# Odd computer behavior

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-computer-behavior/32011>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 4, 2000, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-computer-behavior/32011 "2000-09-04T22:30:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2000, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-computer-behavior/32011/1 "2000-09-04T22:30:03Z")

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When I logged on earlier this afternoon, it took an extraordinarily long time for my computer (a 7300 Power Macintosh) to load anything… much longer than usual, anyway. I tried restarting, and that didn’t help. Then I realized that I had left my Palm connected, so I tried disconnecting it and restarting. Now things are loading much more quickly. Even though my Palm wasn’t on, was it influencing how quickly I could read stuff off the net, or was it something else (some time did pass before I disconnected the Palm)? How would just having it plugged in do that?

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**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2000, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-computer-behavior/32011/2 "2000-09-04T23:26:32Z")

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It could have just been a fluke, cured by restarting.

OTOH, are you sure your Palm was off?

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**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2000, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-computer-behavior/32011/3 "2000-09-05T00:27:48Z")

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Odd Computers? Are they anything like Emachines Computers?

Any time you have anything connected to a computer it takes longer to boot. Ive got a network, the other computers are off but itll still take time to find that out.

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**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2000, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-computer-behavior/32011/4 "2000-09-05T03:26:29Z")

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mine seems to take a long while to shut down because of the network

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**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2000, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-computer-behavior/32011/5 "2000-09-05T15:10:36Z")

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sailor, if its a W98 machine you can change the system settings to speed things up. I only do that because the other network computers are only used rarely.

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**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2000, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-computer-behavior/32011/6 "2000-09-05T16:10:38Z")

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Handy I am running win95 OSR2 on this machine.

Now that you mentioned it I believe the other one, which uses win98, _does_ shut down much faster. Is there any trick so that this one will do the same?