Little win98 help?

coil

<div class="IPBDescription">Laggy explorer & desktop</div>I'm posting this here mostly because MonsE seems to be a Windows GOD, and I'm hoping he can help; however, anyone else with input on this, feel free to offer advice.

<b>System:</b>
P3 800, 384MB PCI 133 RAM
Windows98 (first edition).  GeForce2MX, Creative Labs Audigy Gamer, assorted other goodies.

<b>Problem:</b>
After a fair amount of time without a reboot (I think I'm going on 2 days, which is unusually long for my system q: ), Explorer - specifically actions such as copying, deleting, or moving files - gets *very* laggy.  Symptoms include:
1) Desktop fails to refresh - moving a window will leave behind a "ghost," and when the task bar auto-hides it leaves a ghost as well.
2) Windows fail to respond - copying a file within a window has a very delayed reaction time, at which the window will not respond to any additional commands until the file is copied.  Manipulating the recycle bin and moving a file between windows both have a similar effect.
3) Accessing a new page in Internet Explorer (opening IE or opening a new window) is very laggy, with the new window failing to respond for 5-10 seconds.  If I copy/move/delete a file (thus creating the lag effect), any IE activity - the aforementioned as well as simply clicking a link - is delayed/unresponsive until the lag situation passes (i.e. the file is successfully moved/copied/deleted).

I normally have Winamp 2.81 and Trillian 1.0 running, and closing either of them does not alter the situation.  I'm currently at about 60% system resources, and opening a single IE window takes up about 2% each.  Trillian takes 6%; Winamp is negligable.

Symptoms last ~31 seconds (as tested at 66% resources and 55% resources).

Any help figuring out why this happens would be appreciated... I have a feeling it may just be a need to upgrade to Win98SE or WinXP.  <!--emo&???--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='???'><!--endemo-->

LockNLoaded

i used to get this with my old 266 system,64 mb, 4.3 Gb Win98 system. But thats only when i've had almost filled the HD up and not defragment for quite some time.

Then i pursuaded my manufacturer to send me a copy of Win98SE upgrade from support, defragment it and set my virtual disk size to 500 megs. Problems went away.

Hope this helps...  <!--emo&???--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='???'><!--endemo-->

Silver_Fox

upgrade

98 = pants.

I honestly love 2k pro.  At first I didnt want to upgrade and when I did I used an evaluation copy.  In the beginning I didnt like it all.  Had alot of hardware/software conflicts.  That was before I got the service packs.

After I got those, every thing ran like a dream, no problems with any software or hardware and my games ran so much faster then in 98 I was very, very supprised.

Thats the only tip I could offer.  Perhaps there are some tweaking tips out there or something, but I honestly would just as soon upgrade.

MonsieurEvil

Even though you have the hardware to run Win2k admirably, I don't want to make that call quite yet. A few questions:

1. Has this always hapened, or can you remember a time when it didn't?
2. When is the last time you <i>fully</i> defragged your PC's drive(s) (without having anything running or you using it)?
3. How much disk space do you have in use versus free?

coil

As far as I can tell, this is a recent development.  Things I've done recently to my computer (oldest first):
1) Installed new drivers for my SB Audigy
2) Installed the new Det drivers for my GeForce2 (previously using the 30.whatevers)
3) Installed 3D Studio Max 5

I don't think I've defragged this computer since I reformatted (which was an entirely fresh start - new OS, all freshly installed programs, etc), which was in July.

Free space is 5.58GB on a 19GB hard drive.



<!--EDIT|coil|Oct. 23 2002,09:14-->

Relic25

I would start by cleaning that mother out.  All unnecessary temp files, .chk files, garbage, unnecessary & unused programs...flush 'em all.  Then take a look at your desktop.  I know this may sound strange, but I had almost the exact same symptoms at home, and after some experimentation, I found that it was just the number (and probably combined filesize) of all the files that I was storing on the desktop.  I had a huge load of graphic files, project files, and all sorts of other bs in various folders that I was accessing through the desktop folder (not shortcutted).  Moving these elsewhere on the C: drive made an almost instant improvement.  I wouldn't have thought this would be a problem in 98 (I know it was in 95), but it certainly was in my case.

Anyway, whatever you find, I would also definitely do a thorough defrag once everything else was done.

MonsieurEvil

I agree with Relic. Clean clean clean, defrag defrag defrag!

coil

<!--QuoteBegin--MonsieurEvil+Oct. 23 2002,09:40--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> (MonsieurEvil @ Oct. 23 2002,09:40)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><!--QuoteEBegin-->I agree with Relic. Clean clean clean, defrag defrag defrag!<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
3 times each?  Is that really necessary?  <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo-->

Just cleaned it up, and I'm going to defrag while I study for/take my social psych midterm.  Yay!

Epoch

Personally I get along fine with my Windows 2000 Professional SP3 computer. I've been running it for over a year and have had no problems. Of course, I also clean it up about once a week, so it's pretty finely tuned all the time. It works well enough that I have no reason to ever use XP, or "Longhorn". If it isn't broken, don't fix it!

Sorry, off topic. I would upgrade if you could. For one thing, the disk defrag in 98 doesn't work nearly as well as the one in 2000, and I'm sure there are other reasons to upgrade as well. Your system specs are almost the same as mine. I run an 850 MHz PIII with 392 MB SD-RAM. How about that!

Hope you get it fixed!

CrouchingHamster

60% system resources sounds a little low to me..are you sure you're not running lots of unnecessary stuff in the background?

eg, Im on a 766mhz, 128MB ram, 2 explorer windows open, virus scanner, firewall and Valve Hammer running, and my resources are 73% free..

Got to start/run/msconfig.exe/startup to check whats going on in there..then..

<a href="http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk" target="_blank">http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk</a>

Has a pretty comprehensive list of what can and can't be disabled to save some resources..

Other than that, defrag!

coil

Thanks for the advice, all.  I ran a full system cleanup today (deleting, scandisk, and defrag - took about 6 hours&#33<!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->, and I'll look into that background programs thing as well.  We'll see!