Topic: Something new every day?

[tim]

A few hiccoughs recently - freezing etc - & now, on closing down, the monitor goes full screen green, then red.

Pretty, but should I worry?

[lorna]

Tim. Don't want to hi-jack but interested in any answers to freezing. Every morning when I start up the "arrow" freezes. I have to reset. Then all is well for rest of the day. Weird?
Lorna

[tim]

Join the club!!

On top of which, I have had to retry A4A between subjects several times several times (yes!) today.

Keeps going blank.

[woppa30]

If you screen is goping green then red when you shut the computer down it sounds as if your monitor is on the way out. I assume its a CRT (TV like) rather than a flat panel LCD type.
As for the freezing that could be one a a zillion things.
Does it happen when you do a particular task or is it completely random ??
Best wishes,
woppa

[tim]

Thanks for that.

No, it's a newish flat LCD thing.

Freezing? Whenever it feels like it!!

[tim]

Oh, & now - about 6 different colours. Better by the minute!!

[Yellow Petals]

Tim,

As Woppa says, freezing can be down to a zillion things but common ones are:
1) Processor getting hot - Make sure main fan, vents are unblocked; also turn off, open and make sure processor fan/heatsink are free of dust and fan rotating freely & fast.
2) Memory problem - turn off, openPC, remove memory modules and plug back in carefully.

As far as the Monitor goes, don't really know what to suggest except check plugs are not loose or bent. Could be monitor fault, graphics card fault - unlikely to be software problem.

[kitten]

If your monitor is less than a year old i'd be tempted to take it back for exchange/repair to see if it's that causing the problem. Other than that i'm no help i'm afraid.

[tim]

Up the creek without a paddle!! Great to have ideas - thanks.

 Petals, all good stuff. I accept freezing as a temporary unwillingness to serve the Master. But the inspection of innards - you're joking? - see below - it needs 2 people to get it out of there!!

As to replacements, it seems to get cheaper year on year to buy new.  Awful state of affairs!

And to take anything back - at my age - joking again!!

[kenkew]

It shouldn't be a settings fault Tim, but by resetting your settings it might cure it....
Click 'start'....'control panel'....'appearance & themes'....'Change the computer's theme'.....(this takes you to 'display properties')...click on 'appearances'....windows and buttons tag should be set to 'windows XP'...(I trust that's your version?)...Color scheme should be set to 'default'...(that's blue)

Then click 'settings' at top right tag in the same 'display properties' box....and under the word 'display' it should give the name of your monitor..(does it?)
Under 'screen resolution' it should have a number like 1024 x 768 pixels.
Under 'Color quality' it should have the setting 'highest 32 bit'.

How we doing so far?
Ken.

[tim]

1024x1280
Dell E177FP on Intel(R) 82915E/GV/910GL Express Chipset family - whatever that might mean!!

[kenkew]

Dell E177FP is your 17" Flat Panel LCD (colour) Monitor.
Resolution for this monitor is 1280x1024 so that seems to be in order. Don't change anything there. (Providing your monitor actually is that!)
Have you changed your color scheme to default (blue) or was that already set to default?

[tim]

Set.

[glow777]

If your monitor is less than a year old i'd be tempted to take it back for exchange/repair to see if it's that causing the problem. Other than that i'm no help i'm afraid.

Hi Tim
Sounds lie a graphics card problem to me as a monitor would display the fault all the time. Unless of course it was heat related and then it would do it a random intervals.

If you take your monitor back youre liable to get a shipping bill or a testing fee or a restocking cost (or all 3)


constant freezing is usually ram motherboard or cpu. If your lucky its fluff in the heatsink if your unlucky its the mobo either way someone has to go inside.

Theres some nice upgrade packages around at the moment - two birds one stone etc

G

[Larkshall]

I used to have the freezing problem and slow start-ups (got a lot of stuff on here), but about a year ago I got "ErrorGuard". It searches for errors throughout your system, lists them and lets you remove them. The main errors are in the registry. Windows is good at writing new registry entries but damned hopeless at removing those no longer required. These entries slow things up as they are searching for non-existing links.

I also use Anti-Virus Kapersky, Spybot and ZoneAlarm.

[electron]

Beware of Errorguard look at what Google reports, suggesting this is scam

Regards
Electron

[tim]

Green & red? No - green, red, blue, aquamarine, yellow, purple, white, blank.................!!

[Larkshall]

Beware of Errorguard look at what Google reports, suggesting this is scam

Regards
Electron

You have to realise that any search engine only reports on existing web pages, not the accuracy of them. The main suggestion that this is spyware seems to come from Wikipedia, as this is an open database which can be accessed and altered by anyone it is not reliable.

The combination of protection software mentioned before has served me well over the last twelve months. Using Mosilla Thunderbird for emails has also resulted in about 90% of spam being junked from the inbox. If you have a well advertised email address you will receive a lot of spam. If your address is not advertised (as my wife's is not), then you will not receive spam. It does help to have your own small domain, as the ISP domains tend to attract random character generators, and a proportion will find genuine addesses.

[Yellow Petals]

Woah there!  Probably nothing quite so drastic is needed! 

Tim, as I and Glow have pointed out, the best idea is to hire a crane and drag your tower out.  Open it up and follow advice re cleaning etc.

With regards to the monitor, check plugs, connections, graphics card etc.

Please don't go downloading and tampering with registry changing programmes etc until you've a) tried the above and b) are 100% sure of what you're doing.

[djbrenton]

The first thing to do is eliminate viruses and spyware.
Scan your PC with your whatever you use then download hijackthis from http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3155.html. Run it and post the results here. I'll look in case you have any nasties before you start replacing hardware.