Speeding up Windows 98 and Computer

Your directx installation also seems to be a little shaky. Install directx again to see if the freezing problem goes away (or is it the card - no way to know for sure).

 

Sorry Christer, I meant to say was that it constantly freezes while on the Internet. However since I did that Graphics change thing, it has become less frequent. I also tried using Mozilla Firefox to see if it was just Internet Explorer that was causing the problems however it froze on Firefox too.

And thankyou for your suggestions rsinfo, I will definately give them a try. and lol how do you know my directx seems to be a little shaky on my grandpas computer??

 

A little off topic, but the computer I have is a Dell Dimension 8200 Desktop, with Soundblaster Live! as my Soundcard, NvidiaGeforce2 as my graphics card, and 256MB Ram running Windows XP.

Is there a place I can go to check for driver updates, I "ve never done that before. Will it be beneficial?

 

But where do u go on the sites to check for available updates?

 

At the Nvidia site click the download drivers button at the top left. At the Creative page, click on support at the top of the page.

 

Problems with graphics - either a hardware problem or a software problem.

 

How much of your hard disk is free? Also reduce the size of the internet cache files to something around 10 MB.

 

Just a couple of thoughts of mine.

Maybe you should add this cleanup file. Copy the following bold text into Notepad, and Save As "Clean.Bat" into the windows folder. To use, just Restart in Dos Mode, type in CLEAN and press Enter. What it will do is delete the TEMP files in a way not possible while windows is running, when you reboot the deleted folders will be rebuilt clean.
smartdrv
deltree /y c:\windows\cookies
deltree /y c:\windows\history
deltree /y c:\windows\temp
deltree /y c:\windows\tempor~1

While you are at the dos prompt, you could do some maintenance on the registry. Use the commands to optimize and repair the registry.

scanreg /opt
scanreg /fix

The first command will appear to do nothing on the screen. The second command will give you a progress bar. Note, this may appear to hang when it is running, this is normal.

Add this line to the beginning of your C:\Config.Sys file. If this will be only line, this is fine.

Dos=High,Umb

While FILES and BUFFERS won't have much affect, this line allows windows to load some of the Vmm32.Vxd file into the Upper Memory Area, giving you a little bit more free memory elsewhere. Otherwise this Upper Area is unused.

Does this freezing occur such as when the Sun Java Virtual Machine could be in use? This can gobble memory quickly. Most free internet games are requiring this VM be used.
Perhaps cleaning out it's cache may help?
Go to Control Panel\Java. When it opens, click on Delete Files, towards the bottom of the window.
Note if the freezing occurs when this loads up.

This system is going to have a swapfile going no matter what. Why not set the mininum size, so this system spends less time creating it, and using it instead.
Use Notepad to open the C:\Windows\System.Ini file. Add the following line in the [386Enh] section as I have it below.

[386Enh]
MinPagingFileSize=131072

This sets a mininum size of 128 mb {128 x 1024 = 131072}. You could set it for 96mb {98304}, as windows will enlarge the file if it needs to.

 

Dell Dimension 8200. I put "Dell Dimension 8200 download" into a Google search and got this:
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...emID=DIM_PNT_P4_8200&category=0&os=WW1&osl=EN
Looks like it covers all the hardware you mentioned.

Like Christer said, don't just install the latest drivers, the latest drivers may not be the best for your hardware. Read carefully about which are recommended for your model. For the Dell, I would definitely use those liked to by Dell, they should be the best for your model/models and should work best in your system.

Matt

 

All your suggestions have been extremely helpful in increasing the speed of the computer, so thank you very much! It's just this last part that I'm a little confused on doing.

How do you open that system file in notepad? I also am confused as to which size I set it to. My computer has 64MB of ram if that helps?

 

Thank you all for your continued suggestions. Together, they have combined to really speed up, and stop the freezes on the computer. Just last night the family member, who gave the computer to my grandpa, was using it, and she couldn't believe how good it was running. Since Monday, we have not had one freeze up while on the Internet and Pogo. Thankyou .

One last thing though. On my Dell8200, 256MB RAM computer with XP, should I also change my Swapfile/Virtual Mem settings ? If so to what amount(s)?

 

A good rule of the thumb is to specify a swapfile = 2 x amount of RAM in the computer. However, I would aim a little higher & make it 3 x amount of RAM. Make the minimum & the maximum same so that in essence it becomes a fixed swapfile.

 

I know the phenomenon. I started with a machine similar to this with 128Mb RAM in 2001. I thought increasing the amount of RAM would decrease the size of the swapfile. I now have 512Mb and the swapfile is at 131Mb with only a few internet pages open.

Someone gave a detailed explanation of how Windows handles memory quite a while ago. I think the outcome was that if Windows has the memory space available it will use it. My slant would be the difference between trying to throw a beachball into a bucket rather than throwing it into a swimming pool. Windows would have to be more careful about setting and shuffling RAM addresses on a small system, with a large system it could put them where it likes and have a lot less trouble accessing them.

I might add that my system rarely seems to access the HDD unless I call for it, so the swapfile may be holding "in case" data.

Matt