PC help... please!

[J Michaels]

It seems I have some sort of problem with the ol' PC about every other year, and it seems the time has come again. Hopefully someone can help.

A couple of specs, first (from "System Information"):
Dell Dimension 8200
Windows 2000 Professional
Version 5.0.2195 Service Pack 4
40 GB hard drive
512 MB RAM

Starting about 2 or 3 days ago, I turn on my computer, and press enter at the log-in screen to get to my main desktop. When it gets there, I start getting repeated error messages about "Dr. Watson couldn't attach to the process", "<the process already closed down>" (or something to that effect) and so forth. I found a couple of things online about how to turn off Dr. Watson by changing the setting in the registry, which I did. Now, instead of the repeated error messages from that program, I am getting "Application errors" that usually say "The instruction at 0x732e7800 referenced memory at 0x732e7800. The memory could not be 'read'." with two buttons to click: "Click OK to terminate program" and "Click on cancel to debug the program." One of these windows opens for every application I open - Eudora, Internet Explorer, Word, etc. Sometimes the numbers merely read "0x00000000". Also, I can't get Windows Explorer to even open, though shortcuts directly to folders are still opening the folders.

My system is responding quite slowly, but not in a way that makes me think it's a virus or something. I think something is corrupted in the registry that is automatically shutting down processes / applications, or trying to, and somehow tying up resources. Of course, that is my uneducated guess.

I ran SpyBot and cleaned up everything it found, then ran "Hijack This". Someone knowledgeable is giving me some guidance, and said the Hijack This log looked clean. Anyone else got any ideas?

HELP?!

[RobTheDrummer]

Did you try a system restore? I got the same thing before and did a system restore and mine works fine now.

[mjb]

sounds like your valves are shot.

[lonewolf]

Dr. Watson is a built-in Windows system monitor that lets you know when something's wrong. When you disable it, you are shooting the messenger, but not fixing anything. I would re-enable Dr. Watson before proceeding. Another thing that you should do 1st is a scandisk with surface scan (thorough) to make sure your hard drive doesn't have any bad blocks.

EDIT: I don't think Win2K Pro has scandisk, so you have to do the following:

Click "Start"
Click "RUN"
In the "OPEN" command line, type:

chkdsk /f

Click OK

It will tell you that it can't access the drive, and ask if you want to schedule it on the next startup.

Type "Y"

Restart the computer. It will run chkdsk before starting Windows. Watch to see if there are errors. If there are errors, it may take awhile and you probably found the initial cause of your problem.

It sounds like you may have corrupted or missing system files. If the Win2K system restore doesn't work, try re-applying Windows 2000 service pack 4.

[Ron]

J,
There are a ton of different things that could cause memory referencing problems with windows, both hardware and software related. If you have Windows update set to run automatically, it can cause problems to appear out of the blue. I would take the steps outlined in lonewolf's post and also try:

- Remove and reinstall the memory sticks. Clean the contacts with a pencil eraser.
- If you have any Norton antivirus/firewall/utility software installed, it could be the root of the problem. It is all bloated, overrated crap. In a recent CNET review of Norton Anti-virus, it got a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10.
- Reinstall/update your video driver.
- Reenable Dr. Watson and check the dumps and log file. They are at
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DrWatson\user.dmp
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DrWatson\drwtsn32.log
- This is a longshot, but Win2K has a bug that causes similar problems if a filename has more than 260 characters to the right of the period.
- go to the Run box on the Start Menu and type in: sfc /scannow this will scan, verify and fix any corrupted Windows protected files.

I've also been seeing a lot of people having problems after they updated Internet Exploder to version 7.

These kind of problems are inherent in Microsoft products. That's why my next machine is definitely going to be a Mac.

[Punkinhead]

J,
There are a ton of different things that could cause memory referencing problems with windows, both hardware and software related. If you have Windows update set to run automatically, it can cause problems to appear out of the blue. I would take the steps outlined in lonewolf's post and also try:

- Remove and reinstall the memory sticks. Clean the contacts with a pencil eraser.
- If you have any Norton antivirus/firewall/utility software installed, it could be the root of the problem. It is all bloated, overrated crap. In a recent CNET review of Norton Anti-virus, it got a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10.
- Reinstall/update your video driver.
- Reenable Dr. Watson and check the dumps and log file. They are at
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DrWatson\user.dmp
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DrWatson\drwtsn32.log
- This is a longshot, but Win2K has a bug that causes similar problems if a filename has more than 260 characters to the right of the period.
- go to the Run box on the Start Menu and type in: sfc /scannow this will scan, verify and fix any corrupted Windows protected files.

I've also been seeing a lot of people having problems after they updated Internet Exploder to version 7.

These kind of problems are inherent in Microsoft products. That's why my next machine is definitely going to be a Mac.

There can be problems if you have directory structures longer than 255. We have some deep packages in sub-modules and had to switch all of our continuous integration to linux boxes because of that. Also, I have a game server @ home that has taken a shit on me since I allowed the IE7 update. I couldn't agree more with the Mac comment, although if there were more games dev'd for Linux and/or Wine was a little better I would just stay with Linux. I'm pretty into the Fedora Core box I have set up.

[Colton]

These kind of problems are inherent in Microsoft products. That's why my next machine is definitely going to be a Mac.

Amen.