Last attempt at figuring out thi 'puter.

Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

What we have here is a Gateway Select 1000 PC with an AMD Athlon at 1ghz, and 640MB Ram. The OS is Win ME.

This has been a freaky crash prone headache since almost new. It freezes up a lot particularly when playing Yahoo games (I like pool myself!) but at almost any time you can walk in here and see an error message on screen and need to reboot.

In Start/Settings/Taskbar & Strat Menu Properties/Advanced/Advanced/Programs there is a BUTTLOAD of stuff. Must it all be in this folder to work? Upon a reboot there is a major flurry of HD activity! Some 10 seconds worth of nothing but drive chatter.

Or is the problem stuff strictly what I see when I Control-Alt-Delete?

We can live with it as we have for a long time now, but if I can make it work better I will!

What do ya think Guru?

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

Do you keep getting the same error message ? if so please give details.

Could be a display driver problem if it keeps crashing while playing games.

It's worth running "windows update" to ensure all your OS files are up to date.

Link to Microsoft windows update site.

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

do you have any antivirus software? i have norton (utilities?) and it has the one button checkup feature, what it does is scans your hd, fixes shortcut errors, reassociates files, scans for virus, and basically cleans you computer up real nicely...you might want to check into that.

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

Kudos on the windows update. Also see if you can find information on the video card and go to the manufacturers site (or perhaps in the Gateway site itself) and update that driver as well. When I first got my original Nvidia Geforce card, it would freeze up intermittently for no reason but when I went to the Nvidia site and downloaded and installed the latest driver at the time, my problem was solved.

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

Click here for Gateway's download site (you can enter you computers serial number for a list of compatable drivers & upgrades)

They also seem to have their own version of windows update...

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

You may have a bunch of stuff loading into memory (ram) at bootup. WinME is a joke. Gateway is known to pawn off junk to consumers (not business/enterprise systems). They are also notorious for password locking the BIOS.

The point, is that you can get a stable and reliable system, custom built at a local shop, and you specify the components. I built my own system, and it is rock solid stable.

We do need more specific info on the error. If it is an out of memory error, then there is way too much in ram.

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

WinME is a garbage OS...I havit it on my yucky HP...Anyways...I had a bunch of memory problems and lock up problems. I went to msconfig, and went to startup, and unchecked all the programs i didn't want to start at startup, which freed-up a bunch of memory. Just be careful not to uncheck something the computer needs to run!

-dan

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

yes, what dano suggested helps a lot.

go to start, run, type in: msconfig and hit enter, go to the startup tab, and deselect all the crap that shouldn't be selected.

you'll be surprised about what is on there.

also, if you download a program like tweakui, you can do cool things like automatically delete viewed web pages, disable "documents" and "favorites" on the start menu, and even hide the recycle bin. won't help a lot, but is sure is nifty

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

Just run Linux

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

Originally posted by Saaby:
Just run Linux

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Purely for the ease of installation (didn't someone from Sweden mention it a while ago)

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

PlayboyJoeShmoe,

>Putting on electrical contractor hat now<
In addition to the many great suggestions above, the electrical power can also dramitically impact computer performance. You might want to have an electrician check the circuit that you are operating the PC on. Is is on a common circuit with >microwave? fridge? toaster? electric heater? motorized things like vacuum cleaners? hair dryers?

Even if it is not on the same circuit, it is VERY likely that the "Neutral" conductor may be shared with another circuit that has one or more of these items plugged in. This means that when a load on the other circuit cycles on/off, there is a change in the amount of Neutral current being applied, which can create noticable effects on the suspect circuit.

Also, have the electrical system grounding checked out.

See if you can get an un-interruptible power supply and hopefully a good transient voltage surge suppressor to plug into. I use the TRIPP-LIGHT ISOBAR brand surge suppression. About $55 if I recall correctly. No, I'm not affiliated with Tripp-Light.

My experience with computers, is that once they have power related problems, you get all kinds of weird glitches and hangups. Sometimes a re-formatting of the hard drive is required. This means having all of the required program disks for reinstallation, and hopefully not losing too much data in the process.

>OK, off with the E.C. hat now.<
Hope this helps.

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

in addition to killing the crapware,spyware,and other junk that comes with the default software restore look at the caps on the motherboard for swelling and leakage.this has become an epidemic even on high end mobo's.it took only 4 months to use up 15000 new caps refurbing mobo's for several distributers.the pc will act possessed early in the failure.

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

Defective caps are a known sore point at mo`:

http://www.niccomp.com/taiwanlowesr.htm

Adam

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

Originally posted by Rothrandir:
do you have any antivirus software? i have norton (utilities?) and it has the one button checkup feature, what it does is scans your hd, fixes shortcut errors, reassociates files, scans for virus, and basically cleans you computer up real nicely...you might want to check into that.

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">DO NOT DO THIS!!!!

While it sometimes can so a really spiffy job of cleaning things up, it is NOT good for repairing SQUAT!... Norton can NOT repair everything. But it hates to admit it. So it will DELETE the problem and then sit back all satisfied and say "VIOLA!! You're all better now"... and you will be... until you reboot... and your OS system can't even be found... because Norton System Works fixed the problem... by DELETING the files that have the problem. Trust me on this one. If you have that crap on your computer, GET RID OF IT!!!

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

...hmmm...

my dad has been doing this for years...no problems so far...

if it finds a problem, it comes up with options like "fix" "ignore" or whatever else.

sasha, how prominent is this problem? i've never heard of it or had any problems.

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

Those are rather strong words. I wouldn't quite call it crap. Norton's has helped me out before. Just pay attention to what the problems are before choosing the autorepair option. You certainly should not delete the Norton antivirus part of Systemworks.

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

I didn't say anything about the virus protect. I use it religiously and update weekly and renew my subscription yearly. I'm talking about System Works. And for well over a year, I thought it was just the cat's meow. I was using Win98. I recommended it to everyone I knew. And then I had a problem with a virus... that Norton didn't catch. I was able to find the repair and Norton virus fixed the virus. Then I ran System Works to clean everything up. And it deleted this file that had been affected by the virus... and that the fix didn't fix. But it said it did. And System Works said it fixed all other problems... it told me that I was perfect now with no errors. So I smiled and happily rebooted. And got a blinking "OS NOT FOUND". I tried everything... and it all came down to a file that had somehow gotten deleted. I didn't delete. I wasn't the one who LOCKED my boot drive up. I had to do and fdisk and start from scratch... after having to order and pay for the recovery disk to be FedEx'd to me. Once I got up and running again, I went and checked everything out to see what happened and I found the culprit. Norton SystemWorks. And a week later, it did the same thing again in another situation. It deleted a boot file. OS not found. I never installed System Works again on any computer that I've ever owned. Only Virus Check. And I've never gotten OS not found again either.

I'm just passing on my experience. I'd hate to see someone else go through what I have. As far as I'm concerned, it is crap. And I'll never waste my money on it again.

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

I would think you have spyware running on your computer and is causing it to crash, Does your startpage change from what you set it?, does strange icons appear on your desktop? does Casino games or XXX sites popup for no reason at all?

Try this forum, they can suggest what programs do not need to be active at startup and help you deal with spyware.

http://www.spywareinfo.com/yabbse/index.php

HTH
Alex

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

Originally posted by Sasha:
I'm just passing on my experience. I'd hate to see someone else go through what I have. As far as I'm concerned, it is crap. And I'll never waste my money on it again.

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I had Norton blow up my computer back when Dos 3.3 was new. I can't remember the name of it, but it was the same sort of "I can fix it and not tell you don't worry about it files deleted before you can blink" problem you just described. Good to know some things don't change. It's consumer software alright.

Playboy - you might try finding and running a program called "ad-aware". It's free, no need to purchase the pro version. The program looks for and let's you remove spyware software on your computer. If you play Internet much, you probably have some.

Also, you may want to double check that your fans are working. Sometimes a cpu fan doesn't work, the CPU overheats, and the system locks up.

Re: Last attempt at figuring out thi \'puter.

sasha...i still hold norton system works to be a great program, but as with all software (just like kids ) it should be monitored. i understand that there are certain situations that it will do something without you knowing it...but that happens with all programs. while it may have a few bugs, such as the one you just described, it is the best option out there, and i will continue to use it, though with a little more caution

don't you just love it how one questoin yields infinate answers?