My computer has a tendency to freeze up and stays that way. It will not allow me to open or close any programs or even to shut down the computer. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason. Sometimes it happens while surfing the net, other times while doing things on the desktop. I have Windows 98. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Diagnosing random freezes in Windows 98 is surprisingly difficult. However, there are several things we can try. Firstly, let’s try and reduce the acceleration of your graphics card. Right-click on ‘My Computer’, located on the desktop, and click ‘Properties’ from the context menu which appears. In the window that comes up, click the ‘Performance’ tab and then click the ‘Graphics…’ button. The ‘Advanced Graphics Settings’ window will now appear. Under the ‘Graphics’ heading, note the current setting of the slider (most probably ‘Full’) and then drag the ‘Hardware acceleration’ slider down one notch. Click ‘Ok’ to close this window and then ‘Ok’ again in the other window. Try running the software with which the graphics card was having trouble to see if this resolves the problem. If it doesn’t, repeat the procedure again and again (each time moving the slider down one notch) until it does fix the problem or you reach ‘None’. If you work your way down to ‘None’ on the slider, or other side-effects start occurring, you should restore the slider to its original setting.

If reducing the graphics acceleration doesn’t solve the problem, then it may be caused by a corrupt Windows file. To investigate this avenue, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Programs’ > ‘Accessories’ > ‘System Tools’ > and open ‘System Information’. In the window that appears, click the ‘Tools’ menu and then ‘System File Checker’. Use this utility to check for any corrupt Windows files. If any are found, then the SFC can also extract a new copy of the corrupt file from your Windows 98 CD.

A third reason for the problem could be an application you are running. If you are running a common application whenever your computer crashes, close the application after rebooting your PC to see if the problem persists (if the application automatically loads on startup then close straight after Windows has finished booting - ie. before it can potentially cause a problem). When doing this, be sure to have a look at all the applications in your system tray and in the background (by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL). Another thing to try next time your computer freezes, is to give it the three finger salute and press CTRL-ALT-DEL to see if you can close the problem application. Applications which have hung will have ‘[Not Responding]‘ next to its name in the list of applications.

Another possible cause of the problem may be caused by OS decay. This is a situation where there is so much trash in your system from installing applications, uninstalling applications, loading and removing drivers, etc… that your computer is littered with miscellaneous files and registry entries causing random crashes and lockups. In this case, your only hope is to backup all of your data that you wish to keep (eg. documents) and reinstall Windows. The best guide I have found to doing this is at ZDNet www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/stories/main/0,5594,2531288,00.html . There are a couple of sketchy sections in this article so I will run through some pointers for you. When you create a boot disk, as the article mentions, Windows will copy the CD drivers onto the disk for you. The article doesn’t mention how to do this, but you go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’, open the ‘Add/Remove Programs’ control panel, click the ‘Startup Disk’ tab, and then the ‘Create Disk’ button. It is IMPERATIVE that you make sure this disk works with CD support (and if it doesn’t, don’t continue). You can establish this by rebooting your computer with the disk in the drive. Once your computer has finished booting off the disk, place a CD into your CD-ROM drive, change to the drive, and view the contents (’dir’ command). If all works well, the contents of your CD drive will be displayed. Remove the disk from your drive and reboot your computer. Now turning to the last section of the article, if you have a full version of Windows 98, you can reinstall by running SETUP.EXE from the CD (after you have formatted your hard drive - as covered in the article). You can also do this if you have the Windows 98 upgrade but you will need a previous version of Windows (eg. Windows 95) handy as setup will request this so that it knows you can use the upgrade edition. You will be prompted by the Windows 98 setup sometime during the installation to insert a disk from a previous version of Windows. Good luck and if you have any questions, queries, or theories then please contact me again BEFORE you attempt the reinstallation. One final note, this always catches me out when I reinstall Windows on other people’s computers. Make sure you note down your video driver (ie. brand and model) and have the information to hand otherwise you will get a rude surprise (in the form of 640 x 480 with 16 colours) when you boot Windows (however, if you are caught out, have a read of the next question in this column which deals with that exact problem).