Need HELP

We have a Micron PC with Windows ME, for well over a year now, we have been experiencing serious problems with it. A friend of ours installed XP for us, which completely took care of the dreaded blue screen of death that plagued us, but at the same time, it slowed us down unbelievably! We finally downgraded back to ME a few months ago, WOW! our comp was fast again, but once again the blue screen is driving us CRAZY!!! On top of the blue screen we have encountered a new source of irritation, our comp will (without warning) reboot itself! On top of that we also experience freezing!
Due to all the troubles we were having, I ended up running the recovery disc, thought that would take care of all our problems. It's back to factory, it should be perfect! I spent hours upon hours working on the recovery and then installing all of the critical updates from Microsoft. When i was finally done, I found that we still have all the problems listed above. I came to this site to re-download Ad-Aware (free version) and saw all the other programs that were available for free. I finally got around to trying a few. In reading all the info from googling our error messages, I came across more than a few that suggested a firewall. My first attemptat a firewall was unpleasant, I was no longer able to play games online at one of my favorite sites, when I would click on play now absolutely NOTHING would happen. I removed that firewall and it took several days before I was able to get my games going again.
Three or four days ago, after becoming frustrated to no end by the actions of this comp, I decided to try a few different programs. I downloaded Spybot, SpyBlaster and Sygate Personal Firewall from this site. For the first two days, everything went GREAT! None of the afore mentioned problems reared their ugly heads!! I thought I had finally gotten this comp fixed. Unfortunately, as of yesterday, the plague has returned!!! I noticed yesterday that in my Close Programs window it shows "smc (not responding) which i do not understand because the symbol in my systray flashes to show incoming and outgoing info and also asks me whether to allow connection or not.
Anybody have any suggestions as to what should be done to FIX this comp? It's only 4 yrs old. Tired of trying to find info at Google. Tired of getting the run around at Microsoft and not willing to pay those money grubbers for them to fix their own malfuntioning software! Tired of getting the run around at Micron who won't help becuse the waranty is expired!

Thanks in Advance for ANY Help Received,
Angie

 

System Freezes and reboots could be caused by bad RAM, faulty device drivers, corrupt OS (in WindowsME's case it doesn't have to get corrupted to give you BSoD, I hate to say it but it is the worst of all Windows!) and/or malware infection of some kind.
I would suggest analyzing windows startup files would be a good place to start, disabling all processes by using a standalone freeware like Startup Control Panel to see is the problems were linked to a program or processes that started along with Windows or not. If the problem continue, I would suggest downloading and using HijackThis to not only check for infection possibilities but also to see what programs/apps running in the background during the system slowdowns that could be related to the problem.
If you suspect virial infection on the system then please check out the stickies on the 'Spyware Specific' section to get started and one of the -anti-spyware geeks will continue helping you, ok?

PS. I'd recommend Windows98se over WindowsME any day of the week. IF upgrading your hardware is not an option I'd suggest you look into installing Windows98se.

Good Luck.

 

how about windows 2000? is it as bad? or worse? have a friend that is willing to help install it...have been playing around a little with msconfig, i turned off all un-needed programs, manually deleted some spyware that ad-aware and spybot were not catching or would not delete, ie WSXSVC.exe, prutect, 180ax.exe, mmups, admanctl.exe, admankeep.exe and vmss...also have turned off VREDIR.exe was getting errors saying that the dll was missing or corrupt....will download startup control panel and hijackthis and see if they help...thanks again for your suggestions.....angie

 

win2k is just as good .. id go for that...actually, anything over winME ...heck, id do win98SE or even win95b

 

Windows 2000 would be a step up and in the right direction. But I would download one of the free antivirus utilities and firewall programs from the download section of MajorGeeks, burn them to a CD, and install them after the OS install, and before connecting to the internet. It takes a very small amount of time for an unprotected PC to become infected with viruses and malware.

Please don't do an upgrade install over ME, as it has been know to cause numerous problems. Best to start with a reformat and fresh install!

 

another thing id do, especially if doing a fresh install, is install a program such as DeepFreeze. gives even more protection. even though the program is exactly for the novice of users i thikn

 

lol, i currently have windows me installed on my older home computer, which is my main computer, and i've not really had alot of problems. yes, things could be better, such as upgrading to xp, but i don't have the dough to shell out for it. anyway, when you re-installed any of the operating systems, did you format the disk prior to installation? i recently reinstalled windows 98se, (i also tried xp on it), and had problems, on my managers laptop. it turns out (my opinion), that it was picking up residual stuff that was there, and when i loaded the os, and finally booted up, i found msn messenger was in the task bar (by the clock). i also noticed a couple of other things as well. anyway, i couldn't format the hard drive until i had an os loaded (it wouldn't let me), and after i did that, things were ok. anyway, i would format the hard drive, load your os, load your drivers (check for updates), and see what happens.

as for the vredir problem, i've only recently had problems with that (on the comp, i just talked about), on 98 se. that actually has something to do with network neighborhood (as well as a bunch of other stuff). anyway, i just deleted the registry keys and got rid of that problem, and everything seems to work fine, internet and all.

vnetsup.vxd, dfs.vxd, vredir.vxd <-- problems that i had

g/l, sosaman

 

why would you have problems formatting a hard drive just cuz an OS was loaded on the computer? just get a win98SE boot disk, and then fdisk, and format ....

 

it wouldn't let me format the hard drive until i had an os loaded.

basically the laptop in question, wouldn't bootup in normal mode or safe mode, so i had to reinstall. i had no 98 boot disk, only the os disk (and no floppy drive). - sos

 

how does one go about formatting their hard drive? and does anyone have anexplanation about Sygate showing as not responding even though it seems to be working fine??....angie

 

well, best bet is to get a win98SE boot disk ... its a good thing to have for those OS... then you can just fdisk and format ... best way to install an OS ...

 

akc50138,
The easiest way to format your hard drive is the way jaeSun suggested, with a boot disk, and use the FDISK function. You can make such a boot disk with your computer and ME. Go to Control Panel - Add/Remove programs, and at the top you should see an option to make a start up disk and this is the same as the boot disk that was referred to. Have a floppy disk handy and click on the option to make a start up disk, and insert the floppy disk when prompted to. When finished you will have a ME boot disk that contains the same basic programs that the Win98SE boot disk has, and will perform the same functions. If you don't wish to make your own, go to bootdisk.com and download the Win98SE boot disk. This will be a WinImage self extracting file and you will still need a floppy disk. Click on the file, and it will either self extract to A:, or give you the option to do so, and when the operation is finished you will have your boot disk.

With the floppy in the drive, reboot your computer, and it should boot from the floppy disk that you made. If it doesn't, then you will have to go into your BIOS and change the boot order to boot from A: first. Assuming that it booted from the floppy, when it is finished, you should see this "A:>" minus the quotation marks. Type "fdisk C:" minus the quotation marks, and it should bring up a menu. You would want the DOS partition, so check it. When the FDISK operation is complete, hit escape and it should carry you back to A:>, now type "format C:" minus quoatation marks and when the operation completes you should have a freshly reformatted hard drive. Open your CD drive and put your OS CD in, remove the floppy, and reboot the computer. The OS CD should kick in here, follow the on screen messages and prompts.