Warning

[Byff]

Am I getting an early warning from my puter of imminent crashes?

The smily icons on these forums sometimes have a coloured background/mixed up colour schemes and the pictures sometimes look a little grainy.

It usually happens after i've looked at a couple of posts.

My system is a AMD1400 with 128 ram and it says I have 49% system resources free. Running windows 98SE.

Any ideas?

[scruff400]

Take Bill Gates out of the equation - run Linux.

[456mgt]

quote:The smily icons on these forums sometimes have a coloured background/mixed up colour schemes and the pictures sometimes look a little grainy.quote]

Same on my machine, but as I'm in the 1% of this site not working in IT I've no idea why.

[ErnestM]

quote:Am I getting an early warning from my puter of imminent crashes?

The smily icons on these forums sometimes have a coloured background/mixed up colour schemes and the pictures sometimes look a little grainy.

It usually happens after i've looked at a couple of posts.

My system is a AMD1400 with 128 ram and it says I have 49% system resources free. Running windows 98SE.

Any ideas?

Check to see if your video card drivers are up to date...

ErnestM

[nmlowe]

I usually get: " Warning, This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down"

Then it offers you with two options 'Close' or 'Details'

when you click close, the friggin' thing just pops up again, and again.... until the machine locks!!

It's usually just as you are getting to a webpage you need.

Also, when I'm at uni, the keyboard letter and punctuation keys have a nasty habit of re-arranging themselves for about two minutes at a time???

[essexboyracer]

re-format your hard drive and re-install windows (2000 preferrably) and start again, unlike motas, PC's can quite easily be put back to 100% performance, as the spec intended. About 3 hours work in total, barring any major hiccups.

[Byff]

I was thinking of a re-format.

Only trouble is I really want win2000, but i'm too tight ar5ed to go out and buy it and i've lost my win98se cd.

Just burying my head in the sand till the machine goes pop, then i'll have to do something about it

[CarZee]

if you can log out and log back in and that fixes it you're fine

if otherwise, you're probably running a dodgy remote conrol package or you need new video drivers..

don't rebuild until you've excluded the most obvious options and regresses the most recent changes..

[Byff]

Looks like a reformat is needed. Crashing regular now, but quick question - whats best, windows 2000 or windows XP pro?

[pdv6]

Not a lot in it to be honest.
Probably go for XP Pro, as weirdly enough its cheaper than 2000!

Prices from www.greymatter.com:

Win2kPro: £288 or £155 upgrade from 98
WinXPHome: £145 or £74 upgrade
WinXPPro: £207 or £140 upgrade

[davidd]

quote:
Looks like a reformat is needed. Crashing regular now, but quick question - whats best, windows 2000 or windows XP pro?

With your spec I'd say bung a bit more Ram in it and shove xp on, with SP1 (important it makes it faster). However are you sure you really have a problem?

Try getting a copy of Norton utils on it, that will find and correct most windows problems, also download adaware, this should tell you if you have any spyware and help you remove it. Be careful you might end up deleting cookies you want to keep.

Also try deleting your temp internet files.

Good luck

D.

[pdv6]

Before shelling out, though, take the advice posted in the rest of this thread and thoroughly check out your video card drivers, as these would appear to be the culprit (at first glance).

I don't think you'll regret moving to XP*, though, but read the system requirements before committing or else you might be in the market for some hardware upgrades too!

* disclaimer: as long as you were reasonably happy with 98 whilst it was working...

{edited to add:} oops! Didn't notice your system spec. XP should be absolutely fine...

>> Edited by pdv6 on Friday 11th October 09:36