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Hello,
I have a HP pentium 3, 550 mhz, 2 1/2 years old, never any problems, until now, I have been reading the archives and cannot find a solution there (maybe because I do not understand most of what I am reading, I am a computer idiot, I understand my software and that is it! I do not understand anything about how a computer works or what the terms mean) anyway........here is the system info that I found:
Win 98 4.10.2222A
IE 5 6.0.2600.0000
uptime: 1:08:22:59
normal mode
128 mb RAM
57% system resources free
windows managed swapfile on drive C (14520mb free)
Awailable space on drive C: 14520mb of 19525mb (fat32)Over the past month I have noticed a big slowdown, opening files, clicking icons, even the screen saver takes 20 -30 seconds to stop once the mouse is moved. I defrag regularly, and that is slow now; I tried to run scandisk, but that tells me to close all open/ running windows and restart scandisk, but nothing else is running, so that won't work. I have downloaded PC cillin and I don't have any viruses, I have not added anything new and I haven't changed any settings.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
What is the swap file? What does it do?
(Sorry for my computer ignorance, I have never had the opportunity to learn how these things work and a patient teacher)
Any definitions and descriptions would be appreciated related to fixing this thing!
I hope I have given you enough info, if not tell me what you need and where I can find it.
Thanks in advance!!!!!
Lori
How many files are in your Temporary Internet Files Folder? Delete them.
Do you have thoudands of 0 byte oem*.inf files? Delete them.
Do you have thoudands of 0 byte fff*.tmp files? Delete them.
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Dear Lori,
Clearly, you are not "a computer idiot", you have found out a lot of information and done various things correctly and you have sought help.
Are you running "Word 7" or "Word 2000" perhaps with your Windows?
[I believe that you have "Windows 98 Second Edition" judging from your reference number that you supplied]
I am a relative beginner myself but I am learning bit by bit.
I started off with a 500MHz CPU and then got a 550Mhz after the first machine developed a fault and recently fitted in its place a 700MHz K7 AMD(the maximum processor speed for my "Slot A" MS-6191 Motherboard that I could find on the market here in London).
I also added an External Drive (LaCie 10Gb) plus a Firewire Card which I managed to fit myself. I have now added (with some help from a friend) an Internal "PlexWriter" CD-RW 40/12/40A, a new Ultra Quiet Power Supply 300W, a new Ultra Quiet CPU Fan plus acoustic material inside the tower to improve things a bit in the early hours.
I get numerous magazines and little gadget programmes including for backing up e-mails (having lost 200Mb in the past) and I am now re-reading the 60 magazines I have, most of which meant little when I first bought them, owing to lack of understanding and terminology and so on.
I am sure you will get replies shortly from more experienced members to help you.
There is one thing I thought you might check.
In the "Temp" file in "Windows" (obtained by right-clicking on the "C" in "My Computer" then left-clicking on "Explore" and then right-clicking on "Windows", then left-click on "Explore" after which the yellow "Temp" Folder should appear. If you right-click on that, please check if it's full up.As far as I know, the contents can be deleted, just leaving the empty yellow Folder. Sometimes a particular file or two won't delete. Just ignore this.
There is also another Folder "RECENT", - again you can delete the contents as far as I know without any problem.
If you look in
"My Computer"/Properties/Performance/Virtual Memory" - this is where the "swap file" comes in I believe (others will correct me if I am wrong). It will probably have a box ticked with "Let Windows manage my virtual memory settings"I think this is to do with the swap file and to do with memory and if you choose to alter the settings there is a min and max. I have seen various suggestions on how these should be set.
There is also a programme "Cacheman" which is said to improve performance automatically when you set your system description (i.e. Windows 98 with options CD-RW, etc.) I expect this can be downloaded as freeware.
Sometimes slow operation might be caused by a lot of programmes all loading up or running at once. I have a utility (Fix-It Utilities) that tells me whats running but this can be done in Windows "RUN". I think you type "misconfig" and invesrtigate precisely what is loading up at the start, but no doubt you will hear about this from the other members .
Good luck for the future.
Regards,
Yours sincerely,
Victor Mishiku
(West London Sunday 7th July, 2002 sent at about 4.40am)
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Sorry Lori, correction towards the end of my message above: from Victor: 4.49am
"msconfig" (not misconfig)
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how many icons do you have in your system tray?(beside the time display)
Go and click on the 'start' button,
click on 'run'
and theen type in 'msconfig' and press 'enter'
This will bring up the "System Configuration Utility'.
Now click on 'Start Up'
Make a note of all the programs with a 'check' in front of them.
You can uncheck any programs you don't want or need to start when Windows boots.
Typically you need system tray, possibly 'powerprofile', your 'antivirus' and firewall running.
If you're not sure what you can safely uncheck, post back what is checked in your SCU.
I have seen an ME system go from 37% to 97% free just by not having programs load at boot.
Oh yeah, don't forget your startup folder in the 'start', 'programs' folder, you can drag those programs in the 'startup' to the 'recycle' bin.
If you are really interested in speed, get rid of 'sounds','animations' and all the other cute little effects that windows has as default.
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You can also try cntrl delete and shut nonessential things (keep things like rundll, explorer, rnapp, etc) and if it causes issues when you close those, just restart your computer...
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If none of the above work you need to reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything. This is usually the only reliable method to fix your sort of problem which is almost inevitable after 2 and a half years without a reformat (I'm assuming here you've never reformatted it). The registry gets bloated with garbage, old programs don't get uninstalled completely, and a hundred other things over time combine to slow a system down. A good spring cleaning is in order. Just be sure to do some homework before you format anything.
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Forgot the obvious (not sure if anyone mentioned it) but Goto Start Run and type in "Defrag" and then click OK.
Another riskier option (before Reform when all else fails) is to use Regclean (which is a microsoft product) but from july 5-7 02' Cnet will be down, and thats the only place I know where go get it as of now =[ so I guess it's a wait till the go back deal
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A reformat/reinstall in a last resort and usually should not be necessary.
Clean out your junk files and clean out your registry.
At the very least you should use Disk Cleanup (it's part of WinME and I think it's in Win98).
Get a copy of MS RegClean; if you've never used it (or any Registry Cleaner) before, you'll be amazed at how much junk is removed.
This is old, and it was posted on the WinME forum, but there's a lot of stuff that should help you in Win98:
RESOURCE: Tweaking Win ME/20513And/or try Delindex:
The primary purpose of Delindex is to delete Index.dat files which are never resized and only get bigger. They contain all your web surfing history since they were (re)created, and large index.dat files can cause performance issues with browsing. Index.dat files cannot be deleted if Explorer is running. The secondary purpose is to delete junk files for reasons of space, privacy, and performance.
Click here for the Delindex post.
Click here to look at Delindex (the code and notes) now.
Click here to view/download Delindex from http://burzurq.com/forum/delindex.html
=========================================
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You could also keep WINTOP running to see what's using up the cpu.
Download Kernel Toys here:
http://www.aumha.org/freewarez.htm
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Hello again!!
Thank you all for your excellent input, so far no luck, I have emptied the temp internet files, used disk cleanup, downloaded delindex and the kernel toys with Wintop, but I am kind of stuck in how to use them, when I try Delindex from DOS, I get "bad file name" when I downloaded and saved it what do I need to do to get it to work ( remember - computer idiot here ) also how do I use Wintop and the other functions?
Renaissance Man told me to delete 0 byte oem*.inf files and 0 byte fff.tmp files, I did not find any, maybe I wasn't looking in the right places?
Thanks again!!!!!
Lori
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I haven't seriously considered reformatting.........too scared!! I tried that on an old computer years ago, major screw up!
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Have you tried downloading and running Ad-Aware? This will check your system for spyware and let you get rid of any.
Note that programs associated with the spyware may quit working after adaware cleans the spyware out so you will need to reinstall them.
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• The file is delindex.bat.
• You may have downloaded it somewhere other than the root directory; it should be on C:\ and not in a folder.
• You must reboot to DOS; don't use a DOS window.
• Since C:\ in not usually part of the path statement, at a DOS prompt, type
c:\delindex
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