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Juju2bigdog
| Sunday, December 28, 2003 - 6:18 pm
Cassie wrote: Quote:I use a program called "Housecalls" to run virus checks--do you think I still need to buy an anti-virus program?
Cassie, I used that one when I had the virus and Norton failed to detect it. Only problem I see with that is if you get a virus that won't let you get to the internet to use Housecalls. (or do you have it downloaded onto your computer?) With an up-to-date anti-virus program installed on your computer, the program should catch viruses as you receive them and not let them onto your computer in the first place.
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Grannyg
| Sunday, December 28, 2003 - 7:07 pm
Dra, Java 2 V1.3.1_04 for applet was checked so I unchecked it and checked Microsoft VM. But after I thought about it, I think I downloaded that because I was having trouble getting into chat. I went to the Sun site and downloaded Java 2 sdk-1_4_2 but it also came with something called NetBeans IDE. After I downloaded it I tried to install it and it hung my computer up. So I hit the dreaded button on hard drive and it ran scan disk but it didn't take the usually 10 to 15 it's been taking. It went through pretty normal and then gave me the dreaded white screen that says something about active desktop. I rebooted and everything came up fine. I have run Spybot and Ad-Aware and nothing out of the ordinary. Just tracking files that are "low" and I always delete all of them. I found a program called Trojan Horse and downloaded the trial of that and ran that but it came back clean. It "seems" that unchecking the java thingie might be working but I'll see if I can get into chat without it. You are a peach. Wonder why I couldn't install the Java 1.4 whatever?don't tell Jmm but
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Dipo
| Sunday, December 28, 2003 - 8:41 pm
okay, I am checking my computer and it seem to be okay except the s key is really hard to get to work. Now I just have to figure out how to get the a keypad back on. Thanks for all your help. I will print the cleaning thing to work on the s key. Thanks again.
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Juju2bigdog
| Sunday, December 28, 2003 - 10:02 pm
Yay, Dipo!!!
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 8:25 am
Jujo wrote: <Cassie, 248 Mb left on your computer is not very much. Quite frankly, it would make me uneasy to have that little left. Run through that procedure I told you again and see how big your hard drive is total.> Juju and Draheid: Here's a puzzler about the space left on my computer that someone might be able to help with. When I got this 'puter, it had a 32-bit memory. I took advice to go and buy an additional 32-bit (don't know if it's 32MB or GB!) and immediately added it on. The computer was always crashing on me and doing the blue screen thing. Anyway, about 4 weeks ago, it seemed to be dying altogether, and I had someone come over (it was giving me a bad memory message.) When he checked my space (same way as you told me to above, Juju) the pie showed a very small sliver of space left. We cleaned out some programs and then he checked both memory chips and lo, the one I had added when I originally bought the computer was defective, so he said. So he removed it and ordered a new one. The computer ran much better with the removal but worked much slower. Anyway, the new memory chip was put in and apparently is bigger than the first one. It used to read 60 MB Ram; not it reads 92 MB Ram. But here's the puzzler: The sliver of space left showing on the pie, has never changed. It read 258 MB before adding the new BIGGER memory and now reads 248!!!! Can anyone explain that to me? I'm thinking that this newly added 62MB of memory is doing nothing. Am I correct? It's hard because there is just NOWHERE around here I can drop the computer at and have it fixed. Why oh why is there no decent computer repair places to go to. I bought the service deal at Best Buy when I bought the computer (which has been nothing but trouble since Day 1) and that was just a big joke. To be honest, I'm scared to even buy a new computer as I feel it will just be more of the same...a high-priced piece of technology that never works right and no-one can fix, LOL. Anyway, I'd love to get your thoughts on this memory thing. Thanks!
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Draheid
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 8:33 am
Cassie: What version of Windows are you running?
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 8:48 am
Draheid, I'm running 98. (The computer is almost 4 years old now).
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Draheid
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 9:16 am
Cassie: Could you locate the "My Computer" icon on your desktop, point and right-click on that icon, then left-click on 'Properties'. From the dialog the 'System Properties' dialog, can you post the information please: 1. On the 'General' tab, the details under 'System:' and 'Computer:' 2. On the 'Performance' tab, the details shown there. 3. From the 'Perfomance' tab, click on 'Virtual Memory' and list the details of what is checked and entered there. (Do NOT change anything here yet. When finished click 'Cance' to exit.) Cancel/close the System Properties window then... Open Windows Explorer, locate your C: drive and point to it, right-click on that drive then left-click on 'Properties'. Let me know what the information on that screen is as well. You can cancel once you have the information noted. This should help me offer you the best advice on how to get your system running better without too much problem.
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 9:40 am
OK, Dra, here we go: 1. On the 'General' tab, the details under 'System:' MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98. 4.10.98 and 'Computer:' IBM CORP APTIVA 6x86MX (tm) 2. On the 'Performance' tab, the details shown there: MEMORY: 92.0mb OF ram; SYStem RESOURCES: 73% FREE FILE SYSTEM: 32-BIT VIRTUAL MEMORY: 32-BIT DISK COMPRESSOR: NOT INSTALLED PC CARDS: NO PC CARD SOCKETS ARE INSTALLED 3. From the 'Perfomance' tab, click on 'Virtual Memory' and list the details of what is checked and entered there. (Do NOT change anything here yet: LET WINDOWS MANAGE MY VIRTUAL MEMORY SETTINGS (Recommended) Cancel/close the System Properties window then... Open Windows Explorer, locate your C: drive and point to it, right-click on that drive then left-click on 'Properties'. Let me know what the information on that screen is as well. FILE SYSTEM: FAT32 USED SPACE: 2,957,258,752 BYTES, 2.75GB FREE SPACE: 265,084,928 BYTES, 252 MB CAPACITY: 3,222,343,680 BYTES, 3.00 and then under this is the blue/pink pie, showing only a sliver of pink. Hope I did this right Dra and it helps.
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Juju2bigdog
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 9:42 am
Cassie, while you're doing that, I'll pop in here with some layman's explanations. You have two different kinds of "memory" on your computer. Oh, and uhhhhhhhhhh, Draheid or any other experts, feel free to tell me if I am phrasing it wrong. When I had you check My Computer:C: and then Properties, we were checking to see how much hard drive space you had left. That is how much "stuff" you can physically put on your computer, like programs, Word documents, games, and photographs (a big quantity of pictures can use a lot of hard drive), things like that. So you only have 248 Mb left to put stuff on. You are checking now to see 248 Mb out of "how much" you started with. I will guess if your computer is four years old, you started with about 4 Gigabytes, but we'll see. If it is 4 Gig, you are using 15/16ths of your total space. The other memory, the one your friend added is called RAM, and it is sort of a temporary memory that lets you do things on your computer WHILE you are using it. Generally the more RAM (up to a point of dimishing returns), the faster and easier you can do stuff on your computer. Okay. After you get the answers for Dra and post them here, he will come back and tell you some more stuff. Juju2itsybitsyDra Edit: I see we were posting at the same time. So you have about a 3 Gigabyte hard drive. That is pretty small. Okay, we'll see what Draheid says on that and the other stuff.
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 9:49 am
Thanks, Juju. I did not know there are two kinds of memory. BTW, I tried removing some programs and got a lot of "unable to uninstall--missing components" messages!!! Sounds like if I delete a lot of saved photos I have on the computer, I can gain back a chunk of my hard drive, n'est pas? It's a shame coz I wanted to save most of the photos someone scanned in for me. (LOL at your sig above
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 9:53 am
Ps...isn't that reading on "Systems Resources: 73% free" a good thing? (It gave me hope, lol)
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Juju2bigdog
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 9:56 am
Cassie, wait and see what Dra says. Don't uninstall or delete any stuff yet. Can you afford a new computer? Yours IS pretty old, AND pretty small. If you are not near stores, you can always get a Dell mail order. They have some pretty good prices nowadays and a pretty good reputation.
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Juju2bigdog
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 9:57 am
Cassie, I think the 73% free would be a good sign. It would mean you are not underpowered on RAM.
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 10:00 am
Unfortunately, Juju, on a very limited income and I can't get a new 'puter for a while. (Just spent over $1,100 on vet bills . I'll just try and eke this one out for a while. What I will do though is start looking around (and asking questions here) before I buy another, so I won't end up with another piece of crap.
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Draheid
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 10:06 am
Cassie: Yes, that's perfect. I can tell you many things about your computer from the information you've provided. As for clarification of Juju's information, technically RAM is memory, hard drive space is STORAGE. As you'll see here, however, Windows often uses a portion of your storage as 'Virtual Memory'. First, you hard drive is nearly full, 252MB free is not much storage space at all. You need to look into freeing up anything you can by removing unused programs, deleting old files, clearing cache files, etc., move any seldom used files you can, especially any large files such as music or video files, to another storage such as CD (if you have a CD writer that is) and remove them from the hard drive. The biggest conflict you are experiencing is that Windows is attempting to use what little space you have on your hard drive as Virtual Memory. When you load a large program to use, and windows detects that you do not have sufficient memory available to run that program, it will clear some memory by writing unused programs to 'Virtual Memory' which means it is writing it to a special file on your hard drive. Hard drives are considerably slower to access then regular memory mainly due to the fact that they are mechanical devices. If you aren't able to remove much because you want to save it, I would recommend you look into installing another, bigger hard drive. These are very inexpensive these days, around $100 for a 20 - 40 GB drive is fairly common. And they are really easy to install, just ask Juju! You may also want to think about a CD burner which would allow you to permanently store all of your picture files and still remove them from your hard drive. Once you have enough space free on your hard drive, the next steps you need to take are a little bit tricky but not difficult. First you will need to turn OFF your virtual memory, defragment your hard drive (defrag won't optimize any virtual memory area so turning it off temporarily will allow the entire free space to be optimized). Finally turn virtual memory back on with a fixed file size setting instead of allowing windows to control it. Setting a fixed swap file (virtual memory) prevents windows from working harder to maintain an variable swap file and prevents fragmentation of the swap file by creating one fixed file permanently. This also keeps windows from taking up processing time to manage the swap file which will make the computer seem to be running a little faster as well. Bottom line: You need more free hard drive space, one way or another, to get your computer running a little better for you. It wouldn't help a lot right now to add more memory but that is another option for future improvement of your computers operation. Hope this helps. When you're ready to proceed, let me know which way you want to go and I'll be happy to provide detailed instructions on what to do. If you have any questions about all this, let me know and I will be happy to explain things better for you. PS: The 73% free system resources is definitely a good indication. However, system resources is a whole different issue, having to do with file handles, file system management, etc. and can be effected by many different things. I have seen systems with 1000 MB of RAM that run out of system resources while they still have plenty of memory available
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 10:13 am
Phew, Draheid, looks like it's time for me to do something, huh? Right now, I'm going to turn it off and go do some cleaning (been spending WAY too much time at TVCH this past week ;) I'll definitely take you up on your offer though and have you walk me through some of the steps above tomorrow or the next day. Right now, a big thank you to you and Juju for your time and help--it's much appreciated.
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 1:32 pm
OK, Dra, I've gone through everything and cleared out as much as I can, but don't know how do I clear out cache files? Once done with cache stuff, I'll be ready to do the virtual memory defrag thing if you're up to giving me directions. Thanks again.
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Draheid
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 1:43 pm
Cassie: To clear the cache on Netscape 7.x, click on 'Edit - Preference' then expand 'Advanced' and click on 'Cache' where you will find a 'Clear Cache' button. That will clear it. Also, if you've used Internet Explorer at all, clearing that cache would also be helpful. To do that, load IE and click 'Tools - Internet Options' then click on 'Delete Files' - in the next dialog, check the 'Offline...' box also then click 'Ok' to finish that process. Let me know when you would like to move to the next step - note: it will probably take quite some time to defragment your hard drive, possibly several hours, and it needs to be allowed to complete before moving to the next step. I will be happy to provide step-by-step instructions you could write down or print in order to proceed, just let me know when you're ready.
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 1:50 pm
Dra, I cleared out IE no problem. But when I tried NS, there is no 'Clear Cache' button when I expand advanced. (Remember, I downloaded 7.1 yesterday!)
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Draheid
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 1:58 pm
Cassie: You missed a tiny step. 1. Click 'Edit' 2. Click 'Preferences' 3. Expand 'Advanced' (by clicking on the + to the left) 4. Click 'Cache' 5. Click 'Clear Cache' button. That should get it for you.
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 2:06 pm
OK, done it. Don't think it cleared though as it's still showing 50MB. Nothing seemed to happen when I clicked 'clear cache'.
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 2:18 pm
I'm up for the Defrag, Dra and if you're up for giving instructions. Cass
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Draheid
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 2:24 pm
Cassie: The 50 is the maximum size the cache is allowed to be before it automatically starts removing files from the folder. Most likely the 'button' stayed clicked for a few seconds while the cache was emptied. Now for the instructions to help your computer. 1. Close all running programs. Note: If you use a screen saver on this computer, I recommend turning it OFF (none) before proceeding as some screen savers can interfere with the defragment process. 2. Right-click on My Computer from your desktop then left-click on 'Properties' 3. Click on the 'Performance' tab. 4. Click on 'Virtual Memory' 5. Check the box 'Disable Virtual Memory' - you will probably see a message warning you that this is not recommended, proceed anyway. 6. After clicking 'Ok', you should be prompted to restart your computer. Allow the computer to reboot. 7. Immediately run Defrag by clicking 'Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Defragment' Note: This will probably take quite some time to complete. Please allow it to finish. After this has finished, you will need to set the virtual memory again, only this time you will set a fixed size instead of allowing Windows to manage it for you. Here's how: 1. Right-click on 'My Computer' then left-click on 'Properties'. 2. Click on the 'Performance' tab then click 'Virtual Memory'. 3. Check the option for 'Let me specify my own virtual memory settings'. Notice the 'Hard Disk:' setting and the amount of free space indicated there. The next settings should be well below that amount. 4. Set 'Maximum' to 144. 5. Set 'Minimum' to 144 also. (You have to set the maximum first or you might have trouble setting the minimum) 6. Click 'Ok' Note: You will probably get more warning message(s) during this process, click 'Ok' to any to proceed. Once you have clicked the final 'Ok', you should be prompted to reboot the computer again. Once it has restarted, you should be all set. Please ask any questions before you proceed so we can be sure you won't run into any trouble with this. It should be fairly easy but please ask if you have any concerns.
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Cassie
| Monday, December 29, 2003 - 2:34 pm
OK, Dra, I've got all that written down. One concern I have is with the defrag. In the past, it's seldom worked...it goes to above 10% and then restarts again...sometimes getting to 97% and then crashing. I'll give it a go if you think it's all right though.
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