Now what's wrong???

Something is seriously wrong with my computer. I'm sure it's a problem with the comp itself, and not any kind of virus because I've run the virus scan and also used several free ones online like the housecall and the panda thing, nothing ever came up. I've also used Ad aware and spybot S&D and nothing serious came up.

The problem is, #1, the computer takes forever to come on now. At least 20 minutes sometimes. #2, I end up having to restart it at least once because even though my mouse lights up (laser) it doesn't work so I end up having to disconnect it and reconnect it just at the right moment, when windows is loading. #3, It doesn't stay on for long before it turns off and restarts.....in the bad way. It'll flicker off and back on, and it'll go to the error scan screen. If I keep the computer active, it might work for a half hour....if I leave it alone for more than a minute, it'll restart.

So, does anyone have any idea what this could possibly be, or if I can fix it? I can't afford to take it anywhere right now, so I gotta figure it out on my own. I think it might be about to die.

 

It's most likely a mixture of spyware, addware, and virii.... Not much you really can do, short of reformatting...

 

do you keep non system files in your C: folder?

 

ONE word. DEFRAG!

 

nah....one command: FDISK.

/man i love fdisk. take that foul device!

 

Sounds like the best thing to do is reformat and reinstall windows... do you have the windows disk that came with your computer? If so Its not really that hard... All you have to do is press enter a couple times and It'll do the trick... your computer will run like its brand new.

 

I'd run a chkdsk before you wiped it clean. Co to "My Computer", right click on c:, click properties, and click the tools tab. The first item there is error checking, click on it. I might tell you it needs to restart first. Also, If it's taking forever to boot up, you might have a lot of unneccesary things running at startup.

Alex

 

if you'd like to see/stop/edit what runs at startup,

start-->run-->msconfig

go to the tab on the far right, and uncheck anything you dont like/recognize.

 

the last two post's were good info.

I would reformat yet. I would do what the previous 2 said to do. Also, go into control panel, add/remove programs and uninstall any software that you don't use or don't know what it is.

after that I would use the defrag tool which can be found in the same place as check disk. let it run all night while you sleep.

Keep us updated!!

 

Also, before anyone can TRUELY provide you with any real support we need to know:

Version of windows
Processor speed
MB of RAM installed
When did it start happening?
Anything weird also happen or get installed during that time?

Also, you said it restarts itself randomly -- I had that problem once and it was caused by too many peripheral devices plugged in at once and my computers power supply did not have enough juice to keep everything going so it shut down. So also if you could tell us what is connected to your computer (IE: Printer, scanner, speakers, external hard drive, zip drive, etc) that would be helpful. You can always try unplugging all that stuff and booting it up.

Also, do you get a message that mentions lsass.exe as the reason why it will shut down and it does a nice little 60 second count down? if so there is a windows update to fix it.

Please tell us more info and let us know how its going so far.

 

We still have windows 98 SE...ram is 127.0 MB, all I know about the processor is it's intel celeron. There SHOULDN'T be anything installed that we don't know about, because like I said we have both spybot S&D and ad-aware on it to clean out most ad/spyware, plus even though I don't know much about computers I do keep check of what's in all of the folders and I can usually recognize when there is something new there.

As for what's plugged into it...nothing but a mouse, keyboard, speakers and a webcam. Oh yeah, and the cable modem. That's it.

trotsky, someone was telling me that FDISK would remove everything, including windows. I don't know how informed he is though, I personally think he's full of shit most of the time.

Trouble is, we do not have a copy of windows 98. My dad took off with it just a couple of months ago to try to put it on my bro's comp, and never brought it back, and claims he never had it to begin with. Idiot. We had a recovery disk for it, but I think he swiped that too. So, I'm not sure about what we can do to fix it, at least until my numbnut father remembers what he did with everything.

About the problems now.....it's been doing this for at least 2 weeks now. It doesn't exactly restart either....it's more like you pull the plug out and plug it right back in, and I can tell it's seriously fucking things up. We've found a way to keep it from doing that though at least for now, as long as we keep the winamp going with music playing constantly, it won't shut off. If it's inactive even for a few seconds though w/o the winamp going, it'll go. I can't even read shit without constantly having to move the mouse around in circles. When it first started doing this, I thought it had something to do with the cold because we used to have an ancient ass computer that would do the same thing in extreme weather, but it's been about 70 degrees here lately so I could pretty much rule that out. There's also no messages that pop up or any kind of countdown, no warning at all....like I said it's as if you just pull the plug on it. Plus, when I first turn it on in the mornings, it just doesn't come on at all. I mean, the two green lights on the tower will be on, and I can hear it running, but the monitor, mouse, keyboard, all of that stays off and usually takes a long time (at least 20 min most of the time) to come on, and then I'll have to restart anyway because it won't detect the mouse at all so I have to unplug and replug it to get it to work.

Ugh, this shit is driving me crazy.

 

at first I thought it sounded like a variation of the Sasser worm which has been causing havok amongst peoples computers for a long time... but than i read you are using windows 98... so i dont think it would be the sasser worm... if reformatting doesnt help, than there is a problem with your hardware... probably the hard drive or motherboard...

also would like to tell you that letting your computer turn on and shut down often is not good for your computer... can cause your motherboard to short and break your ram and all sorts of problems with about anything.

 

Sounds like your computer has some sort of suspend mode... It's supposed to save power, but it doesn't work too well. I used to have a shitty old comp and it had all sorts of problems with suspend, it would always screw shit up... There should be some way to disable it.

 

Oh, and it's a safe bet your power supply is too weak...

 

oh that reminds me... you should go into your bios and see your settings... there may be a "suspend" mode or something turning your computer off if it reaches a critical temperature... there are a lot of bios settings which sometimes turn off peoples computers to protect it from further damage...

 

I don't think so... just because the way she is describing the computer makes it sound like an old fugly computer... and celeron processors dont really need high voltage power supplies... thats more for amds and things of that sort... it'd have to be an extremely weak power supply if it couldnt run that thing... it could be that the power supply is old or damaged though.

 

yes, fdisk is my favorite command because, well, i'm sure you can guess what it might stand for. and yes, it's what you do before you do a full format, it kills everything.

it has to do with partitioning. you could probably get a new box for pretty cheap, it sounds like yours is ready to be put out to pasture.

 

Say it's not so..........

 

also, disable all the uneeded programs that start up with windows, delet all the useless stuff on your pc and get more ram. these days using standard ram at 128 can get very messy.
buy more ram, and disable all the startup programs and move stuff out of the c: folder, if you have put stuff in there.

 

I've got a veeery simple solution to all this. fdisk everything and install the Debian distro