what do i do?

[mr_anderson187]

ok heres the problem

my dad voilunteered me to help with his friends computer, which he says crashes all the time, so hes dropped it round with me...

amd-k6
8gb hdd
64mb ram
agp grfx card
win98

he says this crashes all the time

literally i dunno wot to do, so far ive taken the hdd out, put it as slave on my machine and backed up all the data,

what id ;liek to know is, is this machien ok to run windows xp? cos i coudl easily foramt the hdd and install xp pro on there if it coudl run it, or would i be better sticking with windows 98???


suggestions appreciated

[icp222]

For one there is no chance that thing would run XP... Friends machine with 256ram struggles with it. I would guess the reason it keeps kacking up is that it is over stressed. Those are old old parts, and I imagine your friend it using ever increasingly new software (as a natural progression), but clearly the hardware isn't following suit. I would say dumb down the intensity of the programs, or upgrade (i.e. new machine).

But hey, what I have just said is very presumtious. Please enlighten me a little further...

[r1zeek]

/\ what he said.

XP needs 256Mb RAM minimum to run, and 512Mb runs it okish.

If you have the disks then i'd say give it a format and reinstall Windows 98, appart from that can't think of anything.

[mr_anderson187]

your not actually far wrong,

but upgradign is a nono as he jsut huses it to to type letters and things and his daughter does some school work on it too, thats really all.

another sortof question, is there anyway to keep all teh data on the hdd, liek conection to the internet and printer drivers etc, and get rid of everything else???, because, i can put all his word documents and such on a cd and load them back in. im trying to say can i sortof half format it?

[-mb-]

You can backup the dial-up details, I think you can copy the connection from dial-up networking properties.

Printer drivers ect. can always be redownloaded off the net, as can all other hardware drivers. Just make sure you note down the relevant model numbers.
Use SiSoft Sandra (http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/) to get hardware details.
The latest drivers won't do it any harm anyway.

You can't really "half-format".

Also, when you've reinstalled Win98 and MS Office, do get the latest windows updates.

Then give him Mozilla Firefox, Spybot Seach and Destroy, Spyware Blaster, Crap Cleaner, AVG Antivirus, Irfanview and Winamp.

Then he should be set
If able, try to explain to the friend how to use and update the Virus and Spyware stuff.

[mr_anderson187]

thanks -mb- ure pretty usefull,

he hasnt given me his 98 cd tho, lol, bur wen i get it off him, 98 need sdrivers for cd rw writers and stuff like that dont they?

[mr_anderson187]

ysee hes given me a cdrw'r to put in as well, but lookin at the box its just bang it in and nero will detect it as a writer,


if only all computers had xp, this would be a lot easier

[Daymonkey]

made sure its not overheating. is there lots of dust give it a small cleanout.

[mr_anderson187]

i twas vvvv dusty inside tbh, but in not sure bout overheating, it has a hs and a jippy we 40mm fan on it, lol id needa find some way to attach a bigger fan *(80mm case fan) to it stably, ill test it for heat later, im still copying files over atm

[mr_anderson187]

ok yet another problem,

when im scanning this hdd with STINGER, a little program that finds then deletes/moves/fixes most viruses, it seesm that theres turdloads of stuff in teh tempoary internet folder, could this be slowing the computer down, can i delete all these files, if they are only temporary internet files?

EDIT: the temporary internet files in the folder are 508MB!!!!!!!!

[mike_w]

I thought Stinger gets rid of all the viri it finds, so that shouldn't be a problem any more?

As said above, formatting would be a good idea - gets rid of all the viri, and the rubbish that WIndows seems to collect. Drivers shouldn't be too hard to find, either on original CDs or on the internet. It's generally a good idea to format a PC every so often anyway - a clean install is much faster than a very old install.

As for getting rid of the temporary internet files, it should be fine just to delete them - you should probably try deleting them through Internet Explorer first rather than manually.

[mr_anderson187]

thanks mike, i knew youd be able to help, will get onto that asap,

[iranu]

Sounds to me like (just off the top of my head) that there is very little room left on the hard drive for a paging file. Check this and set it correctly. Many programs especially with win 98 use this file and if it ain't big enough it can cause random lock ups.

Dust - this is a big problem for pc's that have never been cleaned. I recommend taking the lot apart cleaning all the surfaces and contacts and rebuilding. From personal experience those K6, slot A, heatsinks are dust magnets, cleaning them can make all the difference.

On a final note regarding win xp on old machines - I have found it runs fine as long as there is enough ram, example k6-750Mhz athlon slot a, 512mb ram, 10g hd, tnt 2 riva gfx, sound blaster live, which my auntie now uses for email, word etc.

There is loads of free sd-ram kicking about round various enthusiasts houses!!

[Kumagoro]

Dont waste your time just format and reinstall windows just get the disks off him save yourself hastle

[megah0]

I would look at the heatsink, I bet its full of dust bunnies