What the crap

Glad to hear that things have cleared up, one thing to check could be how much disc space you have left.

Be really careful thinking this, I done the same thing with my work PC a while back (same problems as you), and the next day the HDD died.

I'd backup all your data again and buy a new HDD.

I have a few gigs left of HD space.

I have an external HDD, so all my essential school files are loaded on there. Since it's a laptop, I'm not sure how confident I would be with opening up the puppy to replace one of the parts, with the possible exception of RAM.

If you feel you can manage ram then you shoudl be able to manage the HD. most laptops just have a screwed shut cover over top of the drive. Open that up, yank out the old and in with the new. I suppose the real pain of that is duplicating all your info to the new drive.
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How big is the swap file (C:\pagefile.sys), the disc in total and what percentage is being used?

You'll have to "dumb it down" a bit for me. I'm searching for this C:\pagefile.sys using the "search" tool, but it's not coming up with what is needed.

Where can I find that info (or is it one of those "hidden files" that i'll have to root around for)

And finally, once I see it, what should I be looking for (if it's say, 5 meg, what's that mean as opposed to...12 Gig?)

First timer with the swap files, sorry. And While I'm comfortable doing some things with my computer, I haven't done much "down and dirty" to figure out how it's all working...probably the root of my problems now.

First of all I assume you are using Win 2K or XP.

In Windows Explorer, goto 'Tools' and select 'Folder Options'.

Now select the 'View' tab, scroll down until you can see the radio button that is labelled 'Show hidden files and folder' and make sure it is selected.

Also make sure the tick box that is labelled 'Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)' isn't ticked.

Then click OK and you should be back in Windows Explorer.

Just click on your C: drive and you should now see a whole load more files, one of them being pagefile.sys.


If you right-click and select properties on this file it will show you the file size, just look for the size in GB.

Also right-click on your C: drive and select properties, from here you can see how big your hard drive is how much free space you have.



If you haven't, I'd suggest Defragging your hard drive as well, this can be done by right-clicking on your C: drive, selecting Properties and then the 'Tools' Tab. If your drive is more than 3% fragmented (Total fragmentation in the report), I'd recommend running the defrager as many times as needed to get down to 3%.

Would also suggest clicking on the 'Check Now' button under the 'Tools' tab, ticking both boxes and hitting start. Then select Yes when it asks if you want it to run it when you restart.

Good Luck and sorry if I've dumbed it down too much are not enough 8~) If you need anymore info, just ask.

right right. Thanks. I don't care if you overly-dumb it down, I'm not easily insulted (after all, I'm teaching 13 and 14 year olds right now, so I can take almost anything)

The pagefile is 768 MB. Don't know if that's good, bad, or whatever.

My 60 Gig HD has about 4 or 5 gigs left. When I try to defrag (Windows says it doesn't need it, but I tried anyway) it told me there wasn't enough free space to defrag.

Any idea if the pagefile is at a good, bad, or whatever number? I don't know what to look for with that file.

I'll also try to free up some space to defrag later this weekend.

On the whole, the system is running stable now, even though I haven't done anything. Although it still takes a while for the computer to boot up, and initially launch my browser and outlook, once things are running, the computer is behaving normally.

It's size doesn't really have that much meaning. This file is used by Windows to manage the RAM inside your machine - when it thinks it's going to need more memory than it has in the machine it starts using the hard disk as if it's RAM. To be even more intelligent, it splits everything into "pages" which are dynamically switched between the fast physically memory (RAM) and slow virtual memory (HDD) to maximise performance. Hence it's the pagefile.

I guess that what the other person's getting at is that if the pagefile is fragmented (little bits put all over your hard disk, so the hard disk has to do a lot of work when reading to put all the bits back into a larger file) since Windows almost always uses the pagefile the computer will run slower. Also, if you don't have enough HDD space then Windows will not be able to make the pagefile big enough to store all the data it wants to store (it alters the size depending on how much extra "memory" it needs).

Under Windows 2000/XP if you press CTRL+ALT+DEL and click Task Manager and then click Performance, you can monitor the size of the page file. Nowerdays, you probably want to leave Windows at least 2GB growing room and try to have at least 5GB considering various other programs will want to write temporary files too (although those are just estimates plucked out of the air, I'm sure someone can give you optimal figures!).

Hope that's helpful as background at least, hopefully some of the other people can give you some more useful info!


PS RE: The whole Macs are better thing. I don't think they're better. Macs are still more expensive than PCs, they don't have the range of software, and a person who has been trained in Windows and Office, which most people are, is less productive on a Mac. In your generic office it will probably never be practical to replace PCs with Macs, no more than it would be possible to replace Windows desktops with Linux desktops or Office with OpenOffice.

What Adam M was saying is correct and thanks to him for filling in some background info.

The reason I've asked all the question is I think that your file system is a bit messed up. Which is the reason I was asking about defragging and doing a check disc (the option that asks you to run it when Windows boots up).

All seems okay with your pagefile, if it was double that then there might be cause for concern, again the numbers Adam M mentioned seem fine, although I don't know the exact figures either.

What I think has happened is some of your Windows system files have become fragmented or corrupt.

That fact that Windows says it doesn't need to defragment the hard drive isn't always correct.

I'd suggesting clearing some data off your hard drive, enough so that you can run the defrager. Also could you tell by the little graph if the disc looked fragmented? (The one that appears when you click on 'Analyze')

Did you run the check disc? (Right-click on C: drive, select Properties, then the Tools tab, then click the Check Now... button.) This should sort out any corruption in the files.

As your system is now working correctly, it's possible Windows has fixed some of these errors its self. How long do you use the PC for each day, do you always shut it down properly, have you had any power cuts recently?

Make sure you keep all your files backup just in case the problem occurs again, this is good practice as you never know when Windows will just keel over!

If all else fails or it happens again it could be worth doing a Windows recovery, not as bad as it sounds but a bit more involved than the things above 8~)

Good luck and let us know what happens.

The day I say "everything's working again" I get rammed with the problems again.

I had just unplugged my USB mouse and power to take the lappy to my USB printer, which is in another room. I print some stuff out, and take the lappy back and plug everything back in.

It doesn't find the mouse right away (about 10 to 15 seconds) which is new. then I get the BSD saying there was a horrendous error and Windows needs to shut down in order to not die.

That happened twice last night, the second time I wasn't even using the computer, it just found a way to kill itself, I guess (I think my Outlook may have been running to check email, but that's it)

I've done the Disk Doctor stuff (fixing errors) right after you suggested it. I'll try the defrag while I'm teaching the kiddies today.

Something tells me the HDD is going to crap out on me, but maybe you all have a different opinion, so I'd love to hear it. (or if you would agree with me)

I have a horrible feeling you may be right about the hard drive!

Make sure you have all your files backedup.

I know its hard with a laptop but can you hear the hard disc making any stranger than normal noises?

If you are running 2K or XP it could be worth putting the original disc in and booting the laptop up, then follow the instructions to do a recovery (not the Recovery Console). Unfortunately I can't remember all the options off the top of my head.

The only problem with this is, it's not guaranteed to fix the problem and you will more than likely have to re-install all your applications once it's complete. Or you could format and start again, however these options are only worth doing if the hard drive is okay.

The other option is try and source a new hard drive, which would mean starting from scratch anyway.

One more thing to check would be to right-click on My Computer->Properties, select the Hardware tab and click on Device Manager and see if anything has got a Exclamation or Question mark by it?

Totally agree with miacid.

Backup all your files again and triple-check the backup was successful.

Reinstall Windows from scratch or use a recovery disc if you have one (keeping in mind you will have to reinstall all your applications, unless your provider's recovery disc does it - however this is really the only way to eliminate the possibility of a software problem). Seek advice from your computer's documentation.

If that fails, replace the hard disk.

Apparently, according to the Hardware tab, everything is "working properly."

As far as noises, now that you mention it, about 2 weeks ago, or maybe 3, I did notice my lappy making some strange noises, but they stopped after a few minutes, and didn't result in an error of any kind. Since then, I haven't noticed any noises. However, I do notice that the fan on my lappy doesn't kick in like it used to when I boot up.

That initally made me think there may be some heat problem, so I checked mobmeter, but everything was within the computer's normal range.

I defragged while I was at school, am going to error check now, then Back Up everything tonight (good thing I asked for an external HD for christmas)

Thanks for the help so far - even though I got the errors yesterday, I'm learning new things about my lappy, so at least I can chalk this up as a learning experience - and if you have more ideas, let me know.

I did the total HDD error check routine, it took 3 hours to boot up and go through the disk check (I hope that's in the normal range) and I also defragged, so I'm down to 3% fragmentation.

When I when to "My Computer" from the start menu, It took about 10 seconds to load the folder /whatever it's called, which is much slower than usual. Firefox took a whole 25 to 30 seconds to bring up a blank page (that's what I use as my default webpage)

Pagefile is 768.

Antivirus / spyware scans as of 2 days ago were clean.

I used the utility to look for any programs that load up on startup, and didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

Next up is the total backup (I already have backed up all the "must have" files for school and such)

So, the verdict for you all is still on the HDD? I'm just hoping that there isn't any issue with the Mobo, since programs are taking a while to load, and it's taking longer to boot. I just wish I knew where this problem is coming from, so I can be better prepared. So, once again, let me know where you're leaning at this point.