Re: Cycling not related to global warming

"raisethe" <raisethe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1179695169.133898.299710@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> Are there any techniques you can use when buying hardware and software
> which will minimise the hassle?

Keep the OS patched and up to date, don't look at dodgy websites, don't use
IE, don't read/open spam, install as few programs as possible, have a
firewall, have antivirus, keep back ups of files you wish to keep.

Yes, I do all that, and periodically defrag and use a couple of
registry cleaners, yet still I get the freeze ups - it took me four
attempts to boot up today. I can't open 3 windows on the internet
without the computer seizing, windows media player doesn't work, my
newish external hard drive doesn't work, the original cdwriter has
long since failed, as has the original monitor, printer and modem.
When I upload pictures from my camera it is hit or miss whether it
works or I lose them forever. I can only play one CD before it seizes
the computer and even then it closes excel for some reason. The rest
of my music is on the broken hard drive so is inaccessible.

At work in that situation we go for the pragmatic approach : wipe the hard disk and reinstall from scratch. However our guys are used to doing this, so can just reimage without much effort. In your case I'd consider buying a new internal HD, install from scratch on that, then copy what stuff you need from the old one.

FWIW in some ways I'm slacker than some, eg I use IE and OE, and never touch registry cleaners, and don't have any problems.

Unless of course your hardware is knackered somehow. You could try a knoppix CD to see if this is any happier - if it works fine, that would imply the hardware is ok.

cheers,
clive

.

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