Start with a defrag and diskscan of the hard drives. Clean out temp folders, especially the ones under Windows and those used by IE. Have you checked for a virus? If you've installed and uninstalled lots of software, run RegClean to remove unneeded registry entries. How big is your Windows swap file? IMO, it should be at least 2x physical memory.


>I'm calling on the group mind to see if anyone has any idea what's going on with my home computer. For the last month or two, I've been having a problem with it locking up for 10-30 seconds at a time. The only pattern I see is that it happens when I start a new task that uses a lot of resources. Playing a video file or opening IE are big ones, but other programs do it, too. The whole system freezes for 10-30 seconds and then it comes back and everything is fine. It's more a nuisance than anything, but it's really getting annoying, so I thought I'd ask here.
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>Nothing changed on my system hardware-wise immediately before this problem started. I did add some new memory, but that was months earlier. I do wonder if it is that, though, and just was a delayed effect? I know PC100 and PC133 is _supposed_ to co-exist peacefully, but...?
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>Software-wise, I install all sorts of junk all the time, so it's hard to pinpoint if anything there is causing it. I did run a virus scan and came up clean.
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>I know that's not a lot to go on, but I'm hoping someone will recognize the symptoms and be able to give me a clue. :)
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>System specs:
>P3-600 (not overclocked)
>128 PC100
>128 PC133
>IBM Deskstars 20GB & 75GB
>Windows 98SE
>
>Any ideas?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Michelle