Author: Timothy J. Frohlick
Date: 09:58:21 05/17/04
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Steve, It doesn't sound like a bad hard drive but it does sound like either a bad CPU heat sink/fan or a bad memory problem. I fixed my wife's machine that was running Win98 with 192 MB RAM. The CPU was an AMD K6-3 450MHz that had a failing fan and a bad heatsink connection. The solution was easy. I replaced the heatsink and fan and the silicone grease and the problem of freeze-up went away. The computer store tech thought that the problem was a bad hard drive. Don't forget that the CPU controls everything. If it is overheating then you will get poor and unpredictable operation. Try replacing the CPU cooling fan before doing anything else. You can have a local store install this for less than $30.00 including the price of the new equipment. Personally, my AMD 1500 MHz machine behaved erratically when I installed more memory. I had placed the memory chips too close together. When I moved the new chip one more space away the machine became stable. An alternate solution would have been to install aluminum metal heat sinks on the mem chips and leave the chips were they were. TJF On May 17, 2004 at 11:04:05, Stephen Ham wrote: >Dear Readers, > >Most of you already know that I'm probably the most computer ignorant person >ever to post here. Well, my ignorance partly explains why I'm posting again. I >have computer problems and need advice regarding 1) diagnosing what's wrong, and >2) what the solution is. > >I have a 3-year old AMD 1.4G computer with a 20G hard drive, 512MB RAM and >Windows 98. > >I began having problems a few months ago when I was trying to attach some family >photo's to an email, and the photo's (.jpg's) wouldn't open. When I clicked on >them, my computer locked up. I assumed that I had some unkown virus or perhaps >there's some corruption of Windows 98. No big deal. I ran all my McAfee >anti-virus stuff and Adaware and Spybot stuff, but found nothing. > >But soon after that, the computer wouldn't immediately reboot. It always asked >if I want to wait. When I click on restart, it sometimes failed to do anything. >I had to frequently manually turn it off by holding the power button down. > >Next I noticed that my scheduled defragmentation of my hard drive failed. I had >to do it manually. Then I got messages warning of a possible hard drive failure. >When I did defrag, suddenly about 18-bad spots appeared. Nonetheless, most of my >hard drive is unused. > >Next, when clicking onto the Internet, the entire screen went yellow and the >computer locked up. > >I logged on to PC Pit Stop where it told me everything was fine except for very >slow performance from my hard drive. > >A few days ago, I ran an engine tournament over night. When I turned my screen >on the next day, the screen was black and there was a message warning of a "Disk >Write Error." > >So some or all of the above appears to be hard drive related. Is this due to a >virus, or simply a defective hard drive? A buddy said I should just install a >new hard drive with the latest Windows, next to my existing hard drive. He seems >to think that the new hard drive and the current Windows will over-ride the >defective one. In this fashion I won't lose any of my data from my old hard >drive. Is that true or is he dreaming? > >Any thoughts/suggstions, gents? > >Thanks in advance. > >Stephen
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