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PC Hesitation

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by loydster 1 view

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I have a P2 350, running windows 98. I know its not much, but it is my work computer. I recently installed RAM so now I have 512MB, in anticipation of working on Access 97 files and such.

The problem is, now the system seems to hesitate. I have very little open. 2 IE windows, Excel, and AIM. Also have the latest version of Mcafee running. I just turned of antivirus to test, and it is much better. When accessing websites with the System Scan enabled, the whole system freezes for 5 seconds or so. Not bad except it happens every 10 seconds. It has gotten old rather rapidly. I have always had Antivirus, the only thing new is the 512 ram. I even did a clean install of 98 to see if it would correct it, but it didn't.

Please help before I flip out and force my face slowly through the glass of the monitor.

13 replies

by islander

Goto start>run and type in msconfig. In msconfig there is a TAB showing you what is running at startup and in the background. Check there to see what unusual is running during startup or in the background and diable it. Don't disable apps that you are not sure of for it may be needed by the system. Hope this helps. I had a similar problem where my PC would freeze or be really slow. It was a scanning software that installed inself from the internet. I disabled it and the problem went away.

by fellows

I've read a few tech articles around that say it's possible to have 'excessive RAM' problems with Win98, and I think it's true. I don't know why, but when I upgraded the RAM in my Win98 pc from 64 to 256, it did exactly the same thing(hesitations, IE pausing, ect.) No other config or software changes were made. When I lowered the RAM to 128, it actually ran much better. I've tried different brands of RAM and it still only ran well at 128mgs. My motherboard is rated at 768mgs, btw.

by thechas

Windows 9X does have a bug where some systems cannot handle more than 511MB of ram.

Windows gets lost, and installs multiple copies of drivers. In the worst case, Windows runs out of memory while booting.

Also, It is best if all of your RAM is of similar specification and structure.

I run my 98 machines with either 256MB or 384MB with no problems.

by big ray

I had the same problem as the others. Win98 SE started with 64 meg. Upgraded to 512 meg. ran slower than with 64 so I downgraded to 256. It still ran too slow. It looks like 98 runs best with somewhere between 128 and 192. I say 192 because that is what I was able to put in my machine and have it run smoothly.

On a side note. Win 2000 Quad processors P4 1Ghz w/ 2 Gig memory. runs 10X slower than same machine with single P3 800 Mhz processor and only 512Meg memory. Alas the bigger the are, the slower they run. But oh it was fun testing. I should mention the test was for a compaq server which was going to be running Citrix Metaframe for 250 user.

by dpalsen

I've had the same problem with Mcafee. It fixed itself when I got the newewst DAT files. I think there must have been a bug somewhere. Check your dat file version.

by d4dar

all the other answers sound good, but the first thing i thought of was are you still letting windows manage your virtual memory - if so i would manage it myself & change the max setting to 2 & 1/2 times your ram which would be 1280. That is if you have the hard drive space. also try putting it on another drive besides where your operating sys is located.

good luck

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