Thread: Bad News?!?!
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Old August 10th 03, 05:01 PM
donut
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"Slim Win" wrote in
:

Finally got the summons to do something to improve my aged mothers
equally aged Compaq Pres' 5170 which runs so slowly it's unbelievable
(recent OS renewal W98SE, nothing improved) and l was wondering what
l'll find inside the case...

Compaqs site specs list the 5170 at 10Gb HD, but this one is 6Gb from
new, so l cannot believe anything l read on the Compaq site... but
sys' info tells me it's a 64Mb ram machine with a 100Mhz bus, 4Mb
graphics chip (on Mobo?) and a PIII processor...

Can l scrap Compaqs software (would locating individual
sound/modem/mobo drivers be impossible or not?) and reformat and
reload the OS without the Compaq flavour?

Also... how do l get into CMOS setup on this machine?

My even older K6-350Mhz ****es all over the Presario... the Compaq
sounds just like a Geiger Counter most of the time... the HD just
clicks and clicks away like there had been a nuclear accident when the
PC's asked to perform the simplest task...

Want to scan a photo? Got 2 hours to spare? That's how long it takes
to scan and allow you to manipulate ONE 6" x 4" colour photo on an HP
all in one USB device... so you see what l mean about slow... but this
machine really takes the biscuit...

And Dixons told my dear old Mum it was a top flight machine back in...
err, must have been 1999 l think... l remember Amstrad machine using
C60 cassettes for data storage that were faster beasts...
unfortunately l was out of the country when she took it upon herself
to wander into Dixons without telling a soul she had taken her credit
card and was on a mission...

Lack of FE or BSOD errors makes me think there's no burned out
hardware...

Could it have been like this from new? Does anyone know?

Any replies/suggestions most welcome...

Frank




My 5000T has similar hardware (633 MHz, 64M RAM) and has none of the
problems you describe. Scanning is a breeze.

Run msconfig/startup and see what the machine is loading at bootup. Do a
C/A/D and see how many processes are running.

It sounds like the machine is running a continuous swap file, which will
bring everything down to a crawl. I would want to know exactly why.

It could be infected with a Trojan that is using the machine for most any
kind of nefarious activity. You didn't mention if the machine is online or
not.

Does it have a firewall? Up to date anti-virus?

No, the machine was not like that new. It should do the things you describe
with no trouble at all.

I got rid of the "Compaq flavour" on mine ages ago. No problems. That is
only there because the Windows install disk is customized. Use any normal
Win98 or ME disk and you won't have it any more.