My parent's computer has been running slowly for the past few months... I took a look and found it was filled with junk programs. It refused to standby and took a good 10 minutes to boot up... so I formatted it and reinstalled windows (98 home). Now, it was working fine, actually better than I expected... loading quickly etc. Today my dad informed me that it was booting slowly. I went to have a look and it boots up to the point where the windows screen comes on with "windows 98 is now loading" or something along those lines, then it just stops for about two minutes. The hard drive seems to be doing very little (the light flashes briefly every couple of seconds), then eventually it springs back into life and boots as normal.

Any ideas? I'm at a total loss with it now. My knowledge is very limited (I'm quite proud that I managed to format it )

Ask him what he's installed/touched. Could be a number of reasons and you might find that pressing enter solves it (usually if something is behind the scenes waiting on a response)....

Chris

No brilliant ideas, I'm afraid... :(

but 98 and ME was the absolutely worst (unstable and troublesome) versions of Windows.

If Win98 is installed I guess the computer is not this year's model, so it may be unwise to upgrade? If enough RAM and processor speed I'll suggest an upgrade to Win2000 or WinXP if you can find a cd somwhere. IMHO even Windows 95 was better than 98!

Or try to persuade your father to get a new computer.

Or try to persuade him to give you a new computer and he can have your old one

Can you boot it into safe mode?

This will not invoke a lot of the stuff that starts when you boot normally.

From there, when you are in, check both the event viewer logs to see if anything has registered an entry, and also have a look in the 'run' directory in RegEdit

*disclaimer: editing stuff thru reg editor when you don't know what you are doing can seriously knacker your machine*

this can be found in HKey_Local_Machine/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/

In the run directory you will see everything that is booted up during startup - have a look for anything dodgy in there.

If in doubt, post details in here and we can advise.

Does the machine have any kind of firewall/antivirus on it?

OOPS! Sorry, I meant windows XP. :(

Thanks for the ideas so far... I'll go and try them and report back.

Thanks again

Oh..and the problem is there when booting into safe mode, too.

If it's XP, get him to install BootVis (BootVis Download - Softpedia ) which will show you what it's getting stuck on, IIRC.

Chris

He hasn't been using TalkTalk by any chance?

If it's XP, get him to install BootVis (BootVis Download - Softpedia ) which will show you what it's getting stuck on, IIRC.

Chris

BootVis Should work, There is always the hardware side of it?

The HDD was flashing lights but was it making more noise then normal?? - It could be a new HDD.

If BootVis does not work I would suggest a new HDD and re-start from scratch then just transfer the files across. (Then don't let them touch it)

Rob

After formatting and reinstalling, did you install any updated drivers for graphics and peripherals?

If you can't get in in safe mode it's getting tricky.

You could pull the disk and put it in your machine and run a chkdsk on it.

Failing that....

Reformat reinstall again but partition the disk. Get something to write an image to the partition (Ghost or equivalent). Tell him never to ever buy anything online or use internet banking but otherwise leave him to his devices and reimage when needed.

Or

Stick Ubuntu on it. All the little games and widgits he's addicted to won't work, and the malware they carry can't function.

Ubuntu isn't all that hard to get going (unless you use wireless or a winmodem).

You have my sympathy. My Dad is the same.

He's farmed me out to his pal to sort out a home network for him which I'm a bit p155ed at since I'll have to lose flexi time to do it. Most of my relatives know they're under pain of death not to volunteer my services any more.

Thanks for all your advice, it's much appreciated.

I did a defrag and it seems to have resolved the problem... I have no idea why?

Anyway, I have noted all your thoughts incase the problem returns.

Thanks again

Phil.

I did a defrag and it seems to have resolved the problem...

Hmmm, I'll remember that one. Good to hear you got it going:thumbup:

So many techies and you forgot the universal solution.

If it doesn't work, you need a bigger hammer

I would run Ad-Aware while you can

The fact that a defrag seems to have solved the problem worries me a little, especially as it had a clean version of Windows on the drive.

Either your Dad's extremely good at de-stabilising computers, or I might suspect a hard drive issue.

I'd check what make the drive is, and there should be a diagnostic problem available from the manufacturer's website. Run that and see if any problems are reported.

Steve

The defrag may have fixed it by reallocating a dodgy sector, it maybe ok for a while but it does sound like the HD is failing a slow death.

iagree: - you run diagnostics on it yet Phil?

Steve

Either your Dad's extremely good at de-stabilising computers, or I might suspect a hard drive issue.

Steve

- I told you so

Win 98SE was actually quite stable when XP was released and I was dual booting that with XP

But I did eventually drop it completly once XPs issues were resolved.

I did have an issue where 98 would hang at the start up screen. XP has a few times. But usually updating al drivers like mobo, gfx etc or even flashing the motherboards BIOS may help. But you need to know what you are doing as a failed BIOS update could kill the PC

I agree with the disk theory.

It sounds to me as if there are bad sectors on the disk and the spares have all been used up.

New disk time me thinks.

Won't a decent defrag program identify bad disc sectors?

Won't a decent defrag program identify bad disc sectors?

Sadly not, what it will do though if possible is relocate the data to another good sector. The only tool that can identify bad sectors in XP is chkdsk , or a third party tool. The drive will attempt to reallocate bad sectors as they are discovered withour user intevention, usually successfully. However once all the spare sectors which are reserved for this purpose are used up, then the drive cant do this anymore and the real problems start.

Ah, I'm only really used to 3rd party defrag programs (meaning I don't use the built-in one, ever).

Open the case and have a look at who made the disk.

All the manufacturers make their own testing software so download that (probably burn it to a disk) and follow the instructions to run it.

It should test the disk and flag up more than a chkdsk which will only show bad sectors.

If you're in any doubt and there is important stuff on the disk (photos or files) plug it into another machine and copy off the data to make a back up.

Then bin it and get another. HDs are cheap and it's not worth worrying about one constantly.