thanks for the prompt reply kayak, i have previously had 4-6 windows open including d4f and money am and have usually had 45-50% system resources left which is why i posted. The problems seemed to start once i had used the spy bot programme.

Thanks
peter

extrovert

In 'Run' near the Start button type

MSCONFIG

and then click on OK

Up will pop a window with a 'Startup' tab.
Click on it and then tell us what you have on there which has been selected with a tick and are running as programmes in the background.

It's some of these background programmes that need to be shut down to conserve your operating resources.

hi DocProc,
programmes selected

msnmsgr
scanregistry
taskmonitor
systemtray
loadpowerprofile
creative launcher
criticalupdate
loadqm
icsmgr
incd
avg_cc
loadpowerprofile
schedulingagent
SAgent2ExePath
truevector
dkservice
Avgserv9exe
Zonealarmpro
epsonstatusmonitor2
microsoftofficestartup

thank you
peter

extrovert, I agree with kayaks comments above there is probably not much you can do with w98, however if you have a very samll amount of RAM say 128K or less it may be worth adding some more, it wont cost much and it may put of the day when you have to upgrade.

thanks spaceman i have 320MB of RAM

extrovert, if you upgrade to 2000/XP you will notice a vast improvement in just about everything. Fewer crashes, faster, no more memory problems, etc. etc. It really is worth doing. However, you can get some improvement by going through your system tray (bottom right hand corner) and getting rid of anything that you don't really need.

Thanks for your time and effort kayak, i will get xp

Peter

extrovert, yep kayaks right time to move up to a proper OS (well as proper as MS get). I would go for 2000 but xp is fine to.

extrovert

For a start, I do not have my Zip (Genius Clean) open at all. But despite that, let us compare, eh? Immediately, I think yours is much bigger than mine.......

;-)

On mine, with Win 98SE, I only have open

scanregistry
systemtray
loadpowerprofile
loadpowerprofile

and also a "No Frills Timer", which is a timer programme to assist with info' concerning my 2 hour bounce.

Hope that helps.

Help!

Since 7pm last night, within 5 mins of going online I get the following message:

The system is shutting down. Please save all work in progress and log off. Any unsaved changes will be lost.
This shutdown was initiated by NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM.

Time before shutdown ......45 secs

Windows must now restart because the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service terminated unexpectedly.

I know someone is attacking me because I can see the poisonous little anorak on my Sygate Firewall.

Advice welcome as it has effectively paralysed my computer.

You'll be wanting to read the "freeserve disconnections countrywide" thread :-)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/32286.html

You must keep your PC up to date with Microsoft patches - visit www.windowsupdate.com regularly or install the auto-notification program to download updates automatically. The patch to protect against this exploit is several weeks old.

edit - click here for a cleanup tool specific to this problem.

Not a major problem - but any ideas re my post 701?

skinny - a program which loads on startup is crashing, probably something you don't need since you're not noticing any other problem. See DocProc's post in reply to extrovert a few below your question. Uncheck one of the startup items, reboot and see if the problem goes away. If not, try the next one etc etc.

the troll - thanks I'll try this evening.

thanks for your advice kayak/spaceman, things great and speedy now
peter

Velocity - I've just heard from a pal with the same problem. He thinks its a virus called MS blast which he can't delete as it changes the registry. Will post further if he finds the answer. Good luck

ON EDIT

Go to www.f-secure.com/v-descs/msblast.shtml

where you can download a zip file and instructions on how to remove the virus

Thanks v. much all - now been online for a (presumably worm-free) 20 mins so it seems to have sorted itself out at last which is a relief as it was seriously messing with my karma :-)

Cheers
V

Velocity,

check out slashdot.org for a thread on this latest exploit (which was patched by MS back in June I believe), has details on how to fix it and how to kill the shutdown timer...

J.

Dead PC

We had a close lightning strike last weekend and the mains went all over the place. It took out my BT HH box and an ISDN router. My main PC was OK as I use surge protected sockets but my spare PC is dead. I tried a new ATX power supply today but all that happens is the processor fan turns for a second and then everything's dead again.

So probably a damaged m'board then. Is there anything I can do to check this other than buy a new one ?

cheers

Take out the network card and any modem first, just in case they are dead from having been connected to the comms when it blew up, and are affecting the motherboard. If it still doesn't work then it very probably is the motherboard and possibly the CPU too.

If your second PC is just an older PC then the cheapest and easiest thing to do is probably to buy the same model of motherboard second-hand on eBay (sometimes older but new motherboards come up). Obviously you won't have the latest model but then again you won't spend ages planning the upgrade. Same for the processor if you have to change that, except that there you can move to the fastest supported by your motherboard. This is often a lot faster than is specified in the instruction manual since the motherboard does not actually see the processor speed, it is internal to the processor.