I would suggest calling a computer technician to clean up your system,
or you could end up losing your data, especially as you are quite
candid about not really knowing what you should be doing.
Of all the possibilities, I've narrowed it down to the registry ...
(At *this* point, now, I'm asking for ideas from others who know more
than I so I can get on with the reinstall after everything is finally
backed up.)
The least you should do, is empty your c:\temp and c:\windows\temp
folders, and your browser cache. To do the latter, go to
Start\Settings\Control Panel and open Internet Options. On the General
tab, click Delete files.
C:\temp is emptied at boot from autoexec.bat and our browser caches
(we use multiple browsers, none of which is IE) are manually deleted
once or twice weekly. It is extremely rare that anything ever gets to
c:\windows\temp--the rare case seems to be the odd M$ update that
insists on using it and somehow gets around the temp settings in the
autoexec.bat.
Run ScanDisk from Start \ Programs\ Accessories\ System Tools\
ScanDisk. Check the top option (not Thorough) and Fix automatically.
You should have 0 bytes in bad sectors, or it means your hard drive is
flakey and should be replaced (after cloning it to a new drive).
ScanDisk is runs on boot up every time Windows crashes completely
(which it has been up to eight times a day in the last few weeks).
Through a variety of diagnostic software and firmware (from MSI, Maxtor,
Western Digital, Belarc, TuffTest, etc.), and physically opening the
case and using multitesters to check the circuitry and connections I
must assume the hardware--including the various memories, motherboard,
video card, soundcards, floppy and HD controllers, cd-rom, BIOS, CMOS
(and battery), hard drive, etc.--is fine. There is nothing to even
suspect otherwise at this point.
At this point, you should back up any data you would regret losing,
including e-mails, Address Book, Favorites, Outlook *.pst files, etc.
We don't use (nor want to use) Outhouse or Outhouse Express. During
those times when the OS seems to be running smoothly, we are busy
backing up Agent data (just check my headers), data and settings from
about 60 other programs, 10 GB of visual files, five years of M$
updates, drivers for everything, FontLab, 15 GB of fonts, all of our
accounting records, all of our clients' records, and a partridge in a
pear tree. (Merry Christmas?)
Are your anti-virus program virus definitions up-to-date? You need to
know. If the subscription has expired, I recommend uninstalling it and
getting Avast! Home Edition--it's freeware and very good. Download it
from
http://www.asw.cz/eng/down_home.html and install it after you
have uninstalled your old anti-virus program. You might try an on-line
scanner instead. Go to
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ and click on
"Scan now, it's free."
Done. Everything is scanned from the boot sectors on up. Multiple times
in multiple ways with multiple programs. No viruses, worms, trojans,
spyware. Just an occasional, frustrating crash.
Well, there *is* ctfmon.exe, which WE consider a virus (we didn't want
it, we didn't install it, we can't get rid of it, it runs continuously
using system resources: hence, a virus), but M$ wishes to claim
otherwise even though *they* can't figure out which program is demanding
that it run ... or why. [We have sworn at it, and them, in a variety of
languages but that hasn't helped.]
Once you know you have no viruses, download, install, update and run
Ad Aware SE and Spybot Search and Destroy.
See previous paragraphs.
Uninstall any programs you no longer want/need, using Start\ Control
Panel.
... And use InControl 4 or 5 (we like 5, others like 4) to clean up
the rest of the junk that uninstall processes leave scattered hither and
yon. Even the creator of Total Uninstall admits *that* program doesn't
remove everything, which is unfortunate.
(Larry, do you know of any thorough uninstall software?)
To clean up the registry, you can download JV16 from...
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/dload/jv16-1.3.0.195.zip
Install it, close the Introduction screen, then click Registry Tools\
Tools\ Registry Cleaner. Click Continue then Start. When the scan is
finished, click Select\ Special Select and then "Items that should be
safe to remove." Click Remove, [long wait], then Close. Close the
window then Exit the program. Reboot.
That looks like a great program, thank you!
To defragment the hard drive, download DiskeeperLite from
http://www.webattack.com/get/dkeeperlite.shtml and run it. It is a
super defrag program and runs very fast,
This looks okay, too. Based on the descriptions of the program that I
have seen, the Lite version will only defrag "a single disk volume",
however, there isn't sufficient context to know if they are referring to
a single piece of hardware, a single disk partition, or some sub-portion
of a single partition. What has your experience with Diskeeper Lite
shown this phrase to mean?
I suspect this is "normal mode" for Win 98 (opposed to DOS mode or Safe
Mode) and not some mode within Diskeeper Lite?
If it all goes to hell at some point, remember, I recommended hiring a
technician to do these things.
No worries there (you've probably figured this by now). Things
started going to hell weeks ago and, believe it or not, they are more
stable now. We just want the *&^%$#@! thing to stop crashing (or at
least crash less) until we're finished backing everything up--then we
format the HD and after five days and a bottle of rye everything will be
bees knees again.
After things get sorted out, buy
Windows 2000 Pro upgrade and install it. The upgrade will preserve
your programs, files and settings. If it's a newer, fast PC with lots
of hard drive space and RAM, upgrade to XP instead. personally, I
prefer Win2k. I used to crash daily when running Win98SE; I *never*
crash with Win2k!
We've considered 2k Pro (none of us here like XP for a variety of
reasons). We've also considered a number of *nix configs on either a or
both of a PC and Mac machine. The jury is still out as, either way, we
would also need to re-invest in software that would run on any new OS
and *that* would be too expensive for our needs at the moment. (And
running 98 as a separate OS under/around/beside 2k would just be
redundant.)
..
Thank you, Larry. We appreciate it.
JJ et al.
P.S.: I'll keep you posted on the effects, if any, of jv-16.
* Remove the leash to e-mail! *
