Improving PC Performance

[RoyJackson]

I'll try this one...

First, close down all programs (do a CONTROL-ALT-DELETE to access the Close Program menu) except Explorer and Systray.
Second, right click on the desktop and turn off any screensaver...some folks say to turn off the Desktop background too.
Third, run Scandisk to check and correct any errors. Defrag won't finish if it finds errrors.
Fourthly, Defrag the drive(s).


That may square your system away...

By the way, Circuit City had RAM on sale...256Mb of PC133 costs about $45...then you get mail in rebates for $30. You end up paying $15 (~6 cents per megabyte) for the RAM.

 

[Chuck52]

Best improvement I've ever seen resulted from replacing WinDead98 with Winlessdead2000. On my 450MHz HP Pavillion I got next to no benefit going from the original 96MB to 192MB under '98. The upgrade to 2000 was like getting a new computer.

Chuck

 

[MossRoad]

Win95 and 98 machines can try restarting in safe mode and then running scandisk and defrag. This usually helps as no programs are running in the background in safe mode.

 

[Devildog]

Bob the R-1's Are a little pricey/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Mike, its a compact presario, I also did the scandisk as suggested it fixed a couple of things, then I tried to defrag and it locked up completely each time and the ctrl,alt,delete wouldnt work. I would start defragging and after the 3rd time the highest % it got to was 33% then locked up and that was then end of my patience. So I quit before I would do something I regret. (I wish the dell would hurry up and get here)
__________________________________________
Take care all, Jim

 

[Bob_Trevithick]

Jim,

Everything else on this computer works just fine? It's only Defrag that blows up?

If so, I can only think of two things:

1) Possibly the defrag program itself has become corrupted in some way..

2) Maybe the information in your BIOS about the disk is incorrect, but I would have thought this would confuse Scandisk as well as other programs.

This is a weird one!

Good luck...

Bob

 

[Jag]

Jim, Bob, I am having the same problem.... Also my cpu will run at times it should not..... Let me know what's going on...
Jag

 

[Bob_Trevithick]

<font color=blue>...Also my cpu will run at times it should not.....</font color=blue>

Ahah.. this makes me wonder if the PC Power Management system is what's causing the problem. I would suggest you turn off all power management options and see if that makes a difference.

Control Panel | Power Management

Power Schemes: Always On

And pick "Never" for the other options like monitor and hard disk.

I think some systems also have power management options in the BIOS, so reboot, hit the key it says to hit to get into the BIOS stuff, and see if there are any more power management options there which can be disabled.

Note -- make a note of what the settings are currently, in case you want/need to set them back later.

Hope this helps!

Bob

 

[MikePA]

Some versions of Microsoft Office install a service that periodically goes out and looks for new Office files and builds an index to them so they load faster.

 

[Bob_Trevithick]

P.S. As someone previously mentioned, in addition to turning off the power management, make sure you don't have any screen savers enabled.

For reasons that escape me, the screen savers MS distributes seem to be very buggy. The one I tell our folks to use is "Flying Through Space." It seems to cause less crashes in our experience. But make sure you have NO screen saver enabled while doing the defrag.

Bob

 

[GlueGuy]

I also have a Compaq Presario. Great machine BTW. I've had a lot of different computers, clones, etc., and mechanically, this is the most solid designed computer that I've ever owned.

However, if Windows (or some software that you've installed) has done you the favor of replacing some DLL's, and you have gotten any of about a thousand different conditions that can cause a couple of cross-linked clusters (one of the things that scandisk can fix), then you have had broken files on your hard drive.

The first thing you need to do is re-run the Windows installation. This should leave your installed applications alone, but will "repair" the Windows installation to nearly as good as new.

The next step is to run the System information utility. This tooll will allow you to run various other utilities, one of which is the conflict manager. Scan through the "versions" of the various components that it displays. If any of the "currently installed" components look older than what originally came with Windows, then you need to replace them with the ones that came on the Windows installation disk.