Old guy, old machine

[kop442000]

Not sure if this is hardware, but:

This old guy has asked me to sort a problem out with his machine. He says it often freezes when using programmes, and gets lots of error messages.

His PC looked old, so I asked him how long he had had it, and he said about 8 years! I wanted to say "just buy a new one!" but he says he can't afford to.

Is there anything at all he can do to minimise errors and freeings, or is it just inevitable considering the age of his machine?

He is running Windows 98, AMD Athlon, 128MB RAM, 19GB Hard drive (16.8GB free).

I was going to suggest he formats his hard drive, but would this even work? (And he has no cd writer so I don't even know how he would back).

Any replies would be gratefully received, so I can get back to this old guy with a researched answer.

Thanks.
Kop442000

[New_Leaf]

Others will have a more complete answer, I'm sure, but I'd start with the basics first.  To me, the basics would include the following:

1.  Make sure he has the latest drivers for all hardware, especially the video card.  Download the latest ones and install them for him.  

2.  Make sure he's downloaded all critical patches from Microsoft for his operating system.

3.  Defragment the hard drive.

4.  Run Norton Disk Doctor, or whatever other program you might have, to check for system problems.

5.  Find out if he's installed any new hardware recently that might be causing a conflict.  If so, focus in on that.  See if it's conflicting with something else.  

6.  Check for spyware.  I use Ad Aware and Spybot.  Both can be downloaded for free, if you don't have them already.

7.  And of course, pay attention to the error messages.  What do they say?  

[NaturalBornCamper]

Well, as you said, I would recommand formatting the hard drive, his computer would look like it's new. I often had problems like this with old computers, and a computer that wasn't formatted for 8 years!!! (hehe, I'm a formatting freak, as soon as something does not work, that's what I do..) Especially from an old guy, when he surfed over the internet, he must have said yes to every pop-up and said "next" to everything he installed without checking what it said because he didn't understand anyway. So his computer must be filled with half-removed programs, spywares, as New_Leaf said and all kind of crap, maybe even viruses.

Try asking the guy, maybe he has no important stuff to save, and if he has, you can even back all his stuff with just a serial or parallel port and cable and transfer his stuff to another computer.

Hope this helps a bit

[dl65]

kop442000......Sounds like a no brainer .........pc has probably never been regularly maintained....So it's no surprise that it has finally cried out for help.......I would strongly suggest a format ........then a nice fresh clean install of Win 98 .....along with any updates and patches available... An even better solution would be if .....you could get hold of Win Xp and load it on ....and perhaps an additional stick of 128 mg ram .... then a good anti virus and some antispy ware apps like .......Ad-aware SE ( free ) and Antispyware Beta ( free ) ...... A good cleaning out of the accumulated dust in the case .....and the pc will probably last another 8 years ......


dl65  

[merlin_2]

download aso from majorgeeks.com and maybe freeram...maybe the the command defrag in the run box to start-off will help..or use the disk cleanup program...or use the task manager....to sort these out..or re-format...the drive..alter the bios [del key on boot #~hold it  down]to change the bios to boot from cd-rom -install disk..

[kop442000]

Thanks for all your replies everyone!!

Kop442000.