Compac computer

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PeterW2

46 posts

Geek

#75895 25-Jan-2011 15:19

Hi people

I'm in trouble again. My mother has a Compac notebook running Vista home basic that she primarily only uses to do emailing. She doesn't surf the internet at all. Since this machine was new, she has had no end of trouble with it. The damn thing will nearly always freeze up on her, and she has a huge amount of trouble connecting to her wireless network, which is nearly always solved by unplugging the modem and restarting it. I don't think the two issues are related. There is another notebook in their house, an ASUS which has no trouble connecting to the modem wirlessly at all (it'll still work, when it clearly needs to be restarted for the Compac to connect to it).

Now, could these issues be programs conflicting with each other?. She has AVG which I have scanned a number of times, without picking up anything nasty.

Thank you in advance

Peter

PeterW2

46 posts

Geek

#431059 25-Jan-2011 15:25

oh heck, I was meant to add that I'm wondering if I should suggest that she upgrades to Win 7?

gzt

17104 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#431154 25-Jan-2011 19:55

can you describe the freeze further?

for instance, is there hdd activity still going on during this time?

is control eventually returned to the user?

PeterW2

46 posts

Geek

#431158 25-Jan-2011 20:07

Hello gzt. At the moment I can't really tell you a lot more than I have done. I really need to have a 'proper' play with the machine. I do know that about the only thing that I can do to get it running again, is to push and hold the power button. The cursor just does it's little rotating thingie when it locks up, and it'll do this for hours without seemingly doing anything else.

Sorry that I can't be more specific at this stage. I only get called to it when she's already in trouble with it, but I don't think it's anything that she's doing that's causing the issue

gzt

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#431174 25-Jan-2011 20:42

Cool as. Next time you could see if ctrl-alt-del will bring up the task manager eventually, look at the process tab (and maybe sort by cpu time) and see if anything is using the bulk of it.

No idea about the wireless network. I dealt with a connection situation a while ago where there were essentially two wireless network managers running at the same time. I removed one of them and this seemed to resolve the problem, but I did a lot of other things at the same time.

As more background, Is the laptop running the compaq o/s build which came with it or has a different o/s disc been installed since then?

PeterW2

46 posts

Geek

#431179 25-Jan-2011 20:57

I didn't think to do the ctrl-alt thing. I will do that, and let you know. I'm hoping I might get a chance to get my hands on it tomorrow.

The comp is using the op system that came with it (pre-loaded). As a lot of people have commented in various places, Vista doesn't appear to be well liked, but I can't believe that it's Vista that's causing this problem

Once again, thanks gzt
Peter