pc problems

[Curio]

Can anyone tell me why my mouse cursor freezes? It's so frustrating as although I am still connected, I can't do anything so I have to reboot again.
I have had a bad day today as far as the pc goes. All in all I think I must have re-connected about 10 times. Sometimes I get cut off or else have "freezes". I have no viruses as I have done a scan & am up to date with my virus definitions. Is there something I can do to make my pc work better? Also if the mouse cursor freezes again is there any way I can rectify it without having to reboot & start all over again???

I am having to repay from the start every time I have to reconnect. I currently have "infinitcall" which basically means I pay a fee every month with Telkom so that if one wants to stay on line for a long time they can do so & it wont charge more than R7.50. Now, this would be great if I could only stay on line without getting cut off or having freezes. My next telephone bill is going to be so high because of all the re-connections I'm having to do.

My pc is quite old & I am wanting to either upgrade or buy a better pc as soon as I can but in the meantime I have to plod on regardlessly.

Sometimes I can stay on line for a couple of hours or so, other times I'm not so lucky. Fortunately I am still connected now to post this thread.

Well, I feel better having put this down & having a good old moan.

Any computer boffs out there wanna give me some tips? I would be most grateful.

[Jangar]

You could try installing windows again. Do this without removing the old one. Simply install it on top of the old one.

One word of warning though. Make sure you have all important information backed up before you do this and also have your windows serial number as well as all your internet info (dial up number, passwords, etc) handy before you start.

If the freezing only happens when you're using internet explorer, then you could try just reinstalling that, again on top of the old one, or you could try using Netscape or one of the other browsers that are available free of charge.

I don't know what connection speed you have but Netscape is rather large so you might be better of getting a free version from one of the cd's you get free with computer magazines.

I hope one of these solutions help you come right

[Curio]

Hey Jangar, thanks for trying to help. It is very much appreciated.

[angelbabe]

Hi curio

As said before, these freezes can be caused by a number of things. Low memory, video card problems, too many programmes running at the same time. Does your mouse pointer turn into the hour glass while the pc is freezing? What version of windows do you have? 95, 98, etc ?

As jan says, you may have to re install windows, but give this a try.

Click on my computer, then on c.drive, then properties. This will tell you how much space is on your hard drive. You should get something that looks like a pie. The blue part is space used and the pink part is free space.....well on my pc it is. If you dont have a lot of space left, you will have to clear some stuff off that u dont need. Pictures and sound files take up a lot of space.

Click on tools on your browser, then internet options, then clear cookies, and then delete files .... a box should come up asking delete all ofline content, say yes.

Then try doing a Defrag. Click start, then programmes, accessories and system tools, defrag option should be there. It is better not to use the pc for anything else and to disable any programmes that run in the background to do this,like your anti virus and also your screensaver. In fact, do cntrl,alt,delete once and end all tasks except for explorer and systray. Start it before going to bed, because it takes long. You dont have to be connected to the internet to do this. It MAY NOT cure the freezes, but it certainly will be benificial to your pc. This should be done regularily anyway.

Explanation what defrag is:

Windows writes each fileÂ’s data in a set of side-by-side disk clusters. This pattern continues until you begin deleting files and then creating new ones. ThatÂ’s when things get more complicated. Windows must split the information in newly-created files into lots of pieces to store it. Files that are stored this way are called fragmented; they are stored in blocks of clusters that are not next to each other.

The problem is that the more fragmented pieces a file has, the longer it takes Win98 and other operating systems to access it and store data to it. This is because the disk drive heads must hunt all over the disk to find those file pieces. You may notice your system getting slower as time goes on; file fragmentation often is the culprit. Disk Defragmenter finds those separated file clusters and reorganizes them so each file is stored as one group.


If you dont understand anything, about what is here, feel free to ask.