Soliciting help, I freeze up regularly:

I'm not computer illiterate, but I do have a problem I can't solve. I thought I'd see if the bright folks at Club Hombre might not be able to understand something about my situation and offer some advice.

Here's the deal. Sometimes I freeze up. Well, no, not me, my computer. I know this is not uncommon with Windows operating systems, but for a while I thought I could get it licked and actually stop the freezings from happening. I am running a

*Hewlett Packard Pavilion 8660C
*533 MHz Pentium III
*128 Megs of SDRAM, so I ought to have power enough. The screen is a

*Sony Trinitron (I mention this because monitor software has been an issue, maybe), but otherwise the whole thing, software and hardware, is factory-release of the HP Pavilion. I'm running

*Windows 98 Second Edition 4.10.2222A
*Internet Explorer 5.00.2614.3500
*Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200, and have a dial-up account with
*Earthlink at 56 K or less.

Here's the experience. Whenever I'm on line, sometimes things just freeze up and I have to restart from full power down. Sound is frozen, keyboard is frozen (no ctrl-alt-del!), monitor is frozen, mouse is frozen, everything's frozen. In particular, when I'm WORDPROCESSING in one of the above-mentioned online clients, the freezes are quite common -- I figure about a 3 in 5 chance of freezing for any typical four-paragraph Club Hombre posting. I do all my wordprocessing offline now, and then cut-and-paste into the browser window box or the emailer immediately before actually hitting the "send" or "post" button. It's fruitless to try to do otherwise. Club Hombre is one of the least robust of websites that I've experienced, probably because of the subtle frames and security features.

I've done all the obvious things. Re-formatting the hard drive, re-installing the software from the get-go, changing the various hardware acceleration packages down to minimum performance and maximum robustness, making sure the drivers aren't conflicting, and checking Earthlink's and Microsoft's useless documentation on the subject.

I've tried fiddling with monitor software, getting newer drivers, since I read somewhere on some web page that I can't recover, that problems with Outlook freezings are actually problems with Microsoft Internet Exchange being incompatible with certain monitor software releases. I wouldn't put it past 'em, and the Exchange issues would transfer over from Outlook to Explorer, wouldn't they? But I haven't been able to fix anything by that means.

Any suggestions? Anyone else have similar problems? I can render further specifics if someone wants to get involved in helping me out here.

Thanks for your time. Book Guy

I was going to suggest Metimucil b4 you clarified things.

You didn't mention what video card you're using, or if you've made any changes (software/hardware/drivers/etc.) before this problem appeared.

Try updating to the latest video driver for your card.
Try changing the monitor to a generic one.

Also, I had a problem a few weeks ago where my computer wouldn't boot. After hours and hours of looking, I removed my RAM and re-inserted it one by one till the computer wouldn't boot again.

Funny thing is, that same RAM strip works in another machine

Book Guy,

Hard freezes are most likely the result of a hardware defect/conflict. Although it is true that the windows os sucks big time., 98 is supposed to be pretty stable (for windows anyway) HP machines are usually well mached to windows.

Check these things:

Does the machine reboot after the freeze, or just freezes? How long do you wait beore rebooting?

Was the OS originally installed with the machine, or did you do the OS install/upgrade? Did the machine freeze after you installed 98?

Does your HP come with any original drivers., etc.?

Does the machine freeze while under load only, or does it freeze up while doing nothing? (early versions of Win 95 were noted for this) Let it sit for a day or overnight to find this out.

Open up the box and carefully reseat all of the cards and simms. Be careful while doing this and be mindful of static discharge. Some freezes are due to improperly seated cards. When the computer heats up,expantion may cause them to lose contact.

Is your CPU overclocked

IS your fan running. Make sure no dust has cloged any of the little propellers. If all else fails try a bigger fan. Buy a can of compressed air and carefully blow out all the dust bunnies and blow out all the dust in the cracks and crevices of the motherboard and case.

If you have a voltmeter, check the power supply voltage. Try using another electrical plug in the room. A fluctuation in voltage caused by, lets say an A/C going on can drop the voltage enough to affect the computer.

I would say run a few test-compile routines but windows doesn't come with a compiler. Download some test programs and see if they can pinpoint the problem.

Check your hardware manager for hardware conflicts, make sure all setting are set conservatively. Make sure you have enough swap space/virtual memory.

Windows is VERY BUGGY Is prone to crash and freezes at the drop of a hat.

You can always load linux/freebsd on it and see if it still freezes. If it freezes under another OS, it most certainly a hardware problem.

If that is the case you might be able to have HP solve the problem with a replace/repair.

If it is an OS problem "lots o luck sucka" you just joined the "screw you I'm a monopoly" club.

From a Unix kinda guy (apologies to ootie)
OG

book_guy: I was having similar problems. It sounds like you have more technical knowledge than me, but I'll take a stab at this. My suggestion: get a recommendation for a good tech guy and have him update/upgrade everything, including the Win98 OS. OK, I know, the easy way out. But isn't it worth a few bucks to save all the aggravation?

I have a 400 Mhz Pentium II that I bought in early '98 before Win98 came out so it only had Win95. It also had a 56k dial-up connection. After about 2 years, it used to constantly freeze up on me, online, word processing, everything, like 3-5 times a day; same thing CTRL+ALT+DEL didn't work.

I switched to cable modem 6 months ago. Two different techs couldn't get the modem cards to work properly and finally came to the conclusion that it was incompatibility with Win95. They sent in their contract tech expert; he played with it for awhile, then finally asked me to move any files I absolutely need into one area so he could save to his computer and transfer back after he wiped my hard drive clean. He took my computer with him overnight and brought it back with WinME plus memory upgrade to 128 megs, new anti-virus, plus all new drivers.

Have had very few stalls since (maybe 2-3 in 6 months). Reboots are quick with automatic repairs. I got lucky. All this cost me was the price of the added memory. The cable company paid the tech because they want that extra $30/month that I pay. In reality, cable modem only costs me about $3 more than I was paying for dial-up service plus an online notification of incoming phone calls(no longer needed with cable hook-up; phone line is totally free now). I threw the tech guy a few extra bucks and told him to take his wife to dinner on me. Just my thoughts on this.

Thanks for the suggestions. All this about unplugging things and looking at the innerds has me worried; and the very idea that an online cable company would actually come to my house ... hahahah! Can you say monopoly? I guess Microsoft isn't the only organization that loves to take your money and not give you what you pay for.

I'll see what I can come up with on some of these suggestions.

Book-Guy,

This only happens when you are online correct?

How big is your hard drive, and how much is it packed?

Did this just start recently or has it been a problem from the get go?

I guess the other posts snuck in before mine. Anyways, another possible cause. Please don't take this as a personal attack. It's probably those Great American Novels (diatribes) that you seem prone to write LOL. I know that you've acknowledged that you have trouble articulating what you're trying to convey. I often skim some of your posts as they seem full of detail. At times, they remind me of some of those lengthy government memos filled with bureaucratese that I used to see when I worked for Uncle Sam.

Of course, what do I know? As I get older, my reading comprehension seems to keep regressing. Figure I'm back to about 3rd grade level by now. This is likely due the fact that my reading of high brow literary property for the last few years has been limited to Playboy and stripclub/monger discussion boards.

The best example of being concise that I can think of is the following. Weeks of testimony about DNA analysis, blood splatter patterns, collection of evidence can pretty much be summarized as:

Marcia Clark: "OJ did it."

Johnny Cochran: "If it don't fit, you must acquit."

Jury: "We believe Johnny."

Just trying to gig you a little (or is that Gigabyte?). Damn, my last two posts are long. I need a nap now.

Computers locking up while using Explorer is a VERY common problem, and nobody seems to know exactly why. I wouldn't recomend reseating the components of your computer, unless you know what you are doing. The chances are very, very, very, slim(can you say "nada") that this will fix your problem. You have a FAR greater chance of breaking a connection on one of the components, or causing Electro Static Discharge(ESD) damage to one of the components.

Your best chance of a fix is upgrading your OS. You could put Windows ME, and upgrade all your drivers. Many components have special drivers for Win ME. But better yet put win2000 Professional. It's based on the old WinNT OS, and is a very stable OS(unlike 95,98,ME).

Snags,

Re: Playboy.....are you saying the older you get the less you read the articles?

Red: I skim the diatribes like PB Interview and PB Advisor. I seem to have no trouble concentrating on those pages with colorful pict...errr...text; especially those that fold out. The comprehension takes on a 3D visualization when I shut my eyes. It's hard to re-read those particular articles as the pages always seem to stick together after the first perusal.

Whew, I needed a nap after those last posts. After this one, I need to make a run for the border.

Written at 8pm but Club move interrupted post>

Try upgrading to Internet Explorer 6.

-Superman-

I'm a software kind of guy so naturally I'd say it's a hardware problem - and it may be, the most likely hardware problem is that it is an HP, I'm typing on one now, squirrley little computers.

IMHO however, I bet you can fix it without picking up a screwdriver. Reboot, don't start any programs and take a look at what software started up automatically. HPs start stuff you don't need, as does a lot of third party software. Clean up your autostart. Also clean up and defrag your hard disk.

Then, if it doesn't work, take it to a technician.

I agree, all preinstalled systems seem to have a bunch of crap nobody needs. Also causes major problems as there conflicts with other applications.

So I agree with Ldvee. Here is a little app that makes tracking what is starting up easier.

http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-1461989-100-5943130.html

It is called "startup cop" and will list all files the start on load and give you the ability to disable/remove them.

It goes to all registry hives where things start from as well as startup folder and win.ini the only thing it doesn't do I don't think is autoexec.bat

Hope it helps.

Chargers,

I am only fairly computer literate and have recently given up my Mac PC laptop for a 850mhz
Dell laptop with 32HD, 512 ram and 2000 pro. os.

Originally I had Win Me and it sucked I changed to 2000 pro and have had zero problems since.

If it's a branded PC that comes with the modem, I won't mess with the factory settings. It's unlikely that the monitor of your choice causes the freeze. Just undo everything that you may have done to the serial ports.

If your PC only freezes while online, that's pretty obvious your problems are limited. Crash is different from freeze. Crash is when you got some error message, and cannot recover from that. You may need a reboot to clear that. Freeze is nothing happening whatever you do, that's mostly caused by somthing wrong in any part of the network, including your hardware and software accessing it. Traditionally, the retry time is very long for network programs so nothing seems to happen because the software is retrying and retrying for minutes at a time. Sometimes the software freezes, but sometimes the whole computer looked freezed.

Likely problems, bad phone line, long extension etc. Cable can also have low signal level, similar to phone lines. Try your computer some place else, but this may be as bad as allowing someone into your home.

Try different ISP. ISP that allows you to have direct access to the net using any programs are rather problematic. Say pick up an AOL free trial disk, often AOL is the only working ISP for the clones that I had been having. You can also try juno or other free ISP, but it's hen and egg problem if you haven't got a line to download the software.

Down the line, upgrade, downgrade or change your browser. Don't use outlook and your earthlink email account. hotmail yahoo and hushmail have been reliable and you don't have to change your email address as often as you change ISP. If you have the stomach and money for it, swap the OS.

Further down, you can swap the modem or upgrade to cable. Sure they will send somebody if you allow them, but if the first one fails, you have a long wait until everything is solved.

By the way, software/hardware conflicts are only used as explanations. In reality the guy just swap soft or hard modules until it worked or they take it away - to do larger scale swaps. The cost never justify what you may thing.

Innocent

I've had similar experience with Win2000 Pro, that's why I recomended it so highly. When I upgraded to it all those little quirks that my system had just went away.

So what's it cost and where can I get it cheapest ?

Can I run it WELL on a 566 MHz Celeron with 256 Meg of RAM ?

Pauncho

Try Fry's or CompUSA. An upgrade is pretty costly, compared to 95/98/ME.

It will run on a Intel 133 with 128 RAM.

At less that's what Microsoft says.

I got mine free as a MSDN member, at less the company is a member. You got to love those CD burners.

In Win 98 or ME you can use a command called msconfig, which will let you disable junk that is loading in the background on start-up.

Just goto start ...run...and type in msconfig.

Goto the startup tab and it will show you all the stuff that is loaded. By unchecking an item it will not start on booting 98/ME.

How to make your broadband connection SCREAM!!

http://www.dmitchell.com/AustinRRInfo/

You can create and tweak a registry value called "DefaultRcvWindow" - check the above link or do a search for this word. Only works for Win9x, but there is an NT/Win2K equivalent on the same page. Note that it has certain drawbacks, but they are few, and you can tweak them.

But... I got my cable modem to go from about 1 megabit/sec to up to 4-5 megabits/sec on some of the faster sites. !!! Worth a look, gents.

MrBillO^™-

Mr Bill - This works. Thanks! for you W-98 users, skip the step by step and just download the registry file.