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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 25, 2008 20:30:39 GMT
PCs playing up again. Behaving generally slowly when starting applications, boot takes forever - even befoire the windows user screen, applications slow. Net speed looks OK ish. Any ideas ? Sounds like you got some spyware of sorts in the machine Phil. Andy Not as far as Spybot can find. Any more ideas ? I'm wondering if the HDD/Processor/Memory took some sort of hit during the power supply incident last week and I need to replace them as well ? |
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 25, 2008 21:11:49 GMT
Now tending towards processor. I've got the task manager onscreen all the time and typically the usage level is around the 20% mark. Launch an application or perform certainm other tasks and the CPU usage shoots up to 100%
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Post by barricade on Jan 25, 2008 21:41:47 GMT
I suggest you try www.ccleaner.com/ very good at getting rid of old junk and those pesky startup programs. |
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 26, 2008 16:38:00 GMT
Found some crap but the pc is still not right. Took 4 goes to reach the wndows user login screen today,
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Jan 26, 2008 23:26:29 GMT
Might be worth calling up task manager and taking a note of all the processes running. If it's a nasty bit of spyware you might need to find one of those convoluted solutions to removing it. I ended up having to do something similar a few months ago when a family member decided to download a codec exe file from a random website (I'm sure you can guess what kind).
Andy
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 27, 2008 8:30:20 GMT
I've had the taskmanager going. There's nothing running that looks dodgy, and I've run the names of all the odd looking processes through the internet to find out what they are. In fact just typing this we have virtualkly no CPU being used at all. However when I start an application, open/save a document, send and recieve mail the CPU usage shoots up to 100% for the period wheere it tries to do this.
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 28, 2008 10:54:45 GMT
The thought ocurs - could the memory have got damaged ?
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Jan 28, 2008 11:56:26 GMT
Perhaps. Have you had any power cuts at all? Usually they can often be blamed for pc bits not working properly.
Andy
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 28, 2008 13:32:57 GMT
there's the aforementioned power supply unit dying while the pc was on ....
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Jan 28, 2008 13:34:37 GMT
Then I'd say chances are that might be your culprit.
Andy
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Hero
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Post by Hero on Jan 28, 2008 13:35:21 GMT
Hope your PC gets better soon Phil. I am having probs too, in fact mine is not even working to start with.
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 28, 2008 15:51:15 GMT
So memory might be worth a punt then ? There's a spare memory socket in the machine so any extra won't hurt.
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 28, 2008 15:52:47 GMT
Incidentally I'm sitting here typing this on Liz's brand new laptop. She wanted one for her OU work and this crisis made me snap. Relatively painless so far.
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Post by Philip Ayres on Feb 10, 2008 21:02:02 GMT
The PC is back with us, as is a brand new HDD. In it went, I stuck in the windows disc and loaded the setup utility, set the PC off formatting the HDD and went off for dinner. When I came back there was a msg on the screen along the lines of "Error cannot load O/S!" so I think something tragic happened along the lines.
I have what may be a thickee question: When the PC starts up there's a msg about how much RAM it has. Should that be how much physical memory is stuck in the machine ? Because the PC is claiming there's 32mb of ram and there's more memory than that in there. Which makes me think (once again) that the memory is fried.
What do i need to know about buying new PC memory ?
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Feb 11, 2008 13:22:59 GMT
Yes it should be saying the amount of physical memory.
You just need to know what type of memory and what the maximum size of memory the machine will support. The answer to the first is easily found by removing one of the sticks of ram from the machine and it is usually labelled. As for the second question, easiest way is to go online and find the specs of the machine you have from the manufacturers and that should tell you.
Andy
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Post by Philip Ayres on Feb 11, 2008 19:37:27 GMT
There's a mark on the motherboard saying it's a GA-7ZXE Revision 1.1
I've looked this up on Crucial.com and what I need is (up to) 512mb 133mhz SDRAM. Some going for around a tenner.
I've also managed to get the PC started with just one memory strip in, and then with both in avoiding one of the memory ports. So it may not be just memory but plonking some larger memory chips in won't hurt and should help me have enough oomph to the machine to try a few other things ie reinstalling windows on that brand new HDD !
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Feb 11, 2008 23:16:53 GMT
Excellent. Sounds like a solution is in sight.
Andy
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Post by Philip Ayres on Feb 12, 2008 7:24:52 GMT
I hope so..... but I'm left with a nagging feeling memory in't the whole problem. There's something going on with it so a couple of new bigger chips won't hurt and might give us some more flexibility to sort it out.
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Post by Philip Ayres on Feb 12, 2008 13:16:07 GMT
Oh dear.
I went back to try and see what went wrong with the windows install I attempted yesterday.
Started windows with the new hdd slaved to the old one, got it up and formatted the HDD. Restarted the machine with just the new HDD in and ran setup. Which repeatedly crashed backing up my assumption that something was shagged with the hardware.
Unfortunately when I plugged the original HDD back in the PC refused to see it.
How do I get the BIOS setup up ?
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Feb 12, 2008 13:18:45 GMT
It's usually by pressing F2 after you've switched on the machine.
Andy
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Post by Philip Ayres on Feb 12, 2008 13:26:21 GMT
That's what I thought. I'm hoping the bios has just lost it's setting for the HDD. If drive is shagged that's about it then.
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Post by Philip Ayres on Feb 12, 2008 14:15:28 GMT
Hello from Phil's PC.
Not as sick as it was by a long way. But I think we now know exactly what's broken !
Setup wouldn't come up. Dunno what I was doing wrong. In desperation I pulled the IDE cable for the HDD out and plugged it into the IDE port for the CD/DVD Rom drives.
Turned the power back on. Windows booted first time and at normal speeds.
So........
I guess either the port or the controller for IDE1 got damaged in the power surge. How this produced the effects I was seeing I dunno. Will need some thought. So I'm down to 2 IDE devices and a mess inside the case tring to get DVD and HDD plugged together.
Not the memory at all.
Whatever was wrong must have ben failing intermittantly and gone terminal this afternoon.
Which does lead to the possibility the other might do the same thing.
But this is real progress. V V Happy !
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