Windows 98se Performance Blows

[mrlucio]

Hey guys, is there a program out there that i can run to see what is exactly causing my 98 machine to run real sluggish. Now this is a very basic machine. It only has office 97 and a accounting program on it. It does not have internet access. It is a Pentium 500 with 256 megs of ram and a 40gig harddrive. I want to say its the harddrive causing the lag, but I want to be sure.....

[SARGE]

Do a ctrl alt del and see what all is running. Write them down and do a Find for each and see if you can disable the unwanted ones from starting up. Then go to start, run and type msconfig. Select the startup tab and see what is loading at startup. Most items can be unchecked but I'd keep the scanreg and any virus software you want loaded. If you haven't defragged in awhile, do that from "safe mode". These are the basic first steps I'd do.

[GaryRouth]

. . . and if you want a little more background info on the steps that Sarge has recommended, the website pacs-portal has a well-regarded description of the whole startup/background processes/system resources situation in Windows 9x. http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm
[sometimes the link won't work, if the site is down for maintenance (it's not available at the moment, for instance...but it's usually back up and running soon --- I think it's maintained by a single (quite resourceful) fellow]

Since you have Office 97, one thing you can do right away is to remove the "Office startup" icon from the Start/Programs/Startup menu [right-click, select Delete]. Do the same for "FastFind" and the Office 97 shortcut bar. None of these really help Office 97 start or run any faster, but they do bog things down needlessly. An alternative to the Office 97 shortcut bar is simply to copy an extra set of your most-used icons into your Quick-Launch toolbar (the one on your taskbar next to the Start button).

Also, if you have RealPlayer or QuickTime on that machine, their StartCenters don't need to run every second the machine is on.

Sarge's tip to run a defrag in Safe Mode might have the best effect of all, if it's been a while. If the disk is starting to fill up, see if some of that data can go off onto optical storage. The Fat32 file system does bog down on large drives as they fill up. NTFS helped remove some of that performance hit in the WinNT/2000/XP line. In Win9x, try to keep a good 10% free space if possible.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[late Edit - the pacs-portal link is working again. Looks like the site just got updated]

[SARGE]

Gary, that's a good link. Thanks.

[BearEater]

Run antivirus.

probably a trojan,which doesn't show up in task manager.

[GaryRouth]

BearEater brings up a good point. It's possible it could be a trojan. If your antivirus program isn't particularly recent, it might not have an anti-trojan/anti-spyware tool included in it's scanning engine. If so, you can try Lavasoft's "AdAware" and/or Spybot's "Seach & Destroy", which have free versions for personal use. I don't have both links handy, but if you go to the "Software" page at http://www.spywareinfo.com you can find info and links.
. . . Gary

[p.s. ... since that computer doesn't have Internet access, you don't need to worry too much about a trojan, other than wasting some cpu time. Must be one frustrated little proggie, collecting info with nowhere to send it to!]

[risk_reversal]

The other thing I would suggest you try (in the event that you have overlooked it), is to run an anti spyware program either 'Spy Bot Search & destroy' or 'Lavasoft'.

Maybe something is lurking about in your system. 'Kazaa' for example is one likely suspect as an example. But since you do not have internet access this is unlikely.

Otherwise as has already been stated above look at what Windows has open by way of Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Personally, I run my systems with 512Mb of Ram and most/all programs load very quickly.

p.s Looks like GaryRouth has also suggested this above a few minutes ago the links are

'Spy Bot' http://beam.to/spybotsd
'Lavasoft' http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

[regans cortina]

i was just gonna post something very similar about a work pc, which is going EXTREMELY slow. this has internet access, and one of the managers tried to install xp, onto it . for what reson i dont know. i cant see any traces of it and 98 still looks ok. ive tried to do a defrag, but it keeps restarting, no screen saver is on. and a scan disk is taking 5 million years. is it f8 to boot in safe mode?????????????????????????

[mrlucio]

yes it is F8 to boot into safe mode. Always run scandisk and defrag in safemode because there wont be any TSRs running in the background...

[regans cortina]

didnt know that...!!!!! is that the case for all operating systems ???????

[mrlucio]

Only 95,98,ME

[SARGE]

Originally posted by regans cortina didnt know that...!!!!! is that the case for all operating systems ???????

I'll say yes to Win 95 and 98.

[mrlucio]

What is a good program to test and compare benchmarks?

[SARGE]

Originally posted by mrlucio What is a good program to test and compare benchmarks?

http://www.active-hardware.com/english/misc/sandra.html