpful - cheers bud
I've pasted the contents of the msinfo32 startup as you advised.
Look forward to your response

(b)Lerxst(/b)

 

[jackha]

Jees, you have more stuff on you're startup than I do on my computer. Uncheck everything but systray and reboot and playaround with your computer awhile and see if it works ok,also go to start>programs>accessories>system tools and click on resource meter and see what it says for system resources, &quot;Then do this again after a fresh boot and no programs loaded&quot; it should be around 90%.I'm not a Norton fan and don't know much about it but I can see that about half of your startups are Norton..&quot; no wonder they call it a resource hog&quot; I have my virus program to check my Email and downloads and that's it< I also run the full scan once a week, &quot; more or less&quot; ,reg.scan is OK,I don't see anything else that needs to run at start unless you want Norton but then you don't need all of them at start, you'll have to ask someone else what Norton should be on at startup.

http://www2.whidbey.net/djdenham/

Here is a good place to see what is needed at start print it out and read up on it...good luck ..jackha

 

[Kento]

I suggest you go into msconfig and uncheck what's shown below then ok out and restart. Leave the rest checked especially ScanRegistry and Norton Auto-Protect. See if doing that helps fix the problem any. It's up to you if you want to uncheck a couple of these:

-Microsoft Office--resource hog

-Watch Startup Group

-Norton System Doctor--big resource hog that doesn't need to be running all the time. Delete the shortcut in the Startup folder as well.

-Norton CrashGuard Monitor

-CSINJECT.EXE

-CleanSweep Smart Sweep-Internet Sweep

-Atikey--Provides System Tray access and key-combo shortcuts to common display functions on ATI video cards. Can be run from Start-> Settings -> Control Panel -> Display so it's not needed.

-AtiCwd32--This utility adds the ATI tab in the advanced display properties (gives the option for TV out). Do not uncheck if there is TV out on the video card.

-LexmarkPrinTray

-StillImageMonitor--if you use scan the buttons located on your scanner then you can leave this checked. If you don't use those buttons then you can uncheck it. But you could still uncheck it anyway. However if you then go to use your scanner and those buttons on it you would want to first locate stimon.exe and click on it so that it's running or else the buttons may not work.

-SchedulingAgent--you can uncheck this if you don't use scheduled tasks.

 

[lerxst]

Many thanks Guys, so far so good.

 

[JIRRERA]

I'm having a similar system &quot;stuttering&quot; thing going on and it started in the last couple of months with Access 2000 in Win 98 SE. While compacting a 50 meg database (locally) or compiling and saving a VBA module the system will momentarily freeze several times while saving. The problem seems to be getting worse. My startup is pretty lean although I do have OSA9.EXE in my Startup. I also uninstalled McAfee AV completely.

I've even recently changed motherboards and chips from AMD Athlon 750/ABIT KA7-100 512 megs ram to P4 1.8 GHz/ASUS P4S533 with 512 megs DDR-2100 ram. The problem is slightly worse if anything.

Other system hardware:
Maxtor 40 GB 7200 UDMA hd
ATI Rage Fury Pro 32 meg
Netgear Gigabyte NIC (connected ethernet to Dell gigabyte switch)

Other startup apps:
Adobe Gamma Loader
Palm Hot Sync
MemTurbo
Logitech mouse
ScanRegistry
ATIPOLAB (ati2evxx.exe)

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[cshajkur]

I recently had a similiar experience. Here are some web sites that might contain information you may find helpful (free):

1.

http://surecool.com/defrag.htm

(scandisk and defrag)
2.

http://www.wilders.org/downloads.htm

(newdefrag.zip)
3.

http://aroundcny.com/Technofile/texts/tec060902.html

(defag pgrm)
4.

http://www.goldenbow.com/products.htm

(defrag for compress drives)
5.

http://www.ematic.com/techpost/files/

(system maintenace gen)
6.

http://codestuff.mirrorz.com/

(codestuff-must have pgrm)
7.

http://no-nonsense-software.com/freeware/

(desksweeper)
8.

http://www.forrestandassociates.co.uk/startman/index.html

(startman)
9.

http://www.karenware.com/newsletters/2002/2002-07-24.asp

(karen's pwr tools)
10.

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,101782,00.asp

(how to ...)
11.

http://www.pureperformance.com/

(gen info)
12.

http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

(start control)
13.

http://www.funduc.com/

(registry toolkit)
14.

http://www.onecomputerguy.com/tips.htm

(win tips and tricks)
15.

http://www.vb-build.com/

(registry tool-excellent)
16.

http://www.completelyfreesoftware.com/

(best resource)

Note: These are just a few web sites that I have compiled over the years, I hope that you can find something useful.