| Author |
Message |
Paul Martin
| | Posted on Sunday, May 4, 2003 - 4:27 am: | |
Hello everyone.
I would be very grateful if anyone could help me.
Compuuter specs:
Time Computer Systems
500MHZ AMD processor, 3D NOW
128MB RAM PC100
Motherboard: MSI INC. ALADDIN5 VER:1.0
BIOS:American Megatrends, Inc
Drives: 20.50 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
7.08 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8400B [CD-RW drive](DriveD)
SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-606 [CD-ROM drive](DriveE)
Video card: ATI Rage 128 VR AGP (English)
Sound card: Sound Blaster AudioPCI 64V
Modem: USB Cable Modem 351000
Windows 98SE
My computer freezes at seemingly random points. It boots with no obvious problems and runs with no obvious problems and then will freeze. No error message or blue screen, just a lock-up. Sometimes you can use the mouse cursor and sometimes not.
It crashes most on games where there is a lot of memory usage. It has crashed frequently on Jack Nicklaus GBC golf but I have used that program with no problems for years.
About a month ago the computer crashes very often, sometimes when no programs were running.
I started the computer to command prompt and tried to start Windows from there by typing WIN. The message "Himem.sys is missing. Check it is in the Windows directory." It was.
A friend advised me to start the computer using the boot disk and replace system files by pressing "sys c:" from the A: prompt. This I did and it DID improve the computer a lot but it still crashes about three times a day. I replaced the himem.sys file from the Windows 98 CD. I have done the above two steps repeatedly and see a marked improvement but the computer still freezes.
I have looked on the internet and found that my problem could be caused by a faulty RAM chip so I replaced it with another P100 chip that I had. Again, there seemed to be an improvement but the computer still appears to be fine then crashes.
At first I thought something must be modifying a system files but I've tried not using applications to see if that helps and it doesn't.
So, basically, I'm stuck. I've checked for viruses. There are none. What could it be?
I've posted this under memory problems but that is just an educated guess and I apologise to the moderators of this Forum if I have posted in an incorrect place.
As aforementioned, I would be very grateful if anyone could help.
Thanks very much.
Paul Martin. |
Paul Martin
| | Posted on Thursday, May 8, 2003 - 8:25 am: | |
It's Paul Martin again.
I think I've solved my own problem.
It turns out that it was a software related problem after all.
I had downloaded a game and added to the registry about the same time the computer began to have problems. The first crash occurred on that game too. So I uninstalled it and the computer seems to be better.
Was it a clash? Must have been.
Anyway, thanks to anyone who viewed the message and tried to help. |
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