Computer Woes

My home PC system seems to be going down in bits and pieces. Still haven’t fixed my problem with AOL freezing, tried uninstalling and doing a complete reinstall. This worked for a couple of days, now it’s back to freezing. Now my color printer’s color printing is way off and black is barely there. The black ink cartridge is only a couple months old and I tried a new color cartride, but that didn’t change anything. Tried telling the printer to clean the cartridges, but that didn’t work either. Tried reinstalling the software, this cleared the problem a little but it was short-lived, just like my AOL problem. I tried to defrag my C drive but defrag froze while checking the FAT. I guess it’s time for a new C drive, maybe that will solve everything.

Do you have a virus? Did you check for those?

Yeah, I have a current virus protector, but it hasn’t found anything.

We may be able to help if you tell us about your system. Give us the details about your components (CPU, motherboard, video card, etc.) What operating system do you have? Have you upgraded anything recently?

If you can’t figure out how to fix it, here’s my advice: back up all the personal and/or important files on your computer and reformat the hard drive. Then install Windows and make sure it works (e.g. defrag, etc.) Now install the AOL software. Be aware that their software is known to be buggy – the crashes may have nothing to do with you. (Also, get the latest version.) Once it works, download the newest drivers for your sound card, video card, etc. Then try to get your printer working. (You may need a different driver for that also.)

The key is to take it one step at a time, so that when something doesn’t work, you know what is likely causing the problem. Good luck!

How full is your hard drive? Your symptoms sound vaguely like a computer having trouble creating temporary files.

My problems started about a year ago, AOL 5.0 started freezing when I tried to go outside of AOL’s domain. Uninstalled 5.0 and replaced it with 4.0, still froze when going outside AOL but not as frequent, until a few days ago. 4 started freezing right when I signed on. Uninstalled 4 and reinstalled 5, which fixed the problem for a couple of days. Now it’s back to freezing when I sign on. My printer just started acting up within the past month.

OS is 98, not sure as to the motherboard, all I know is it’s a PC-100 and has both AT and ATX connectors. The motherboard has also been having problems, sometimes it will freeze just before checking the RAM (128Meg). I did have an incident where the on-board modem was fried, possibly a spike came thru the phone line. Whatever it was also took out the CPU fan, the keyboard, and I think the original CPU. I bought a Zoom USB modem to use instead of the onboard one. I recently upgraded from a Celeron 333 to a P3-450 and replaced my internal Zip drive with a Philips 8x4x32. That burner doesn’t seem to be working properly either, I tried copying a couple of games with it but those games won’t recognize the copy. Of course, that could be a result of the original CDs being copy protected. C drive is a 20Gig, free space is down to 2G due to migrating files from Zip disks into a second PC. Video card is a Voodoo 3.

What I thought of doing is to get a new HD and install a fresh version of 98, then copy needed files from the 20G. The 20G would then be reformatted and placed into my second PC (a Compaq Deskpro). I may also need a new motherboard with the intermittant problems my current one has been experiencing.

Just got off the phone with my brother. He’s not much of a tech, but he’s been in the computer business since around '85. In his opinion, my 20gig is going bad, which would explain why my system has been having trouble booting up past the memory check. Sometimes the system tries to find the HD but can’t.

OK, I’m in the process of adding a second 20G. I had tried to avoid using my bad HD and do a full install of Win 98, but that 98 didn’t want to be run from DOS. So I had to go through the bad one. I copied the entire bad drive to the new one, then boot from a 98 startup disk and install my 98 upgrade over the existing one to make sure everything works. Then I can set about removing AOL and the printer, run another virus check, then reinstall AOL and the printer. Then I can see if my bad HD can be reformatted, which will become my second drive.

The contents of my existing second drive will need to be copied, then it will be moved to the Comapq. Turns out the Compaq is a P166 (not a 133 as I first thought) with Win 98. I don’t want 98 in the Comapq, I’ll have to install either 3.1 or 95 in there so it will be compatible with some old games that will no longer work on my P3.

Hmmm…lost something while editing. Meant to say that I started last night and will start the 98 installation when I get home today.

No virus? Okay.

Next thing to try is: RUN: SFC

SFC (system file checker) is one of those programs they don’t let you know about for 98. It checks all your system files & lets you know which ones were changed & then puts the right ones back for ya. It’s pretty cool.

I use it first. Then after that I use a DOS thingy:
scanreg /restore & restore an earlier registry, this only takes a couple minutes.

Finally managed to install Angie’s full version of Win98 and all my drivers. Installed AOL 5.0, signed on, upgraded to 6.0. A day later, AOL is still running fine and is exhibiting no signs of freezing. Now if I could just get my printer to work and my sound card to accept audio thru the line-in jack.

I have had the same problem with my printer. The print heads get clogged up and should be cleaned. This isn’t always possible and I actually had to buy a new printer to get it to work. YMMV, though. My printer is a Canon BJC 6000.

Got my sound to work like I wanted. Forgot to change the line in from output to input.

Yeah, I tried telling my printer (HP 712C) to clean those heads, but it didn’t help.