XT
10-03-00, 03:58 PM
Hi all.
I'm helping a friend fix a computer problem. His computer is a brand new PIII, 64 megs ram, hdd has 6+ gigs avail., running Win98SE. He's also running Norton Disk Dr and anti-virus.
He was surfing the web, and locked up. Not knowing what to do, he hit the 'reset' button on his cpu--it sounds like probably multiple times.
His Norton Disk Doctor did a scandisk at reboot. It found a couple of lost clusters, with reportedly nothing in them, but he made an 'undo' diskette just in case (as suggested by disk dr).
The hdd was then reported to be OK.
Windows WILL BOOT UP. However, it takes 15 minutes or so. The mouse is glitchy. Everything you try to do is delayed: if you simply try to open Windows Explorer it has to sit and think about it for a several minutes!
It's acting as if there are no resources available. If you check system resources, however, they are 98% free. As mentioned, there is also plenty of hdd space.
I went over to help him. We did another scandisk. The scan disk took approx. 30-45 minutes to run, delaying for a long time on checking directories.
We did not elect to check the disk surface.
Everything checked out fine, but the computer still barely runs.
If you start into "safe mode", the computer still takes forever to boot, and acts as tho it's under heavy load. You can barely move the mouse, and all actions are greatly delayed.
You can disable start up items, and it doesn't seem to help.
I also ran a scanreg from dos. Scanreg found no problems.
The only unusual thing I saw was when I looked at device manager in control panel to see if there were any conflicts. There were NO conflicts. But, the FIRST time I looked, however, I saw hdd and floppy disk drives (or controllers, don't remember which) installed MULTIPLE times. Later in our 6 hour troubleshooting session, I decided to revisit device manager and possibly try removing the extra installs...but they were now fine! Each item was listed only once. This may be a clue.
Again, it is difficult even to poke around on this machine at the speed it's operating at...it probably took 30 minutes to boot up, open control panel, open device manager.
I'm looking for any suggestions. Could there be a hardware problem, caused by the hard reboots?
Could it be a virus, that just happened to kick in and lock him up, that is now robbing all resources even though the computer doesn't show that?
Or is it a corrupted file or registry issue? Will we need to try reinstalling win98se?
The last thing I can think of to try before giving in to a reinstall (lol) is to perhaps go back to a previously saved registry (user.dat and system.dat) and see what happens.
I have found all kinds of troubleshooting info related to startup or shutdown problems, but all are related to absolutely not being able to boot windows. In this case, windows WILL BOOT, but the computer is running at probably 2 mhz....slower than molasses....as if it has NO resources.
Any suggestions, anyone?
Thanks in advance.
I'm helping a friend fix a computer problem. His computer is a brand new PIII, 64 megs ram, hdd has 6+ gigs avail., running Win98SE. He's also running Norton Disk Dr and anti-virus.
He was surfing the web, and locked up. Not knowing what to do, he hit the 'reset' button on his cpu--it sounds like probably multiple times.
His Norton Disk Doctor did a scandisk at reboot. It found a couple of lost clusters, with reportedly nothing in them, but he made an 'undo' diskette just in case (as suggested by disk dr).
The hdd was then reported to be OK.
Windows WILL BOOT UP. However, it takes 15 minutes or so. The mouse is glitchy. Everything you try to do is delayed: if you simply try to open Windows Explorer it has to sit and think about it for a several minutes!
It's acting as if there are no resources available. If you check system resources, however, they are 98% free. As mentioned, there is also plenty of hdd space.
I went over to help him. We did another scandisk. The scan disk took approx. 30-45 minutes to run, delaying for a long time on checking directories.
We did not elect to check the disk surface.
Everything checked out fine, but the computer still barely runs.
If you start into "safe mode", the computer still takes forever to boot, and acts as tho it's under heavy load. You can barely move the mouse, and all actions are greatly delayed.
You can disable start up items, and it doesn't seem to help.
I also ran a scanreg from dos. Scanreg found no problems.
The only unusual thing I saw was when I looked at device manager in control panel to see if there were any conflicts. There were NO conflicts. But, the FIRST time I looked, however, I saw hdd and floppy disk drives (or controllers, don't remember which) installed MULTIPLE times. Later in our 6 hour troubleshooting session, I decided to revisit device manager and possibly try removing the extra installs...but they were now fine! Each item was listed only once. This may be a clue.
Again, it is difficult even to poke around on this machine at the speed it's operating at...it probably took 30 minutes to boot up, open control panel, open device manager.
I'm looking for any suggestions. Could there be a hardware problem, caused by the hard reboots?
Could it be a virus, that just happened to kick in and lock him up, that is now robbing all resources even though the computer doesn't show that?
Or is it a corrupted file or registry issue? Will we need to try reinstalling win98se?
The last thing I can think of to try before giving in to a reinstall (lol) is to perhaps go back to a previously saved registry (user.dat and system.dat) and see what happens.
I have found all kinds of troubleshooting info related to startup or shutdown problems, but all are related to absolutely not being able to boot windows. In this case, windows WILL BOOT, but the computer is running at probably 2 mhz....slower than molasses....as if it has NO resources.
Any suggestions, anyone?
Thanks in advance.