Laurieheels Posted October 3, 2003 Share Posted October 3, 2003 Hi! My mother has a computer that is a few years old. P4, 800 mhz, 128 MB ram, a pretty good computer, still very servicable. The problem is this. After running for a while, the computer freezes. The mouse will still moev around, but the windows freeze, overlapping on one another, usually the screen inside being black, but the toolbars remaining. We have fixed a number of things, which may have resulted in my use of her computer in the past six weeks. Yet the computer still has this problem, where the programs that are running stop, and the task manager cannot be brought up. Issue 1 is, does anyone know why this may happen? Issue 2 is, does anyone have a copy of MS Office? Our copy is corrupt, and most of the programs will not install properly anymore. Microsoft recalls all older versions, so they won't be of help, except to say spend $500 on a new version. If we have this, we can restore the computer. So if anyone knows what is happening, or if anyone can somehow supply a copy of MS Office to us, that would be wonderful. Because she will certainly hate me very much if we cannot fix this, or restore the computer with all programs running properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Shoe Posted October 3, 2003 Share Posted October 3, 2003 Sorry, can't help with the problem but it sounds like it could be a virus. I had a similar problem and bought Norton Anti-Virus and away it went. On the other hand, some conspiracy theorists claim that Intel have built a "terminator" into their chips rendering them useless after a certain period of time! Graduate footwear designer able to advise and assist on modification and shoe making projects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Shoe Posted October 3, 2003 Share Posted October 3, 2003 Sorry, can't help with the problem but it sounds like it could be a virus. I had a similar problem and bought Norton Anti-Virus and away it went. On the other hand, some conspiracy theorists claim that Intel have built a "terminator" into their chips rendering them useless after a certain period of time! Perhaps you should look at upgrading the chipset and CPU. Graduate footwear designer able to advise and assist on modification and shoe making projects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jo Posted October 3, 2003 Share Posted October 3, 2003 Run Scandisk to fix any disk errors before you do anything else at all. Then run the Disk Defragmenter to rearrange the files on the disk. This can speed a machine up quite a lot if it hasn't been done in many months. Install and run some anti-virus software, Norton Antivirus is about as good as it gets. Install and run Adaware from Lavasoft, to clear any spyware and scumware from your computer. Check how much memory RAM you have (right click on My Computer icon, and then select Properties then look for the line with RAM in it. If you have less than 128MB, then upgrade to 192 or 256MB (the machine will run tons faster). In the UK, there are many computer fairs, and old software can be picked up quite cheaply sometimes. What version of Office are you looking for, and what Operating System is it (NT/95/98/2000/ME/XP, etc) too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laurieheels Posted October 3, 2003 Author Share Posted October 3, 2003 Scandisk has been run several times a day for almost a week. There is Norton's Anti-Virus on there, it has been run recently, well after the problems started. The problems began AFTER I had taken it on myself to download Adaware and run it, removing a bunch of spyware files. The machine came with Windows ME, and it ran fine until I started trying to remove spyware. I will suggest the disk defragmentation, but somehow I suspect it will not help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jo Posted October 4, 2003 Share Posted October 4, 2003 Ah, I see. Yes, certain programs that come with spyware can "self-destruct" when the spyware component is removed. I would also reload windows, but on top of the exisiting copy. That can make a difference. Does that version of windows have a little program called sfc lurking anywhere? That program is the system file checker and it helps restore corrupted files back to full working order. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffM Posted October 4, 2003 Share Posted October 4, 2003 Hi Laurie You didnt say what version of Office you need/want. I have copies of Office 97, 2000 and XP Pro. I can try sending the files by email if you like but dont know if that would work. Probably best if I burnt a disk or two and send them. Let me know if I can be of help in this. I am not an expert on computers by any means but have a couple of suggestions. 1 Do a step by step load of windows, I think it's F8 at the point where you can access your BIOS. It allow you to step through all your Autoexec files one by one. This might allow you to see any files needed at start up that may be corrupt. You will see that a file is being loaded then failed to load if it is corrupt. 2 Do a reinstall of windows (must be a form of 95 or 98 I think as scan disk is not available as such in 2000 or I guess in XP). I dont mean a clean install that will wipe all the programs and data but just install over what is there now. I believe it fixes any corrupt windows files and so cleans the system. 3 Use Partition Magic to create partitions for your operating system, programs and data so that in the event that some thing like this ever happens again you dont loose your data or programs as they are on separate partitions and not part of windows under the program folder. I use version 8 but have an earlier version of this that I dont use if you want to go down this track. Best wishes Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJ Posted October 4, 2003 Share Posted October 4, 2003 Laurieheels; There is a feature in Windows ME that is called SYSTEM RESTORE. Visit http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;312932&Product=winme and scroll down about 3/4 of that page. Look for the section called How Do I Restore My Computer?. Good luck. click .... click .... click .... The sensual sound of stiletto heels on a hard surface. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom-NL Posted October 4, 2003 Share Posted October 4, 2003 What is in the log files? (the system log, the security log and the application log). Those log files could be located as follows: right-click on the icon "My computer" and choose the option "manage". That should bring up a window with two panes. Look in the left one near the top for an entry about "log files" (or similar wording). You might see some lines in the log that start with a red icon. Those are the "interesting" ones. What do they say? PS: the above way of finding the log files might be different for you, since m$ have a nasty habit of sometimes renaming and/or moving things between different flavours of their product. Use the "Help" or "Search" options if necessary. Quote from the Internet: In order to shut down, you have to click "Start". So in order to get started, you have to shut down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJ Posted October 7, 2003 Share Posted October 7, 2003 Laurieheels; How is your computer working? Have you had the chance to try the additional suggestions that were posted here since your last post? My suggestion of SYSTEM RESTORE is something similar to what I have used in the past on my laptop. It's called GO BACK. Whenever some file got changed or corrupted on my computer that caused unstable operation, GO BACK would restore my system to a previous state before the problem occurred. It saved me a lot of headaches. click .... click .... click .... The sensual sound of stiletto heels on a hard surface. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laurieheels Posted October 7, 2003 Author Share Posted October 7, 2003 Well, for my mother's computer, the system restore screwed it up worse. The computer would start up, and hang on looking for a database for Norton's Anti-Virus. But this has been fixed, we think, by turning off a number of items in the system.ini section. As for me, I managed to get credit to buy a new computer. My old one is packed away, as the noise the hard drive makes, and the constant blue screen of death about not being able to read drive c: were afr too annoying. Not that I can afford to pay for it, but it makes digital photography easier. I would like to thank everyone for their help and suggestions in this. It has been appreciated, and we did try a number of things. No one thing worked, but maybe a combination of a few of them did. I think in the end, my mother will burn some CDs filled with everything she wishes to keep, and restore the computer to the way it is when purchased. She has a co-worker who owns MS Office, so we might be able to borrow that. We shall see, but again, thank you everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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