I don’t know WHAT is wrong with this thing, I’ve asked a few people but it sounds like they’ve just been guessing.
I use windows ME (If your posts begins with “You should have used _____” please delete it now :P), a few days ago it slowed to a crawl in everything it did. Everything was simply running very very slowly. The problem is that I can’t seem to use any of the methods I normally use when trying to fix this thing. I’ve tried running system restore several times but it just freezes up, I ran spybot and adaware and took out whatever they found, I can’t seem to start the computer in safe mode at all, and TD sent me an AV program since the one I had been using was rather shoddy but when I tried to install it I was told I had to remove the Norton AV program I currently had. I went to unsinstall that only to have the uninstall program freeze, when I tried to run it again it refused, I manually deleted all the Norton AV files I could find (Using search to check for ones that I had missed) but the new AV program still says it detects Norton on my computer and won’t install.
Holy crap. I hate to say it, but I think you need to save all your junk and format. We could always supply you with, let’s say, another OS if you so choose. cough Or just reinstall ME, whatever, but man, that sounds nasty.
otherwise try reinstalling your OS, if it can be done without formatting go for that. I can house precious information on my hard drive if you do need to format by the way.
I finally managed to get it into safe mode, scandisk and system restore did not work like that either.
And as for formatting, I don’t really have a way of saving my stuff. I can upload a few small items into my staff folder and make notes of things to download, but that’s about it. I don’t have a backup drive, and I can’t send anyone files since this network seems to have that blocked. I’ve never reformatted anyway and I would really rather not do that in case the problem can fixed some other way.
You might want to try crtl-alt-delete and see what tasks are taking up all your power. Sometimes when my computer gets slow I just dot hat and I’ll find one program that I didn’t start that uses a lot of resources. I’ll end it and my computer will be fine. Another problem could also eb memory management. For me, XP seems to haev horrible memory management and it doesn’t pop the stack so stuff just builds up I can’t do anything without rebooting and clearing it. Your hard drive could also be pretty full which also slows a computer down tremendously. Those are some ideas, I hope that they help.
Yeah I tried that CRTL-ALT-DELETE thing, I tried shutting down everything except explorer, didn’t help. Although I did notice that when I ran adaware it told me how many processes were running, and the number was always about 8 higher than the number of programs in the C-A-D list. And I’m using ME not XP, thanks though.
You have the Sasser virus. A varient of it spawns multiple copies of itself and sets it to add more copies with each boot of the comp. Indeed, rebooting the computer makes it WORSE!
Its practically impossible to recover, due to the sheer number of spawned threads chewing up your memory and CPU power. On the upside, it doesnt infect the files you want to back up, so a good format will work wonders!
I’ll try to put up a program you can use to check your RAM tonight for you. It might very well be a hardware failure, rather than a software failure. Since Dell mostly uses off-brand RAM to reduce costs, their computers tend to have a lot of problems after a while. Bad RAM causes a lot of lockups and slow downs similar to what you’re experiencing, so it might be that your RAM has simply gone bad. It’s not the worst thing that could happen though, since RAM is pretty cheap and easy to replace as far as computer hardware goes.
Edit: Or it might be the sasser virus like Shalcar has mentioned. If that’s the case all you really can do is reformat your computer since sasser is designed to counter anti-virus software. You might be able to download a program designed specifically to remove the virus at symantec’s website, but I’m not sure how well that’d work, especially since it sounds like you either have a trial or pirate version of Norton Anti-Virus. =P
I had this on probem on my other PC, (That One with ME!) I had a massive slowdown on IE and a slighty slower everywhere else. I had to Burn and Format (and upgrade).
Big Nutter Me(Sprite off line) WWWWWWhhhhhaaaaaatttt Sllloooowww dddoooowwwnn?
How much space do you need? I have 60 gigs free and I bet TD has a ton. Even if you can only upload to FTP you could just upload and then he and I could download the stuff off of it immediately.
I don’t think it’s the Sasser worm, that was my earliest concern but I checked the Microsoft site to find out how to combat it only to learn that windows ME is not affected by the Sasser virus.
Checking the hardware might be a good idea GM the box has been clicking occasionally, I’m going to open it up today and see if anything looks burnt out.
Merl: Last night I decided to box up my stuff and upload it just in case, since my computer seemed to unstable. Pretty much the only major loss was the massive emulation folders, but that can be recovered. All the files zippedand put together were exactly 1.00 Gigs. Don’t worry about downloading them, I’m going to head home today and backup the files on my family’s computer.
Oh yeah, and I should have titled this thread “Help Computah”.
one time, my brother was working for this place in tech support, where people go into a chat room and ask question. when he went on break, he got locked out. and called me, and I had to go into the chat and say “hey, my brother locked himself out” it was funny
Hey, kid. I’m a computah. Stop all the downloading!
I don’t think it’s the Sasser virus, if all the Sasser does is replicate files to eat up ram. It’s probably another virus that infects one of your bootup files. I’ve had the same thing happen to mine. So uh, yeah, always keep your ZoneAlarm up, or shit like this will happen
There’s no way to cure this except a format. You can take your hard drive out, take it to a computer shop, and tell them to keep all your personal files but remove the entire OS. Then reinstall your Windows ME or what-have-you. And download ZoneAlarm!
Holy crap. I hate to say it, but I think you need to save all your junk and format. We could always supply you with, let’s say, another OS if you so choose. cough Or just reinstall ME, whatever, but man, that sounds nasty.