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"Help ! Busted PC ! What should I do?"

i have a 5 year old pc, which for some reason continuously crashes and when it doesnt crash, it is really, really slow. what can i do?

here are its stats:

Intel Celeron 433MHz
184MB ram
68% system resources free
Available space on drive C: 6087MB of 8040MB (FAT32)

if you need any more information, you'll have to tell me where to get it, cos i dont have a clue!

Buy a CD-writer, that's the best thing for this job. Buy a CD-writer anyway, it's something that everyone should have.

A word on backing up on CDs: Make sure that your software will verify the written data hasn't been corrupted. NERO and most other burning ROMs will do this, but make sure yours does. I usually checksum all my written data, but that's because I have a fast drive which makes checksumming 700mb viable. Verifying can take longer than you think, but believe me, with all your precious data it's worth it.

Like AMD_MAM said, but you REALLY! do need to backup all your personnel files before hand.
Don't bother backing up things you can download or re-install with CD/Floppy like your games..etc

AHHHHHHHHH installing windows, first BACK UP EVERYTHING IF YOU CAN. Then i would create a windows startup floppy by going to ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS and choosing the STARTUP tab this will guide you though makeing a bootable windows floppy disk, then when you restart you can boot from said disk and this will give you 3 option 1.boot with cd rom support 2.boot without cdrom support 3.can't remember. well anyway boot with cdrom support and put your windows cd in the drive and type D:\setup then follow windows setup.

D = cdrom drive number

IT's something like that anyway can't remember off the top of my head as i would do it another way.

c.b.

ive tried that dust thing, and blew it all away, but see if i delete everything, how will i get windows back on? just stick the disk in?

backup using Floppys? :D
probably best if you can borrow a CDR or Zip drive or something that can store a lot of data, you'd be looking at a lot of floppy disks for that and it's more than likely that somethings won't even fit on the floppy disks!
CDRs can cost around £30 not sure about the quality for that though but it would definatly be worth it in the end!

Anyway, as the other people have said, it might not need reformatting and it might just be a system failiure, have you taken the case off yet? my Heatsink was clogged with dust and wasn't getting much heat..although it still worked.

Fog wrote:


> Remeber to backup all your files though, pretty much everything you
> havn't already got on a CD.

i see but i could only do that using floppys, as i have no cd writer or dvd writer. any other ways i could backup them?

Quack wrote:
> maybe im thinking of something else, but isnt formatting a pc, wiping,
> the wholle hard drive, windows and all?

---
That's exacitally what it means, thing is, it will start your PC over again and everything will run alot smoother, I had a 150Mhz PC running for about 4 years, wasn't used loads but the registry was a mess, infact almost everything was a mess on it because no one in my family really bothered about cleaning things up on it.
If this has happened in your family then formatting sounds like a great idea.

Remeber to backup all your files though, pretty much everything you havn't already got on a CD.

If your heatsink fan stops you may smell burning silicon, depending on what heatsink you have. If your heatsink is good enough to function without a fan to the extent your temps reach 90c at a rate of about 1c/min, then your PC will crash before anything becomes critical. However, if your heatsink is of low qualty, or it (shock) drops off, then you'll start smelling something unpleasant very quickly...

AMD_MAN wrote:


> But the problem definatly sounds like overheating, that would be the
> first thing i had a look at if it came to my work, try running it with
> the sides of the case off, and try cleaning all dust and stuff out of
> the fans and Cpu heatsink.
>
> c.b.

ok
ill try thtat thanks mate.

If your CPU heatsink fan has stopped then i doubt you will smell anything, esspecially as it isnt a very powerfull cpu, you will get random lockups and restarts, also windows will slow to a crawl.

Quack the only reason why your dads mate said that the pc never works properly after reinstall is that he probably didnt get all the correct drivers for his hardware first.

A format wouldnt be a bad idea as over time windows gets "clogged" up by all the programs installed and uninstalled, also have you tried a defrag of the hard drive this might help

You could try downloading a ram flushing software www.downloads.com and search for Ram, does it have this slowness trouble after a reboot?

Also how much things have you got running in the background, press Ctrl, Alt and Del at the same time once and the task manager comes up this tells you all the programs running in the background and if there is alot then this can slow things down.

Another route is a possible virus?

But the problem definatly sounds like overheating, that would be the first thing i had a look at if it came to my work, try running it with the sides of the case off, and try cleaning all dust and stuff out of the fans and Cpu heatsink.

c.b.