hello,

my specs are

win98se
866 pentium
256 sdram
30gb HD + 12 GB HD (both 5400 rpm)
ati radeon 32mb

for some reason my pc has been "slowing down" when it's not supposed to.
sometimes when i'm running a program like forte agent or even windows explorer it just stalls and i have to wait a bit for it to return to normal. it seems like my pc's out of memory but forte only uses about 5-10mb and i know explorer uses less than that. i'm not sure what's wrong but it used to work just fine. is there some kind of virus that does this? i never execute unknown files but sometimes my sis checks her email on my pc and she might have downloaded something.

not sure what other info u folks might need, but i think thats it. thanx for the help.

------------------
Mark Burnett is the Devil...thank goodness.

Hey M and M,
ya know I had an old system that just seemed to slow down as the day went on. I can't remember what I finally did to fix it. (no help there, eh?) Sorry. But, that said, do you have a virus utility? If not, ya probably ought to get one. There are some freebies available for download. Scandisk and Defrag. would be other obvious ideas. Hopefully some of the brighter bulbs in the box here will enter in and give some real advice. Do those things first then post back and let's see what direction this goes.
peace

------------------
A man persuaded against his will, is of his old opinion still.

Hi;

What modem do you have in the system? While your system should handle it, I recently had all kinds of trouble with a Motorola SM (soft modem). Every time I opened IE, the system shut down. A hard modem (ISA) solved the problem. Just a shot.

mine does this once in a while i figure it had a hard day i just do a shut down restart usually perks right back up but nimnorf is right v-protection needed.i've done de-frag and scan disk brings it back for a while but comes back.might be heatin up?

Nim, you're getting the hang of it, the basics first, scandisk and defrag have been know to cure a lot of computer ills.

Mang, one of the other things you may want to check is the amount of free space on your hard drive, and clean out any unnecessary files (like the browser cache, and temp directories). Also keep an eye on what you have running in the background, if you don't absolutely need something shut it down instead of just minimizing it.

------------------
mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Gun Control...hitting what you aim at!

MangMang... A number of things could be causing a problem such as you have. Yes, a virus hanging out in the memory (RAM) is a possibility. Do you have an Anti-Virus program you could run? When I first read your post I thought you must have an A-V program running in the backgroud causing the problem. Have you checked the System Resources to see where you stand? Control Panel/Systems/Resources. Check to see what % is available.
There could be a Hard Drive dragging it's feet. Do you have the latest drivers installed for the Radeon card? The 256MB of memory you have, is it Quality? One stick of 256 or two of 128? I'm inclined to lean on memory on this one. Let us know. Luck.


------------------
......Indecision may or may not be my problem......
...... Kickin' A Rock....

thanx for the help and suggestions everyone. unfortunately i have tried all those things but still have had no luck. i do defrag and use scandisk often, also i have checked my ram resources and it's always at 70% free or more when the slowdown happens. i don't have a dial modem in my system but i use a cable modem (terayon). my display driver has been acting weird, it sometimes looks for the display driver after startup like nothing was installed. i'll try downloading a new one and hope that will work. but if anyone has any more suggestions it would really help out.

thanx

------------------
Mark Burnett is the Devil...thank goodness.

mangmang: Article at zdnet (http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/stories/main/0,5594,2531288,00.html) for OS decay causing problems. There's a better one on the same subject, but have to go and look because my link isn't working this morning. Was going to share the link that iisbob gave me yesterday about system resources, but you said you already checked that.

Might be your problem though, Yoda, if you're saying a restart fixes it. Resource meter (http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/stories/main/0,5594,2271378-1,00.html)

Hey,

I suggest a RAM optimizer, if after you have exhausted all other possibilities, you still are having problems. RAM optimizers work by releasing memory that is not released by a program when you shut it down. (The infamous memory leak problem)

Do a search on RAM optimizers. There are loads of them out there, some freeware and some shareware. I paid for the one I used, MemoKit, but it was well worth the twenty-some odd bucks I paid for it.

Before doing all that though, make sure you have that vid card problem sorted out. Seems that might be what's dragging you down. I know from personal experience, that ATI products are a wee bit finicky, or prone to glitches with drivers and/or the system's BIOS. Read up on any issues with the ATI Radeon.

Good luck.

BB 66

------------------
Yes Sir, Occifer!

Okay, found the better article. You may not be ready to go through the whole wipe and start over thing, but you might want to keep it for later. I find the idea of making my own Restore disk fascinating, and want to do that on the new system we're planning to build. How to completely revamp your Windows PC (http://www.pcnuthut.com/Info/revampwindows.htm) by Will Smith.

thanx for the help everyone and for the linx (kayofcircles).

i tried removing the monitor and re-installing all of the display drivers and that seems to have worked. no slow down so far, hopefully this will continue.

thanx again.



------------------
Mark Burnett is the Devil...thank goodness.