PC Problems

Hardip has noticed that when playing games on his PC the gameplay slows down regularly or freezes. It seems obvious that your pc is underpowered for the types of games your playing Hardip. Double check the system requirements on the game box and then see exactly what you have on your system and if it’s within limits. You may find you need more RAM. You could also try disabling any other software or your net connection while your’e playing. Disable anti virus software especially and see if that makes a difference. Other possible issues include having a monitor that can’t refresh the game play fast enough.

Ian’s DVD/CD drive on Vista is not recognised anymore and he’s tried doinga virus check. I don’t think you trying to read 15 year old discs would be the cause unless the discs were seriously damaged and interfered mechanically with the drive in some way. It sounds like a registry problem and you may need to go in and edit certain values in the registry which is something I will refrain from advising on as things can go badly wrong when you edit the registry!

Try this article however:

http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/cd-dvd-drives/code-19-vista-home-basic-167169-2.html

Joanne has lost her main admin XP password and can’t get back into the computer! If there are any other admin accounts on the computer then you could login to one of them and change yours in Control Panel – User Accounts. If not then you may have to use your Password Reset disc supplied with the computer. Click the link you see when you wrongly enter your username on startup. If you don’t have this disc then try restarting the pc in safe mode by tapping F8 on startup. If you can get to the desktop here then change the admin user account password as above, if not then you may need to re-install windows. This shouldn’t be a big deal and you shouldn’t lose much if you forgot your password soon after creating it as you wont have had time to create much data!

Dave is hearing a guitar riff constantly repeating when he turns on his PC and doesn’t know where it’s coming from or how to shut it off! It almost sounds too weird to not be a virus so do a scan first off. I’d then recommend going into the system sound settings and either turning off sounds or having a look to see if this sound is assigned to a system event like startup. Maybe a previous owner set it up? To get into system sounds on XP go to Control Panel – Sounds and Audio Devices – System Sounds.

Greg’s PC is freezing for 3/4 minutes at a time. I’m guessing that because you’re using an old operating system that your PC is also old!? Maybe it’s just on it’s last legs.. Apart from that the usual rules apply for slow/freezing computers. Check the following:

• Do a virus/spyware scan with a decent updated program.
• Do a registry cleanup with appropriate software.
• Start your PC in Safe mode to see if it still freezes, if not that would suggest software problems so…..
• Get rid of unused programs and do a disk cleanup.
• Do a disk error check in the properties tab of your main hard drive.
• Check you’re not running out of hard drive space.
• Check your Cooling fans are still working (CPU may be overheating).
• Try a RAM or CPU upgrade.