Solving Common PC Problems

Now that you've read our 15 solutions to common PC problems, 
how about sharing some of your own home-grown solutions?

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Keith Adams - 10:28am Mar 4, 1999 EDT (#4 of 13)

I have a very roomy tower and if the fixes aren't working for 
whatever problem, I have a simple fix. I put a live mouse in 
the case and throw my cat in after him. Usually by the time my 
cat has caught the mouse everything is jiggled back into place. 
Of course sometimes my cat gets a little singed........ 


Todd Hunt - 03:24pm Mar 4, 1999 EDT (#5 of 13)

I have a AMD k62-400mhz computer i just built. It has 128meg of 
ram a creative lab banshee video card and a creative labs 
soundblaster live value card with a zoltix 56k modem and a 3 
com nic card. Windows seems to freeze with no error message a 
lot of the time.Was curious if anyone has ever had this problem 
and could help. Hope someone can help thanks..Todd 


Ray Gressett - 02:41am Mar 5, 1999 EDT (#6 of 13)

To Todd Hunt: You could try removing each card then 
reinstalling one at a time until you find the culprit. This 
will help you isolate the true problem and could save you some 
headache. I have had trouble with 3COM COMBO cards crashing 
with S3 Virge cards on Pentium 2s, five of them to be exact, 
and no matter what I did they wouldn't work right. The freezing 
sounds like to me either an interrupt conflict or DMA problem. 
Also, try an older card if you have one or borrow one and see 
if the problem goes away. Check the 3COM site and Creative Labs 
site for known issues, also the CD ROMs included have readme 
files with known issues. 

Another quick video card fix: If you have a new loaded PCI 
video (or other) card that simply won't behave no matter what 
you try, just put it into another PCI slot then run the install 
utility again. This has worked for me on several occasions. It 
is best if you place a video card in PCI slot one, which is 
usually the one closest to the top in a tower. 


Ryan Axis - 03:13pm Mar 7, 1999 EDT (#7 of 13)

Hi, 

My computer (Win98) is seeking my floppy drive everytime I shut 
down or reboot from the start menu. Does anyone know how to 
fix this? 


Kyle Gosnell - 03:54am Mar 9, 1999 EDT (#8 of 13)

I read the article in the April issue of Windows Mag and theres 
something thats been forgotten about hangs, when ever you 
experiance hangs on bootup or shutdown , to eleminate Gremlins ,
go to control panel/sounds , remove the sound for start and 
shutdown first thing , the media may have been subjected to a 
glitchy program and is running on "lite", NOW you can chase 
down the problem , if it turns out that your media is the 
culprit , then it's simple to reinstall it and all the sounds 
through the Control panel. One more thing in answer to another 
problem some are having , go to Config.sys and see if there is 
a redundant entry , try the REM command on the last time it 
wrote it ( do not REM the first entry because it may need it in 
that order ), and see how the machine behaves , these are 
simple fixes that will chase the GREMLINs away while you get to 
the needed problems , if any. Kyle M. Gosnell Tue ,
Mar 9th Colorado 


Joe Morelli - 08:37pm Mar 10, 1999 EDT (#9 of 13)

I upgraded to windows 98 recently and after the update, under 
"printer's" in my computer, it is blank, not even "add 
printer".. My printer and various apps, ie;, winfax, fineprint 
all function,however I am unable to set defaults for them, nor 
add an additional printer. An uninstall back to win95 corrected 
problem, a reinstall of win98 recreated the problem. 


Doug Burger - 01:13am Mar 11, 1999 EDT (#10 of 13)

While clearly not a hard-and-fast solution for this problem in 
all instances, this is my story. 

Own a working AMD K6-2 300 system and added zip drive. 
Installed new software from Iomega site as O.E.M. pack received 
with the drive was out of date. System would not recognize 
floppy drive!!!!? 

After much help from Microsoft on how to sleuth out the 
problem, I discovered a conflict now existed with scanner 
driver loaded in system.ini. &*^%@*% 

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, lucked upon changing 
parallel port setting in CMOS from ECP\EPP to EPP\SPP. 

Result? 

Zip drive happy, floopy drive happy, scanner happy, this 
formerly happy owner looking wistfully at the abacus as the 
apex of this type of technology. 

Bring on true plug-and-play!!!! 


Ken Martin - 08:10pm Mar 11, 1999 EDT (#11 of 13)

I have a IBM compatible PC with AMD K6 266MHz processor, 48 
Megs of memory, and run Windows 98 upgraded from Windows 95B. 
Half of the time when I boot the machine, I get an error 
message which states "VMM32.VXD missing or unable to load. 
Press any key." When I press any key, the screen changes to "It 
is now safe to turn off your computer." The only way I can 
overcome this problem is to use Ctrl-Alt-Del, reboot, and then 
lie to the machine that it should start in the "Normal" mode 
rather that the "Safe" mode to which it defaults. It was 
suggested that I replace the video card, which I have done 
using a new ATI Xpert 98, 8 Megabyte unit. The problem still 
persists about half of the time. Does any one out there have 
any ideas on how to solve this problem? I sent an e-mail to 
Microsoft some time ago, but no response as yet. 

Ken Martin AeroVin@ibm.net 


Todd Byers - 08:55pm Mar 12, 1999 EDT (#12 of 13)

Another solution for systems that keep checking drive A: on 
Startup or Shutdown is to clear the Documents from the 
Documents Menu on the Start Menu. 


jerry013 Turner - 12:40am Mar 13, 1999 EDT (#13 of 13)

The best solution I was ever offered has resolved most of my 
operation problems with a home-grown PC 
(K-6/233/128kRAM/Intel430VX and three hard drives). 

Solution: Provide proper cooling by installing in a larger 
tower, adding internal fans, and maximize the size of the CPU 
heatsink/fan. 

Solutions reads simply, but most of us do not have sufficient 
internal cooling. Try it, you will like the result! 




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