posted on September 7, 2001 10:19:56 AM new
A bit of good news.
I installed the monitor from our second computer on our main computer and while it's not a quality monitor with a great picture, it does not look blurry ( however, our photos look very dark and grainy on it, so I don't see how I could use this monitor [from our second computer] to "make" quality photos for auction purposes). So, I don't think it's our computer after all, just the used monitor we bought.
Luckily, the man we bought the used monitor from is going to refund, so we can use that money toward a new monitor.
Meya
Yes, Joy did that and it didn't help. It looks like that used monitor we bought isn't good.
posted on September 7, 2001 10:24:51 AM newthewholenineyards, you also need to remove programs from MSCONFIG so that they don't start up when you boot up your system. Removing unused programs is good for clearing up hard drive space, but it doesn't stop those others from running in the background.
If you have a Win98 system, you get to MSCONFIG by going to Start, Run, and you type MSCONFIG in the box. This brings up a window with a few different tabs, the first is General, you want the tab that says Startup. Look through that long list of programs...every one that has a checkmark is loading at startup and running in the background. Some are necessary, many are not. Look for ones called Reminder, Gator, Comet Cursor, there will be stuff there from your printer, Quicken if you use it, and many others.
Remove the checkmark from ones you want to stop. You have to reboot for the changes to take affect.
posted on September 7, 2001 02:36:37 PM new
Meya ~ I want to thank you more than I can even say on here. While it's still not running perfect, my computer is running 100% better than it has been for months. I only have TWO icons now in the box beside the clock...my zone alarm and my virus scanner. I didn't need anything else. I've been able to leave my computer on for longer amounts of time than I have been able to a long time. I'm thrilled at the idea of being to launch more than 8 auctions at a time
Thank you again so much! I should have done the same thing as loosecannon...asked on here! A long time ago!
posted on September 7, 2001 03:54:28 PM new
We got a new monitor!
It's a Philips 107 S, 17" 1280 X 1024 res.
Very nice and large picture (we've had a 15" monitor for a long time). And the best thing? The price was only $169.00 and they offer a $30.00 rebate, so we'll end up getting it for under $150.00. We got it at Best Buy.
Wow! I can tell that I'll be able to make good photos with it too.
Now if we could just get the shutdown on our computer fixed we'd be in hog heaven.
I'd like to thank each of you for your replies and helping us out here. Thank you.
posted on September 7, 2001 04:25:42 PM new
Congratulations! A good monitor will save your eyes.
With regards to the shutdown problem, are you receiving any type of error message during shutdown? Or does it just "hang"? Often times, computers won't shut down if there is a corrupt .DLL or a background program that will not end properly.
I suggest a process of elimination. End all your applications, including system tray programs like Real Player, etc. If you press Control-Alt-Del you'll see a list of Tasks. Make a note of them. End half of the tasks on that list except for Explorer. If your computer shuts down, then it is one of the tasks you shut down that may be the culprit. If you still can't shut down, then it may be your tasks still operating. Just go through the process of elimination until you can narrow it down.
posted on September 7, 2001 10:10:48 PM new
Meya just a bit of an update here You are my new hero
My computer has been running, non stop, for almost 8 hours. There have been no problems, no churning and grinding, nothing. I've launched almost 100 auctions...multiple ones at a time...tonight. I can keep more than 1 browser open. I can even let my screen saver come on and STILL not have that churning and grinding start. If I had known this months ago!
ZoneAlarm may be able to hang a shutdown, but it is the best damn firewall there is so removing it should not be an option.
I've been online about a decade now, and always found resident virus scanner nothing but trouble. Especially McAfee and Norton which are basically what the French would call 'merde'. I have plenty of virii on my system. All nicely boxed and caged and great for testing my scanners. Haven't had an infection in years either, and even when it happened, never lost any data over it either. My secret? Scan my system on a regular basis and then shut the AV software OFF. And NEVER open unknown attachments or allow any of my software to run scripts like MSWORD will do by default. In fact I try to avoid Microsoft garbage as much as possible since it is designed to take as much control as possible away from you and hand your system over to the corporate types who feel they know whats best for you. Speaking of which - disable JAVA and ActiveX whenever possible, as those benefit only advertizers and malicious hackers.
posted on September 8, 2001 06:25:35 AM new
Glad my comments helped you wholenineyards. Did you pinpoint what the offending program was or was it a combination of things?
As far as shut down trouble...use the same method as mentioned before for shutting off stuff running in the background. Try doing this one program at a time until the shutdown trouble stops. Win98 has known problems with the shutdown, and certain programs such as virus scanners, screen savers, and the like can make it worse. We have problems at times caused by our home network.
posted on September 8, 2001 08:10:25 AM new
I haven't got a clue which program it was that was causing the problems. I disabled a lot of stuff (I didn't even know some of which I was disabling!). I wish I knew for sure but I *really* don't care I appreciate your advice and had a really nice time on the computer yesterday/last night doing my eBay work...not having to reboot every hour sure made things go a lot smoother Now, any advice on how to get bids on the 39 of 47 auctions I have ending tonight? I don't need to buy a new computer now so hey...maybe I'll do something else!
posted on September 8, 2001 01:59:39 PM new
loosecannon
You've solved you're monitor problem, but you should still max out your RAM since it is SOOOO cheap know.
Your K6 is just fine and can give good service for years to come.
As to shut down problems, there are many causes for this in 95 and 98. With so little RAM and the possibility you're running bunches of those little programs nobody needs, you have 1 problem. If you're running 95 or 98 buy the 98SE upgrade (the full version won't install if you have an OS already present). 98SE has many changes to ease shutdown problems. Previous versions would "hang" if a program would not end, 98SE now "times out" and shuts down anyway in most cases. Also by installing it you may repair any possible corruption you may now have.
One of the primary offenders in shutdown problems is the systems energy saving features. You can try disabling the monitor power off, hard drive power off, and cpu suspend power saving features of you computer. If you go to www.support.microsoft.com and search on shut down problems there are test programs and procedures to find what is causing your shutdown problem.
posted on September 8, 2001 02:19:43 PM new
Hi! Wonderful post here!
I was able to run MSCONFIG & remove all those unwanted startup programs. Thanks!
How do I disable activeX & JAVA?Is this what causes thesse pop up windows to show up? I hate those pop up windows!
One last question, how do I remove temp internet files?
Thanks again!
posted on September 8, 2001 05:53:23 PM new
While technically you can disable the integrated onboard video or sound and add another card, many of those systems have limited slots to begin with. You can run into conflicts with IRQ's also with this approach. If you are someone who likes to upgrade sound cards and video cards, an integrated system isn't the best choice for you.
If you buy a trimmed down system, your all around choices will be trimmed down as well. For many users, this isn't a problem. For a true computer head, it is. We have kept our PII 400 system very up-to-date with low cost upgrades over the past year and a half. If it had not been so easily upgraded, we would no doubt been forced into a new machine. The few hundred dollars we've spent don't compare to what a new system (that we would want) would cost. We also work on family and friends machines...hubby is to the point where he won't even touch an HP or a Compaq because normally you are totally limited in what you can do to them upgrade wise.
We're running a 3 1/2 year old PII 400, 60gigs total hard drive space in two hard drives, 256mb ram, 32mb video card, writable cd rom along with a regular cd rom, 4 year old 21" vivitron monitor. It handles everything we through at it. The only thing we can't do that we would like in the future is input video from a VHS and edit it. A DVD would be nice, but I have one on my portable, and we have one in the family room. Since software hasn't been released much on DVD yet, it hasn't been much of an issue.
And, we ran that system for 3 solid years without a reformat. We only reformatted 4 months ago so we could switch to Win98se for full USB support. How did we do this? We built the kids their own system and made them leave ours alone.
