Erratic Slow Down, Slow Mouse Response, Echoes?

[jfdowshen]

Older clone PC with Cyrix 166, Windows 98, no heavy graphic games, etc.
Everything can be operating normally, but when coming back to the PC after various lengths of time, I will find the mouse becoming extremely slow and erratic (non-responsive), programs opening and closing very, very slowly, and when they do close and open, I often get a series of echoes of my system sounds. Usually have to manually restart to get things going again. Have Norton Antivirus running in background. Any ideas on what is causing this or how to correct it? Thanx from a first time user. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

[Randy_tx]

The Cyrix PR166 (esp the + version) had a LOT of overheating problems...but boy was it quick for it's day. I bet your CPU fan is on the fritz and it's overheating. It's a long shot that it could be RAM or a keyboard problem....that's where I would look next. Win 98 isn't too good of a setup for a 166.......better off with Win95-B cause it's a bit faster OS.

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"As hard as a rock & dumb as a brick"...Windows CEMeNT

[jfdowshen]

I have changed the keyboard to no avail, and I should have enough RAM, but the overheating/fan idea is interesting since the problem seems to happen only after the machine has been on for quite a while (does go back to normal after restart though). Is it easy to replace the fan on the Cyrix? I hate to bring it in for $100++ if I can do it myself. Thanx.

[Randy_tx]

Replacing the fan isnt very hard and the fan costs less than $15 at most decent computer stores. What you want to ask for is a Socket 7 heat sink with fan type cooler. The fan sits on top of the cpu (do this when cpu is very cool!) and on your type system it probably plugs into a power connector like you put into the hard drive or cd rom. It has a "Y" extension to allow the use of the power cord for another device if you need it. You install it by cliping one side to the cpu "socket" and you have a spring loaded side that you hook to the other side...this keeps it firmly down on the cpu to provide good cooling. If you can get some "Thermal Grease" it is good to put a SMALL amt. on the bottom of the heat sink which touches the cpu. Thats it.... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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"As hard as a rock & dumb as a brick"...Windows CEMeNT

[BigBlue66]

Hi,

In addition to the above from Randy_tx, you might try disabling the anti-virus so that it does not run in the background. It's a worthwhile program but it doesn't need to run all the time. You can always enable it if you download or install software from a CD.

I think it's eating up resources that you can't really spare.

To disable it at bootup, go to Start/Run and type 'msconfig' without the quotes. Then, go to the StartUp tab and look for the line that has an executable file loading that sounds like Norton's antivirus program. Uncheck it and reboot. Check the lower right-hand corner of the taskbar to see if you were successful. In other words, if you have disabled it correctly, there should be no icon there.

As an alternative, if you have the icon for the anti-virus software in the lower right-hand corner of the taskbar, after you are up and running, right-click on the icon and choose to disable or stop the program. That will free up some resources for you.

How much memory do you have? If only a low amount, such as 16mb or even 32mb, disabling the anti-virus software should help. Additionally, always run scandisk and defrag on a regular basis.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66

[mjc]

I'm not sure about Norton but McAfee antivirus has a feature called 'screen scan' that acts like a screen saver and starts a thorough scan when the system is idle for an extended period, look for a similar feature in the program options and disable it also.

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mjc
To ME or NOT to ME....