AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

[Xcusme]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

Actually, I am on wireless broadband and only use aol for Email. ......

JB...you don't have to install the AOL software to be able to receive/send emails with your AOL account. That's one heck of a price to pay (AOL software install) just to use email.

Here's a head start....Google 'AOL POP3'

Another tidbit... http://help.aol.co.uk/aol-email-wit...ther email software help_portal&c=help_portal

 

[rwise]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

Quote:
Originally Posted by thefairlaneman
I hear you could turn it offf and put a strong magnet beside the hard drive and that would remove the stuff clogging up the thing,,,,,,Im no computer geek but I know a little about puters.

You forgot to add don't try this at home . Lord please don't try that technique.

Hard drives already have very strong magnets in them no more are needed

 

[rwise]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

This may be it.

I was sure that I had my conehead (geek) put 512M of memory in her last time he was here. Now it tells me it only has 248M.

Gonna see if he can give me a Gig.

Can you take the ramm to him and get it tested for free? 248 just does not sound right. Last time I had a machine that reported the wrong amount of ramm it had a bad motherboard, but it reported a different amount each boot

 

[v1_0]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

Tell your wife to ask their IT about getting a SonicWall with filtering. I've used them at schools before. Propery setup the kids will not bypass it.

I think it's more the way things are setup. Firewalls block programs - explorer/firefox/etc wouldn't be blocked, as they legitimately need to go to the internet.

Site blocking software is usually configured in a "permissive model" - sites are not blocked unless they match a rule (or on a list of sites to block) Sites -or queries- that do not match the rules are not blocked.

In this case, a non-permissive model would be better: all sites are blocked unless they are on a "white list". Ideally, the blocking should occur external to the user's PC - in a proxy or gateway type computer.

 

[v1_0]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

Yes, I have XP. What do I have to do to do "system restore"??

System restore probably won't help you with a memory issue.

Please confirm: you have a memory issue. NOT a hard drive/disk space issue?

By the way - 248 is a "wrong" number for physical memory (memory dosn't come in that increment...), but may be ok for free memory. Are you getting that number from the bios setup utility, or during POST, or from inside windows itself?



-V

 

[wildmaninal]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

Quote:
Originally Posted by thefairlaneman
I hear you could turn it offf and put a strong magnet beside the hard drive and that would remove the stuff clogging up the thing,,,,,,Im no computer geek but I know a little about puters.


Hard drives already have very strong magnets in them no more are needed

But you also can get people thinking that this crap is real and having them taring there computer apart for nothing when they are not even familiar with the inside of a computer. And not everybody can point to a hard drive and tell you what it is and what size it is, what the pin settings are. DID I MAKE MY POINT?

 

[Jerico]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

System restore probably won't help you with a memory issue.

Please confirm: you have a memory issue. NOT a hard drive/disk space issue?

By the way - 248 is a "wrong" number for physical memory (memory dosn't come in that increment...), but may be ok for free memory. Are you getting that number from the bios setup utility, or during POST, or from inside windows itself?
-V

248 isn't necessarily wrong. 256 - 8 meg on-board video = 248.

 

[Gary H NC]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

I have fixed a bunch of computers with AOL problems.It puts so much carp in the system thats not needed.
JB,try uninstalling everything AOL. Unless you are on dial up you don't need it.You can still go to your AOL account.
Its worth a try and you can always put it back.
You also probably have a ton of stuff running in the back ground that does not need to be.

 

[SpinnerBait_Nut]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

" Removing programs will most likely free up *disk space*. They only use memory when they are running."

Are you running XP?

You have too many programs loaded in the background that you may or may not be aware of. Internet temp files could have you loaded up too.

I attack and destroy this problem with all the computers at work. I use the RUN MSCONFIG and go into the startup and disable many things that do not need to be running "all the time behind the scenes". If you are not comfortable doing it then do not do it alone (ie w/o support from us here) of you could kill everything.

Hey Bob, I am in there now and it has 28 items running.
How do I know what to disable and what to leave running?

 

[Gary H NC]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

Hey Bob, I am in there now and it has 28 items running.
How do I know what to disable and what to leave running?

Anything that says system32 leave alone,you should be able to drag the window over and see what each thing is.Any messenger programs and stuff like that disable.They will start when you open them.

 

[SpinnerBait_Nut]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

Most of them says C:\program files so on and so on.

 

[wildmaninal]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

If I remember right this also takes the little icons (that may half to do with the items you are disabling) out of the program bar on the bottom right hand corner correct? When you disable the program that has an icon in the bottom right side. It's been a while since I delt with the msconfig but I am familiar with it.

 

[SpinnerBait_Nut]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

I don't know. I have not done anything yet.

 

[wildmaninal]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

Anything dealing with your printer, DVD checker (if you have a DVD on yours), if you have microsoft office or works and don't use it much, Adobe reader, you can uncheck the boxes. If you have problems you can always go back in and check the boxes back. Some of these search engine tool bars can be disabled through Msconfig also, so if you have any of those you don't use disable them. The key is getting some of these big programs that you don't use much or don't use at all were you can disable them. I agree that you need to stay away from anything dealing with system32. Another thing that you can do is go into add and remove programs in your control panel and remove any programs that show used rarely or never and remove them programs that are never used and some of the rarely used if you think you will never use them again.

 

[JCF350]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

People still use AOL ???

More than anything else, number of users wise. It is perfect for those who barely know how to point and click, like my mother and a lot of the folks in my neck of the woods (Citra, FL). If your savvy enough to just need a ISP then you don't need AOL, MSN and the like, but a lot of folks just are not going to be bothered with learning the technical side of computers and the internet. They just want to be able to access the information.

Cost wise- My neighbor pays $7.00/ month for AOL on top of his DSL service and he is happy with that because he doesn't have to worry or fuss with the security issues (he wouldn't know where to start anyway).

 

[i386]

Re: AUGH!! This is awful! Then I made it worse.

I like Xcuseme's approach. If you only need AOL for email, ditch their software and take your choice of normal email software and configure it to access your AOL email account.

BTW, doesn't AOL have Web mail? If the above approach sounds too complicated why not just go to www.aol.com and check your mail there?

Not to dodge the original question...

If it's a memory problem then you may have too many programs (foreground or background) running. As previously stated, installed programs are always consuming space on your hard drive but are not using any memory unless they are running.

If you're going to have your computer person look at it he should be able to address the memory problem if there is one. It's also possible that your old AOL will not successfully uninstall. He'll need to get rid of it manually (hopefully by following a well documented procedure) or using a special utility program for removing AOL when the uninstall gets botched. Once it's off your system and the memory requirements are met it should install fine. Most people can get away with 512MB in XP. If your garmin application came with 4 cds like my gps program did, I think you'll see an improvement in performance with 1GB of ram anyway.