98 Problem (slow)

[sjm1027]

I have a system that is very slow. The user never really took care of it and asked me to look at it. I am no computer guru so I am asking you for help.
I booted the system and it has lots of storage space. I wanted to do a scandisk and defrag but he has norton and GoBack running in background. I tried to bring system up in safe mode but couldn't. Can someone tell me what keey needs to be pressed to go into safe mode? Also any suggeations on how I may get this system a bit faster.

Thanks
Steve

[RJ]

Can someone tell me what keey needs to be pressed to go into safe mode?

F8 . . or just hold down Ctrl after powering up the PC till the menu shows up.

Also any suggeations on how I may get this system a bit faster.

Well, running scandisk and defrag, as you said, will help.
Also there shouldn't be many programs running in the background.

RJ

[sdkfz]

sjm1027

The PC may require a reload of Win98, the OS tends to slow down over time as things are installed and deleted. Scandisk etc will help some but a reinstall will have the best results, of course it also requires backing up data and reinstalling etc.

There are registry cleaners out there that can also help in lieu of a reinstall, MS itself had a app called 'regclean' but I do not think it is available directly from them but a google search pulled up lots of other sites hosting it.

[AlwaysUp]

As, RJ eluded to....
"Also there shouldn't be many programs running in the background."

try this if you have allot of icons in the system tray(lower right on task bar): Start>Run>msconfig and select the radio button for selective startup. Then click on the startup tab. You will find a list of tsr's or apps that run in the background for faster launching. MOST of these are not necessary, as the program is available through your programs menu anyway. Each one of these tsr's take about 2-4% of system resources. Play around with disabling these by dechecking. You can always come back and re-enable. When you select apply or ok the system will need to reboot and voila! Do not worry that you are starting everytime in selective startup mode. Most techs do this as just about all software installed likes to place a tsr in the startup and it is just not necessary. Good luck.

Also, Steve, if you found out the motherboard manufacturer and model, you could determine type and maximum suported RAM that that motherboard supports. I'll just about bet the memory is PC100 SDRAM and that is cheap nowadays. Fill her up and system will be faster, no doubt. Here is the place to ask at the Mech, if you are unsure how to proceed. Don't be afraid to get inside that box.

[glc]

Uhh......PC100 is a lot more expensive than you think. 98 really doesn't need a lot of ram, 128 is plenty, 64 is a decent number, it's resources that run out real quick when you have a ton of crap running in the background.

[GaryRouth]

Here's a link to a similiar thread along these same lines. There is a lot of helpful background information in some of the links, especially those for pacs-portal and aumha.org: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...threadid=97266

[AlwaysUp]

heck, GLC, I got another 64 mb stick I'll give him. Can't get much cheaper than that!

$24 for 128 mb stick of Micron PC100 Non-ECC memory is a Pricewatch.com and that includes shipping. Pretty cheap for a major brand.

[glc]

Right - and that's generic memory that won't necessarily work in that motherboard.

[AlwaysUp]

Did he say what mobo he was using?

[glc]

Nope, that's why you can't just assume it's gonna work. With Norton and GoBack, it's very possible it's a Gateway, those don't care for generic.

[Izumui Abriel]

yeah, as far as memory goes for 98se run 256, that's it's niche in life. That's perfect, anything higher that 512 is a garunteed waste and all the five-twelve does is help with muilti-tasking. The pc won't even boot-up faster with five twelve, at least not noticably.

Well that's my two cents as far as memory is concerned on SE(cause that's what I'm running...lot's of gliches),
Aaron

[Lardass]

One thing that can be done is to minimise the number of processes that are running in the background by disabling them using msconfig. What this does is allows you to disable the processes that start up when loading the OS. Another think is the amount of spyware that is running in the background and maybe worth removing it. Once you have done this you should notices a relative speed difference.