I owe an apology
 

To Bill Gates.

After spending three or four days giving him a good cussin', running diagonstics, searching the web for clues, I finally went back to the basics on my computer.

I took it out to the shop blew some more dirt out of it, wiggled the wires to the HD and the memory chip, and I think my problem is solved. I hope.

It's the first time in a couple of weeks that it's run for over 30 minutes without locking up hard.

God, I hope this damned thing is fixed.

Chas

Chas, I'm sure you had Mr. Gates crying all the way to the bank.:cool: Sounds like the software becomes irrelevant when the hardware is out of whack. Hope it stays fixed for you.

Regards,

D-ray

Mine booted so slowly this AM I thought there must be a virus or malware. Ran both the virus scanner and the malware scanner, found nowt. I did notice while it was scanning that there were a load of files in the Documants and Settings area under my name. Either Windows or other software does a lousy job of cleaning up behind itself. In the Local Settiungs/Temp were over 500 files that were left behind by variious programs. Cleaned out all that crap and all the cookies and it runs fine now.

My computer is ten years old. It's had some nasty viruses, (But I've learned how to clean them out myself.), it has no anti-virus on it, and I have never, ever cleaned the dust out of it. Still chugging along.

Maybe it's like people? Letting it get sick a few times toughens up it's immune system?
Hmmmmm.............

Dave

I would think after ten years it needs the dirt blown out of it. Maybe your processor runs cooler than mine.

Western Digital has a free chkdsk download at their site, I think it's superior to the MS chkdsk program. Avast also has a pretty good free anti-virus program.

Anyway, I left the old box on all night and it was good to go this morning, so I'm gonna call it fixed.

Chas

CC Cleaner has a free program that does a good job of getting rid of all of those temp files. I wouldn't use the registery cleaner that comes with it though.

It takes it about 30 seconds to run.

Chas

+1. However, I've also used the registry cleaner ever since I started using CCleaner years ago. I've never had a problem with it, but I think it is relatively benign as a registry cleaner.

You're absolutely correct that one should tread very carefully within the registry though. I think CCleaner heeds this advice.

I have been entirely conventional, but with success. I run the free full service scan from the Microsoft website. It checks for viruses, for old files, and for registry errors. The scanner will also tell you if you need to defrag. It almost always gives my old basement computer a boost. I try to defrag XP computers at least once a month. I just use Windows Defender on my laptop. Apparently Windows 7 is designed to not need defragging.

Regards,

D-Ray

Windows 7 has a default setting to run defrag once a week without user intervention. Microsoft's Security Essentials software has gotten excellent reviews for anti-virus, anti-malware & anti-spyware and does not use much system resources (an unusual feat for Microsoft).