Win98SE on 600E problems

[farna]

First of all, great forum! I recently bought a used 600E w/294MB RAM and 6GB hard drive. I bought it for a student in the Phillipines and want to have it running right before sending. It currently has the latest Win98SE with all updates. I omitted Outlook and most other unnecessary things (kept IE though). I've got Open Office, Adobe Acrobat, Java, AVG anti-virus, and Ad-Aware SE loaded on it for now.

The problem I'm having is with Windows defrag utility. It takes well over an hour to defrag the 6GB drive! It shows activity, and eventually accomplishes the task, but there are frequent "drive contents changed" restarts at the 10% mark. I know this isn't a fast computer (PII 366), but it shouldn't take over an hour to defrag a 6GB drive! It will take this amount of time even if it was recently defragged. Anyone think the drive is going bad?

I searched through the forum for possible answers. I'm going to see if Perfect Disk will do any better, but I really wanted the kid to be able to click on "maintenance" under system utilities and have everything done -- cleanup, scandisk, and defrag.

I just ordered a PIII 450 processor board for this machine, maybe that will help. I didn't want to go with one of the faster processors due to possible heat/reliability problems later. The kid know nothing about computers! It's going to be a challenge getting her using this one long distance! She has a couple frieds who know a little, so hopefully it won't be to bad. But I need a reliable system!

This started out with me offering up my old P133 HP, but once I started playing with it I realized just how slow and worthless it would be, even with Win95 (98 bogged it way down, it just has 56K in it!). Win95 experience is probably to dated to be of much use on a resume., and I'm afraid XP Pro would bog the 600E down to much.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

[jdhurst]

A couple of things:

1. The defrag issue is not unusual. I have seen that before with Windows 95/98 defraggers. Make sure no processes such as AntiVirus are running and that may speed things up.

2. Unfortunately, handing a Windows 98 system to some who knows nothing about computers is an invitation to problems. Nothing you can do about this, I know. But I have seen newbies render a Windows 98 system unusable in under a day. Oh well.

Good luck, ... JDH

[farna]

Would you think XP Pro would bog the 600E down to much once it's upgraded to a PIII 450? I'd considered more memory, but the 256K SODIMMs are a bit expensive now, especially for a "give away" machine! I did run AMS Defrag -- a freeware program that defrags memory. That's not specific on the website, but it did free up lots of RAM. I don't know what's clogging the sytem up right now. Will run something other than just Ad-Aware and see if there isn't something evil in it not found yet...

[jdhurst]

The defrag tool that comes with Windows XP and with Windows 2000 is based on Diskeeper (a special version of Diskeeper). It works well enough and vastly better and faster than the Win95/98 application. If you are giving the ThinkPad away, it is more than likely good enough. I use PerfectDisk because it can be set to defrag silently under load, and generally completes on my machine in less than 15 minutes. ... JDH

[leoblob]

The problem I'm having is with Windows defrag utility. It takes well over an hour to defrag the 6GB drive! It shows activity, and eventually accomplishes the task, but there are frequent "drive contents changed" restarts at the 10% mark. I know this isn't a fast computer (PII 366), but it shouldn't take over an hour to defrag a 6GB drive!

I am running WIN98SE on my P120-equipped TP365x with 72MB, no problems. There are 2 different ways to avoid the "drive contents changed" re-start problem. First, set virtual memory to zero in Control Panel-->System-->Performance. You will need to re-boot the computer and it will try to scare you that manually setting the virtual memory to zero is a problem. It's not.

After this, try to degfrag again. If you still get lots of "drive contents change," then re-boot, and just before Windows re-starts, hold the F8 key. You will get a DOS-like screen. Select "Start in Safe Mode." Once the computer boots (in lovely 640x480x16), then you can defragment your drive fairly painlessly.

Once you're all done, re-boot into normal Windows (not Safe Mode), and re-set the virtual memory to "let Windows control it" or something like that. It will probably need to re-boot one last time.

Now if the recipient of this machine needs to follow either of these steps to get a decent defrag--and they don't know anything about computers--then it could be a problem.

[farna]

Well, at least now I know how to get around the problem! I didn't think about trying it in Safe Mode... should have! I have the virtual memory hard set at 600MB. That's twice the RAM on the machine, should be fine (I usually set mine "hard" at 2-3 times RAM capacity).

I fixed the problem for the newbie by buying the home version of Diskeeper. It cleared the problem right up and can be set to automatically keep the drive in good condition. Seems like every time I do something I have to throw more money at this thing, but that was $20 well spent!

[d lehmann]

First of all, great forum! I recently bought a used 600E w/294MB RAM and 6GB hard drive. I bought it for a student in the Phillipines and want to have it running right before sending. It currently has the latest Win98SE with all updates. I omitted Outlook and most other unnecessary things (kept IE though). I've got Open Office, Adobe Acrobat, Java, AVG anti-virus, and Ad-Aware SE loaded on it for now.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

To save both you and the student any longdistance headaches, once you have the 600 tweaked to your satisfaction, consider making a drive image backup on cds and sending with.

[leoblob]

I have the virtual memory hard set at 600MB. That's twice the RAM on the machine, should be fine (I usually set mine "hard" at 2-3 times RAM capacity).

Can you explain a little how this helps? I am running WIN98SE on five different machines, and I am always interested in learning about anything that can make it run better.

[jdhurst]

It may actually be cheaper (no workarounds, no problems, all automatic) to get a third party defragger. I happen to like Perfect Desk because it can be set by the admin to run scheduled, silent and automatic in user mode with no interaction by the user. ... JD Hurst

[farna]

leoblob: The only thing setting the virtual memory manually does is 1) ensure that you have at least the specified amount available for the system and 2) prevents the system from taking to much of your hard drive space.

If the system has more than twice your RAM swapped into your hard drive it's bogged down way to much swapping stuff in and out of memory. The minimum would be the same as RAM size, but I've always been told twice the RAM size is recommended. Having the same size all the time makes disk management utilities run a bit faster too since it's a non-moveable section always the same size.

I've also been told that even a home computer will run a little faster if you set it as a network server -- provided you have plenty of RAM. Basically it runs a larger cache. At least I think that's right!

[farna]

d lehman: Any suggestions on making a disk image? I do have a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card and a USB CD burner. I'll need to use a drive imaging utility though, won't I? I could at least copy part of the drive over, or use backup...

[farna]

I think I found an answer to my question in the form of a Linux utility! Yes, runs on any machine through a bootable CD. Take a look at
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities ... mage.shtml
Go down to System Rescue CD

[d lehmann]

I have never tried that, so can't comment.
I have tried most of the commercial economical progs and use Acronis Trueimage (it is linux). At the time it was the only one I found that could reliably image xp, but works with any os.
Search on http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65; digruntled acronis users have mentioned free competitive progs you can check.
With Acronis, you can make backup images with the boot cd on any number of computers (doesn't have to be installed), so it may be a good investment for you personally, as well as creating an image for your student's 600.
No matter what prog you end up using, test your image if possible, so you know it's usefull when needed.

[farna]

Thanks, will check the link. I usually backup my data on a regular basis. I'm not to concerned with a disk crash for my personal machine -- that's a good reason for a fresh install of Windows, which is a good thing for it I've found. After a year or two of running or once unexplained problems start cropping up anyway. Going to try re-downloading and burnign the Linux setup though. There is another clone package that will let you burn to another larger HD then creates a boot floppy for copying the image back to the HD. I have an external 12GB HD so I might be able to burn the cloned image on a CD and copy back to the HD. The Rescue disk makes a direct image of the original -- target drive must be same size or larger. If larger it will just put a same size partition on. Then you have to use a partitioning tool to resize (one comes on the rescue CD) or format the larger portion as a second partition (with tools also on the CD).