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Help with lockups


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My Windows 98 SE computer keeps locking up so bad, that I have to reset it. It never blue screens, just the screen freezes and I can move the mouse, but nothing I click on will respond. It seems to happen most frequently when there's something on the screen using the flash plugin, or animated gifs on the screen. It's really weird, since I never had a Windows 98 SE computer behave this way (ussually they run quite solid unless they're left on too long).

I have a little bit of a suspicion that someone is sending fragmented ICMP packets to my computer. Though I dont think Windows 98 has this problem. (more like Windows 95 and NT 4.0) Though this could be a possibility. I thought the patches fixed all of that. Though, I suppose Flash is doing something Windows 98 doesnt like.

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The crashes could be caused by windows running out of systems resources

You can check this by running Resource meter while you are using your computer.

You can find it under accessories -> system tools

when you get a message about low resources you probably have found the cause of the crashes.

Some programs do not free their resources after using them and you need to quit them before the resources are freed up.

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Could be a bad driver, a hanging background application (antivirus/firewall/service), a system library conflict... Even Explorer may hang sometimes; you can kill it with Task Manager and restart it (CTRL+ESC or a shortcut from within a running application).

First of all, check your running processes, see if there's anything suspicious and if there is, kill it and observe behavior. Uninstall, if necessary.

See if there's any hardware conflict in Device Manager - try to resolve, if any.

Check RAM memory with MemTest86+ as suggested before (leave it running for a few hours).

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  • 3 weeks later...

When I browse the internet I use Firefox 2. I know it's not a memory problem(I had Windows XP on this machine and it worked fine) I have all the unofficial updates (Including Flash 9).

I dont trust Internet Explorer at all, so on my computer I have my firewall set to not allow it to communicate in or out. The lockups have been happening ever since I installed Windows 98 SE in the first place (It did the same thing too the last time I installed it). I have 576 mb of SD-RAM. So, Windows 98 might have a problem with that. Though I dont see why... The lockups ussually occur most often when Firefox is open, most often when viewing things using an Flash plugin (things like youtube or a app with Flash)

There's nothing running on my machine that could cause a problem. I use tiny personal firewall and occasionly I use MSN 7.5. So I'm really kind of confused. It ussually just locks up to the point the mouse operates but nothing on the screen will respond to mouse clicks or key presses. Sometimes the screen will go blank or have giberish on the top portion of the screen and black for the rest and the monitor will go in idle mode as if the monitor is no longer recieving input from the VGA port.

The weird black screen crash doesnt happen as much as the frozen cold solid screen. I never see BSODs. In fact the whole time I used Windows 98 (mostly years ago) I rarely seen BSODs if at all. That's why I always never really understood people when they said they saw them because I probably saw them like once a year.

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??? (if correctly installed even Unofficial patches should be ok...)

Better check your drivers for the video card (whether separate card or integrated). Sounds suspicious. Have you got the video accelerated (Display Properties/Advanced? can't remember...)? Also check the AGP Aperture Size in the BIOS.

edit - suggest NOT "controlling" virtual memory either; firewall/AV software will "eat" memory...

Edited by submix8c
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Thanks for your help, everyone. I think I isolated the problem. Firefox2/Flash were eating GDI resources like crazy. So I just use Opera and reboot every couple hours and turn my PC off when I'm not using it. I used Opera a long long time ago and it sucked, though it seems to work okay with this computer.

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Well, I started using Opera and it worked great, for awhile anyways. Though the lockups still keep happening even if I do reboot often (I looked up 98 GDI and discovered the limit on 98 is very low compared to 2k and XP, so I thought rebooting and clearing those resources would help)

So I thought maybe Flash 9 just isnt intended for Windows 98 SE, so If Id like to use it I'll have to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. I guess TinyFirewall might be screwing something up or it may be my video card driver.

Though my video card is quite old and I have the newest possible version of the driver for 98. I totally stopped using MSN 7.5. So it's not doing it (buggy POS it is).

I'm pretty sure mysterious lockups are Flash's fault. But sometimes it does it on a normal php forum. These things never happened to me on XP and if I had a legit XP CD, Id be using that right now because I didnt have problems like that on it. Just M$ stopped selling XP, and even if I had the money for a new computer I wouldnt want to tolerate Vista. So I'm kind of stuck with old Windows. (I'm going to have to upgrade to Vista eventually as my course work requires me to use it.... bliiag)

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(I hope you mean an XP Evaluation version or an un-activated "friends" copy for "testing"...)

BTW, in your other "new" thread, you indicate lockups on the Win2K install... you have virii? I've had absolutely no lockup problems with the correct versions of browsers (or plugins) in Win98SE...

By-the-by, XP can still be found, just not directly from MS (and they are pretty cheap - try NewEgg). As for Vista, better check your PC for compatibility - the requirements are much higher than 9x/2k/xp...

Edited by submix8c
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This PC had a legit copy of Windows XP (Though the hard drive it resided on pooped out) I dont have the CD for it, but I did have a Windows 98 SE CD lieing around.

As for Vista, this computer is way too slow. The only thing in it the meets the minimum requirements is the CPU. I'm waiting until Vista matures and Microsoft combs out the really bad security holes/stability issues and then when that happens I'll build a PC meeting the recomended requirements. I've helped people out with their Windows Vista computers. Windows Vista does some pretty weird things.

I'm pretty sure the computer has no viruses. I think those third party patches I installed made Windows 2k freak out to be honest. That and the second time I think it caused stability issues with Windows 98 se being on the same drive (Which had nothing to do with the third party patches, just the different things mightve confused things)

And I looked on newegg, but I just saw copies of Windows XP intended for a classroom ($200-300 CDN) Which is just nuts, since I dont need a classroom license. Just for my home PC.

Again, thanks for your help. I think there's no point trying to fix that thing for now.

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This PC had a legit copy of Windows XP (Though the hard drive it resided on pooped out) I dont have the CD for it, but I did have a Windows 98 SE CD lieing around.

As for Vista, this computer is way too slow. The only thing in it the meets the minimum requirements is the CPU. I'm waiting until Vista matures and Microsoft combs out the really bad security holes/stability issues and then when that happens I'll build a PC meeting the recomended requirements. I've helped people out with their Windows Vista computers. Windows Vista does some pretty weird things.

I'm pretty sure the computer has no viruses. I think those third party patches I installed made Windows 2k freak out to be honest. That and the second time I think it caused stability issues with Windows 98 se being on the same drive (Which had nothing to do with the third party patches, just the different things mightve confused things)

And I looked on newegg, but I just saw copies of Windows XP intended for a classroom ($200-300 CDN) Which is just nuts, since I dont need a classroom license. Just for my home PC.

Again, thanks for your help. I think there's no point trying to fix that thing for now.

Sounds more like video card is over heating, this will freeze screen and mouse. Try cleaning your tower - dust and lint on fans and video card. Check on a utility software to read temp. on card and or CPU.

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