Wiping out a computer

[tktrinity]

I need to wipe out my mother's computer and install Windows Millenium. My mom has win 98, and her computer shows that it only has 14% memory remaining. How do I wipe out her computer and install Millenium. I'm sure I could figure it out, but a friend did it to her daughter's computer and it died....a slow agonizing death. Another frined has done this before, and it worked great for him, but he's moved with no way of contacting him. Please, someone help! Mom has an emachine... ACH! This could be why her computer is so slow and is awful, huh?

[Reid]

When you say "memory", do you mean hard drive space? How much RAM memory does the computer have? It may be a good time to add RAM if you have 64M or less. Windows ME will take more resources than '98 does, and you are likely to see a drop in performance, plus it is likely you'll add problems that were never there before. If you are running Windows 98SE, in my opinion, that is the best Windows version to have at this time.

I'd recommend getting a good utilities suite, like Norton System Works, and use it clean and optimize the operating system. You could even start by running disk defragmentation in Windows. If it hasn't been done for a while, that can help.

Knowing a little more about the system may help decide the best upgrade path.

Anybody else have suggestions?



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reido@my-deja.com

Friends don't let friends load Windows ME

[bassvax]

Reid said it all...In this last year that I've been learning puters and the family/friends start coming round with pc probs...these regular maintenance actions are often neglected. Example...I went to my bro's house and he said is older pc has a new 20GB HD in, but only showing 2GB...sure enough that was all it was saying. Scandisk, Defrag and folder dumping had never been done on that thing. There were over 15,000 files in the Temp Internet Folder. Scandisk fixed numerous errors and reclaimed/corrected the hd size. Defrag took over an hour. Defrag usually only takes this much time the first time out (unless of course you get bitten by the defrag bug). I like Norton SystemWorks 2001 comes with Antivirus 2001 also. Just doing that the improvement was like a memory upgrade. I would suggest, as Reid has, that you stick with 98 SE unless you can't get $$ back and then do your mother another favor and set up her Task Scheduler to perform these basic maintenance activities on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Set it to run over night and have your mother decide on a night to just leave the pc on (turn off the monitor and all power management settings in BIOS and Control Panel). Since it will be on over night might as well throw in a full system virus scan as well. There's quite a bit more that could be posted about general performance and optimization...Charles has covered quite a bit of that in the PC Guide (click over the home page).
As the days go by I hear more bad than good about Win ME...now it seems even Dell is having ME probs.
System resources (the 14% I think you are talking about) have been discussed laboriously here and on other sites with the only real conclusion having to do with poorly written code of apps not releasing windows resources even after being closed. TechTV gurus (and others) advise the only way to get those back is to thin out your background-running programs and of course re-booting.
RAM is so inexpensive today www.crucial.com (http://www.crucial.com) and as Reid said would help tremendously if now at 64MB or less.
I will stop now hogging the space...needless to say there is a lot to be said about general maintenance. Let us know what you decide upon http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

ps-For all you code junkies I was not taking a stab at you, but pointing out the difficulties in overcoming windows and app code mersion...So please...no biting http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif
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Jerry

[This message has been edited by bassvax (edited 01-22-2001).]