My computer is a 4 year old IBM NetVista Pentuim III with a 20 GB hard drive (10.3 GB free) running Windows ME. The computer is used for basic home computing (e.g. email, internet, and word processing). No serious gaming or anything like that. The computer has recently been very slow. It is very slow on startup, and often freezes when loading Norton Internet Security. Frequently, NIS doesn’t load at all, causing problems accessing email and internet, so a restart is required. The main issue is with the slow speed of the computer, and regular freezing. Sometimes this will involve green striped lines across the screen (two thirds of the way up) which requires a cold reboot. Other times software just freezes. I suspect the best remedy is a hard disk reformat and start again. However, I am not sure how to go about this confidently and ensure that my software and files can all safely be reloaded. I also think installing a larger hard disk might be sensible. My current computer maintenance includes using NIS, ZoneAlarm, weekly virus scans, regular running Spybot and Ad-Aware, running Disk Defragmenter once a week, and regularly backing up all my important files to a CD. Can you give some pointers on the best way to proceed, and if I need to see a computer technician, how to select a good one? (more…)

When attempting to open Help files, the following message appears: ‘Cannot find the file hh.exe (or one of its components). Make sure the path and filename are correct and that all the required libraries are available’. The computer is running Windows 98 SE. (more…)

Recently I purchased a second-hand computer with Windows 98 installed. An article I read said the best way to clean up the hard drive was to uninstall and reinstall Windows 98. I have attempted this procedure, but a message appears saying the version of Windows 98 on my computer is more up-to-date than the version I am attempting to install. How do I tell the difference, and should I reinstall Windows? (more…)

Whenever Windows starts, a message appears saying ‘Cannot import sys.reg. Error opening the file. There may be a disk or file system error’. The computer is running Windows 98. (more…)

When attempting to open a file that was saved from an attachment to an Outlook Express email message, the following message appears: ‘An error occurred when loading the file C:windowsprofiles…desktop…announcement. This file is not a valid Dr Watson file’. Who is Dr Watson and how can I stop him from trying to open my attachments? (more…)