I think my computer has early stage alzheimers

[catmandu57]

Every so often it balks, it doesn't freeze, it just refuses to carry out whatever I've told it to do. Mostly it happens when I try to call up images, it just balks like it's forgotten how to do it.
I think maybe age is getting to the os, windows 98+, I do regular mainenance, defrag and scans, there's enough spy detecting programs and firewall to keep the nasty's at bay, it's gotta be loosing it's grasp.

[JVS]

1. Insert sanctimonious comments about non-Microsoft OS's here.

Even if said non-Microsoft OS is made by a company that had to be bought and bailed out by Microsoft

[Enraged_Ape]

2. "Buy a new computer" is how all those comments translate

Like that is any fucking help whatsoever.

[ET Awful]

17. As predicted see sanctimonious replies below about

buying a Mac. Yup, spend a thousand dollars on a Mac that will run slower, will not run the applications you need, then will come the suggestions to buy software for the Mac that will allow you to run Windows apps (after you also buy a copy of Windows to run within the shell on the Mac, which slows it down even more).

Tell ya what all you Mac fanboy types. . . . when Mac makes an OS that will run properly on my 64 bit processor and will run all my programs (that includes everything from obscure accounting programs to Half-Life 2), I'll consider it.

[JVS]

22. Whoo hoo! It's like im psychic or psychotic or something!

[Enraged_Ape]

35. You can almost set your watch by these people

You'd think that Apple was owned by the Church of Scientology.

[ET Awful]

3. Do the following

Do your scandisk and defrag, then do a Google search for Regvac and download and run it. This will clean up unneeded registry crap that will slow down your system.

After doing those, let me know if it helps at all.

Next we'll start looking at what programs are running in the background that are memory hogs (possibly one of your spyware utilities is actually eating up resources and is slowing down the system).

[catmandu57]

5. Could be ET

I'll try that later.

[Enraged_Ape]

4. You probably have a bloated registry

It's just a fact of life that after a few years of even the most diligent maintenance, Windows gets full of crap--leftover remnants of old, long-forgotten programs and other little bits of stuff. There are programs out there that can help you clean the registry up, but in my experience the best solution is to:

1) spend a few weeks backing up all the data you want to keep onto Zips or CD-ROM
2) reformat your boot drive
3) reinstall Windows from scratch
4) reinstall all your programs and data

It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. Your computer will run like it's brand new and will stay that way for another several years or until some massive hardware failure kills it for good.

[ET Awful]

6. That's why I suggested the Regvac

It will often clean up all that crap without needing to reformat/reinstall.

[catmandu57]

8. I downloaded and used the regvac

It caught a lot of crap so this will help, thanks for the info.

[ET Awful]

10. No problem.

Let me know if you still have problems, and I'll try to come up with other ideas that don't include "buy a new machine" or "buy a Mac." We both know that those don't help.

[UTUSN]

24. Thanks to Both of You for Brining It Up and the Tip on Regvac

I hadn't done a disk cleanup and defrag in months until last week, when it took forever, an hour or two to do. Did it today and it took 15 or so minutes. Then did the RegVac as tipped. It's a 30-day trial, right? It said it found 700+ suspect items and gave the options to reinstall them or to delete the list: So Deleting the list DOES kick them out of the registry? And do we need to uninstall at the end of 30 days?

[ET Awful]

26. You don't need to uninstall really.

The product will still work afterwards, it'll just tell you your demo has expired and you should purchase the product (at least that's the way it used to do it).

If it stops working, uninstall it, and PM me and I'll try and find links to some other similar products that will work for you (I've used several in the past that work equally well).

[UTUSN]

31. Uh-oh. Now my Norton AntiVirus is Unenabled & won't go on

That has never happened before. The only thing different is the RegVac. Any suggestions? I can't make heads or tails of the Norton "solution":

*******QUOTE*******

Norton AntiVirus has encountered an internal program error.



Technical Suuport Knowledge Base says:

Error: "Norton AntiVirus 2004 has encountered an internal program error" (4002,517)

Situation:
After installing Norton AntiVirus 2004 or Norton AntiVirus 2004 Professional Edition and then restarting your computer, you notice that Auto-Protect is disabled. When you right-click the Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect icon in the system tray and click Enable Auto-Protect, you see the error message "Norton AntiVirus has encountered an internal program error." In the lower-left corner of the window, you see the numbers 4002,517

You may also see this error after Norton AntiVirus has been working correctly for a period of time.

Solution:
Decide what to do
Do one of the following:

If you have a SoundBlaster Audigy sound card: Start with the solution "Stop Creative Media Center from loading when the computer starts." If that does not fix the problem, then go to the next solution.

If you do not have a SoundBlaster Audigy sound card, do one of the following:

If you are running Windows XP: Begin with the solution "Make sure that the Norton AntiVirus program files are set to load on startup (Windows XP only)." If that solution does not fix the problem, then try "Remove a leftover registry key." If that does not fix the problem, then try the remaining two solutions.

If you are running Windows 2000: Go to the solution "Reinstall the Symantec shared files (Symevent)." If that does not fix the problem, then go to the last solution.

********UNQUOTE*******

[UTUSN]

32. Looks Like the Problem Is Over

I *did* uninstall RegVac, and after extensive doodling with the Norton "knowledge base," ended up uninstalling and re-installing the AntiVirus and Firewall. For awhile it wouldn't let me install with the CD, saying there was still some more recent version installed somewhere. Had to do a Search and manually delete several files, while some others would not be deleted. Finally the installation was allowed. I'll be sticking to my low tech ways again.

[Enraged_Ape]

36. And that's a good suggestion

But I also suggested the reformat/reinstall in case that didn't work.

I used Regvac last year when my computer was doing the same things the original poster's was doing. Unfortunately, my computer was so far gone that Regvac couldn't do much. I took the time for the reformat/reinstall and haven't looked back.

[Shredr]

7. Get a Mac

You'll never look back.

[ET Awful]

9. Gee thanks for that completely useless idea.

Too bad it doesn't actually fix his problem though.

[Shredr]

12. Gee, it's not a completely useless idea

Other people with PCs were giving ideas on how to fix it. I don't have a PC, I have a Mac, which never gives me a problem, so I put in my two cents. If that ruffles your feathers, tough.

[ET Awful]

16. So tell me, if someone tells you their car is out of gas, do you tell them

to buy a new car? No, you tell them how to refill the tank.

Your suggestion is worthless because no one asked if they should replace teh computer, they asked how to fix what they had.

Thus, a suggestion to replace it with something else is, indeed, a worthless suggestion.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ET Awful]

25. First, you might want to read the DU rules before making such idiotic

sounding titles for your posts.

Second, if you want to talk about Macs, start a thread about Macs. If you saw you couldn't help someone, then you are taking the entire thread off topic and doing nothing to help.

You can stow your fanboy rhetoric wherever you like.

If you saw you couldn't help, then there was NO REASON to go off-topic, if you wanted to discuss Macs, the thing to do is start another thread regarding them, not distract from the original thread to spew your PC bashing nonsense.

[Shredr]

28. You're right, I apologize

I certainly did not mean to offend anyone or cause such a stir over my silly little comment. I was under the assumption that, when I clicked on the post and saw I couldn't be of any help (which really was my first impulse, to help) if I just made some little comment, it would not be taken so seriously. I was off-topic, I'm sorry about that.

Hey, your cats are really cute. (Oops, that's off-topic too -- but I do mean it.)

[ET Awful]

29. Apology accepted.

Typically, the best way to make such a comment is to label the post as off topic and say something more akin to "I could help you if you had a Mac since that's my area of expertise."

DU being what it is, Cat compliments are always on topic :) :) :)

[Shredr]

30. Point well taken

"I could help you if you had a Mac since that's my area of expertise," would have been a much better way to go. LOL! I didn't even think of that. Funny how different people's minds work. That would have made so much more sense (and I still would have been able to beef up my number of posts by adding my worthless two cents, which was my alterior motive). Hope y'all have figured out the computer problem while I've been babbling aimlessly over here. I'll stop with the off-topic posts now, and go to dinner.

PS. I have 2 ragdoll cats, longhairs like your little guy on the left. They're my life.

[Melynn]

11. O.K. I'll get a Mac

My computer is six years old and running Windows 98 too. And its also starting to show it's age. For security reasons, I am going to buy a Mac later this year once I get my finances together. I can't wait.

[Shredr]

13. Macs are so user friendly

And the new ones are so streamlined and so much more affordable. Plus, if you use iTunes, it integrates so much better.

[driver8]

14. Macs are the shiznit...

I use a PC at work and I hate that *&#@ thing.

[Melynn]

15. I have heard all about Macs being user friendly and such

but what is selling me on the Macs is the insecure Windows systems.

Microsoft just release thirteen security patches for Windows. To me, that's absurd, if not criminal, for a OS to have that many security holes. I wouldn't be surprised if Mac sales start to go up as other people come to the same realization as I did about M$ bloatware.

[ET Awful]

18. I know, and all those top-secret government documents you store

on your PC are in such high danger.

Hint: People have been saying "Mac sales will start to go up" for over a decade. It hasn't happened.

[Shredr]

20. It's true.

Plus Macs never get the viruses that run rampant through the PC world. Macs are just made better.

The new, powerful Mac mini should finally start turning some PC users heads. Especially since you can use your existing PC monitors and mouses (mice?) and they're so inexpensive.

Some people just have to fight progress. Just can't stand change and improvement. Most of them are called "conservative."

[Dookus]

27. my home machines

were Macintoshes from the mid-80s to the late 90s.

Now I use a PC. I actually have fewer problems now than I did on my latest Macs. Plus I can actually run the software I want. The notion that Macs = progress is silly.

[sakabatou]

33. My computer seems to have "constipation"

sometimes "freezes" when doing multiple operations in large scale software.

[enigmatic]

34. You probably need more memory

How much memory do you have in your PC? A low (250w) power supply might be it too, if you're doing alot of graphics or downloading..

[sakabatou]

37. Um

How do I get it to display how much memory there is (PC)?

[enigmatic]

38. When you first boot up...

It will display how much memory you have on the screen..