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| Thread ID: 80060 | 2007-06-10 04:36:00 | Can Win XP Run on this computer OK? | stu161204 (123) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 557890 | 2007-06-10 04:36:00 | My Mum about a month or so ago got another computer as the last one she had was junk. With this one mum has now (which came from some one else when dad upgraded there computer) has an annoying problem with it, It randomly locks/freezes for a few secs to a few mins Like for example it can take a very long time to boot up, & some time I need to restart it to get it going , & other times when mum is reading an e-mail it just freezes for a few secs or when she tried to open a program Any ideas what would case this? I don’t think it’s the CPU, as before on another hard drive we where running Ubuntu on it and it ran fine. I suspect it’s the hard drive that’s causing the bottle neck, but could also be XP? Can Win XP Run on this computer OK? Here are the system specs: Intel Pentium III 730MHz 256MB ram (Dads going to be adding some more ram to it soon) If you need any more info let me know :) |
stu161204 (123) | ||
| 557891 | 2007-06-10 04:55:00 | Has the HDD been defragged recently? after an XP install it is really bad, no Spyware, Adware, Viruses etc? It should run, I used to run it on lower than that, it ran, but was a little slow, but was not unstable... |
The_End_Of_Reality (334) | ||
| 557892 | 2007-06-10 05:10:00 | Has the HDD been defragged recently? after an XP install it is really bad I will give it a try & see if it will run with out it locking up! no Spyware, Adware, Viruses etc? No Viruses, I scanned it with AVG about a week or so ago & it was all clean. There won’t be any Spyware, Adware on it as mum has not been able to do much surfing with this randomly locks/freezes problem & the only programs on it at the moment is Picasa, Google toolbar, AVG, Yahoo Messenger (7.0) Windows has only been installed on it since the 1st of May 2007 |
stu161204 (123) | ||
| 557893 | 2007-06-10 05:30:00 | ... a Virus can come at ANY time that you are connected to the net... a lot can happen in a week virus wise, don't fool yourself ;) Same thing as above... you don't need to have any interaction with the Spyware/Adware for it to be in the system... And it does not matter how long Windows has been installed. worst case I would run a full reformat and if it is XP then that should get ride of what ever is causeing the instability |
The_End_Of_Reality (334) | ||
| 557894 | 2007-06-10 06:10:00 | XP Can definitely run fine on that computer. I used to run SP2 and had about 64M less RAM than you. Like Reality said, another full, clean install of XP would really speed things up or it should otherwise maybe it could be a hardware issue. | beeswax34 (63) | ||
| 557895 | 2007-06-10 06:52:00 | There won’t be any Spyware, Adware on it as mum has not been able to do much surfing with this randomly locks/freezes problem & the only programs on it at the moment is Picasa, Google toolbar, AVG, Yahoo Messenger (7.0) Windows has only been installed on it since the 1st of May 2007 Snicker. Of course there can be malware on it. An unprotected, naked install of WinXP can be infected in 30 minutes. I tried it once. Didn't even have to go anywhere dodgy. And bump it up to 512mb. |
pctek (84) | ||
| 557896 | 2007-06-10 06:53:00 | Snicker. Of course there can be malware on it. An unprotected, naked install of WinXP can be infected in 30 minutes. I tried it once. Didn't even have to go anywhere dodgy. And bump it up to 512mb. 30 is being generous, it's more like 10 minutes or less. |
winmacguy (3367) | ||
| 557897 | 2007-06-10 07:52:00 | A long time ago (hint: it was on my state-of-the-art 486DX-25 with 4MB of RAM), I had a similar-sounding problem which turned out to be a flaky hard drive. The drive would [seemingly] randomly decide to not read the data correctly, resulting in a lengthy sequence of retries (all within the drive controller/driver code) which permanently lit the HDD LED until finally the disk decided to give up its secrets. I timed it once at around 5 minutes (usually about 20s to 1min), during which time absolutely nothing happened, then suddenly all was right until the next time. The first few times I saw this I would reboot out of frustration, then I noticed that occasionally, if I waited log enough, Windows (v3.0, natch) would just continue on as though nothing had happened. The other thing to check on a older machine would be that your fans are working & your CPU heatsink isn't clogged up - thermal lockup of the CPU can cause similar issues. |
MushHead (10626) | ||
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