I am having a lot of compter problems (PC) can anyone help?

[Laurabearz]

These are stupid problems....

First I keep running out of memory... this drives me NUTS coz I have 768 megs (or something like that) What can I shut down.... HOw can I tell from the contral alt delete button what all those strange code things mean.....

Second, My browers (via AOL) keeps changing how my web pages are encoded.... often I cant read the page and have to right click and select used defined to read a page..... Is there anyway to fix that issue???

I am sure more info is needed on your part but I havent a clue what you would need......

Can anyone help?

Thanks!

 

[Kermit]

I can't help you with AOL since I haven't used it in ages.

Memory issues can be hard to pinpoint. Have you installed anything new lately? Any new software or hardware you install could potentially cause a conflict that would hog resources.

Screen savers take a ton of memory. Even if you're just using the basic ones that come with Windows it can cause a problem. Be sure to disable your screen saver and see if that helps.

Virus scanners can also cause problems, but that's a bit trickier since you can't go online without one. You may want to try disabling yours and not going online for a while to see if you have memory problems then.

Along the same lines, do you get the memory problems when you use certain applications? For example, if you don't go online, do you still have the problem? That could possibly give you more information.

You should also remove all applications from your Startup folder. Where this is located depends on the version of Windows that you're running. Basically, anything that's in that folder launches automatically when you start Windows, and it takes a bunch of memory to do that. When you delete the applications from your Startup folder, you <i>will not</i> delete the application from your computer. You just won't have it start automatically any more.

Those are the most common problems I can think of off the top of my head. Unfortunately, there's no good diagnostic to see just what your problem is. This is one case where you may want to have a friend or family member who's really good with computers take a look at your system and see if there's any glaring problem. Good luck!