• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Virus?

arcticpenguin

Philosopher
A
Joined
Sep 18, 2002
Messages
5,687
I have a Win98SE machine. I only use it for word processing, so why upgrade? My primary machine is Linux anyway.

The Win98 machine is acting very very slow, and after I rebooted it, the hourglass icon is blinking. It's been doing that for > 10 minutes now. Could this be a hardware problem, or have it been hit by a virus?

I run anti-viral software on there, and don't use that machine for e-mail, but other people use the machine when I'm not here, and who knows what they do with it?
 
It could be a Virus, but difficult to tell. Is it connected to the INTERNET? And have your "upgraded" the anti-virus software? A system that gets used by lots of people could have had some crappy software installed on it or a virus. I would make sure I had the latest virus definition files on the system.


Most of the Anti-virus programs come with the ability to run off a rescue disk, so if you can do that try it.
 
What happens when you start in safe mode ?

What happens if you:
1) click Start->Run
2) type msconfig, press Enter
3) Select the 'startup' tab
4) remove all checkmarks and restart ?

Do you see any suspicious processes when you press Ctrl-Alt-Del ?
 
So far:

It's not completely frozen. I turned off a couple things in STARTUP, including a digital camera package. I'm running a virus check now.

I talked to the local guru. On hearing the symptoms, and not actually seeing the system, he said something about "OS decay" or "OS rot".

It is on the Internet, but behind a pretty good firewall. Mostly, besides the word processing, I just use it to look at movie trailers. However, as mentioned, a couple other people use it as well when I'm not looking.

edited to add: virus check comes out clean.
 
OS decay could mean that you need to de-frag your hard drive, windows tends to slow down if you have not done a de-frag recently.

In system tools run Scan disk, then Disk defragmenter.

(start/accessories/system tools)
 
Actually OS rot or OS decay or whatever funny name you can think of just means your tech has no clue as to what is wrong. :) Interestingly enough, it is quiet possible that your Windows has endured so many installation/uninstallations of various components that it's now simply falling apart. Fresh install (wipe everything away first) will most likely solve your problems.

SRW said:
OS decay could mean that you need to de-frag your hard drive, windows tends to slow down if you have not done a de-frag recently.

In system tools run Scan disk, then Disk defragmenter.

(start/accessories/system tools)
Click to expand...
 
3 years isn't a long time to go between defrags, is it? ;) I ran a ScanDisk last night, I'm doing a defrag today, and it looks like it will take most of the day. The system does seem to be acting better, it behaved OK while I was deleting a few applications and loading the latest anti-virus stuff, etc.
 
The defrag is finished. I reloaded the latest version of the anti-virus software and did another scan, still clean.

It seems to be behaving better now, I will credit the defrag.

Thanks to all.
 
arcticpenguin said:
I have a Win98SE machine. I only use it for word processing, so why upgrade? My primary machine is Linux anyway.

The Win98 machine is acting very very slow, and after I rebooted it, the hourglass icon is blinking. It's been doing that for > 10 minutes now. Could this be a hardware problem, or have it been hit by a virus?

I run anti-viral software on there, and don't use that machine for e-mail, but other people use the machine when I'm not here, and who knows what they do with it?
Click to expand...

I think there's something new floating around that hasn't been added to the virus defs yet. I got hit early this week with something that made my 999 mhz PIII Optiplex slow to a crawl and denied me access to the network. The Windows Task Mgr - Performance gizmo told me that 100% of CPU was being used on some system process. It was a Win2K system, I tried going back to the last stable setup, running every virus scan known to man and the running Norton's Win Doctor over it, all to no avail. I finally gave up and wiped the disk clean and upgraded to XP Pro. Works fine now.
 
arcticpenguin said:
3 years isn't a long time to go between defrags, is it? ;)
Click to expand...

Are you serious? Holy crap. That's definitely a great way to choke a 95/98/ME machine.
 
Sindai said:

Are you serious? Holy crap. That's definitely a great way to choke a 95/98/ME machine.
Click to expand...
As mentioned, my primary machine is Linux. I try to do as little work as possible on the Win machine. Bill gates is evil.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom