Q. My HP Compaq Presario freezes up after only a few minutes of use nine out of 10 times I switch it on. I have to turn it off, wait a few seconds, turn it back on and hope for the best. It may freeze again, or it may start on the second try.
I tried calling tech support, but the person I reached was impossible to understand.
— Dale McConathy @sbcglobal.net
A. Mystery Windows XP freeze-ups rank near the top of the frequently asked questions I receive, Mr. M., so you and other readers might consider tearing out this answer and storing it face down in the bird cage for later reference.
There are many causes for PCs suddenly going catatonic but there are essentially just two fixes. They are:
– Find problems with hardware such as printers, scanners, cameras, iPods and you name it attached to the machine.
– Ferret out faulty software that kicks in shortly after a session begins.
It is easiest to spot hardware kinks, so I’ll start there. Click on Start and then “Turn off computer” and switch off the power to each peripheral device (such as a printer) and then unplug them from the PC.
Now boot up and see if the computer runs properly. If it does, then you need to find which gadget is to blame. It’s a lot of bother, I know, but switch the PC off and then plug in the first peripheral and reboot.
If you’re lucky, the first item will be the culprit. If not add devices one by one until the problem kicks in.
If all hardware checks out, then finding software problems begins with checking the Start-up folder for flaws in programs set to run at boot up. Right click on Start and select Explore.
In the display that appears, open the folder called Programs then scroll through to the next display and open the Startup folder. If there are icons for programs there, drag them onto the desktop and reboot to see if that’s the fix.
If not, roll up your sleeves for some heavy lifting to remove piles of software modules that run in the background.
Click on Start and then Run and type in “msconfig” (without quotes). This runs the Microsoft configuration program that manages all of the small software routines that get run behind the scenes to handle hundreds of tasks such as loading your iPod or registering your printer. Items are activated and deactivated with a check box. The safe way to approach this is to just shut down all of these background tasks and then restore them one by one with a reboot in between.
However, this can involve 10 or 20 or even more reboots on some machines and can make you crazy. So I suggest just lopping off every one of these items you recognize by name. For example “msmsg” runs the Microsoft Messenger IM service and “iTunes Helper” runs the iPod and “SNDmon” triggers nags to register Symantec’s anti-virus updates.
Somewhere in that pile of patches is the pony.
The sad story is that while just about everybody finds a fix early on in this repair process some problems can be so deeply buried it makes you want to just pull out the PC’s power cord and get some sleep.
Q. I have no trouble receiving e-mail messages in my Hotmail account but whenever I try to reply, the original message is surrounded by so much code that I can barely find the text.
Here’s a bit from a test message I sent myself: “
BLOCKQUOTE style=’PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER- style=’FONT-SIZE:11px;FONT-FAMILY:tahoma,sans-serif’
hr color=#A0C6E5
More Top Picks Best Reading Glasses For Night Reading
/i
br Subject:
i Test message
/i
br Date:” and so on.
— Jim Quinn @hotmail.com
A. That babble is HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the basic underpinning of the Web that tells a browser or an e-mail program how to format and display a Web page or other material.
Hotmail users are particularly vulnerable to getting HTML bombed because this service by Microsoft started as a Web-based e-mail and later users got the option to use the superior Outlook Express e-mail software as you did, Mr. Q.
You need to check two boxes in Outlook Express, and this common vexation will vanish. Click on Tools and then Options while in the main Outlook Express display.
This brings up a complex menu of settings and you need to click on the tabs called “Read” and “Send” and check boxes in each to order the software to handle your notes in plain text instead of displaying HTML code.
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Got a question on personal technology? Send a note to Jim Coates at [email protected]. Questions can be answered only through column.