A friend called me up and asked if I knew what's wrong with her computer. 2 year old Compaq Presario, W95, 32mb RAM. Never had a problem before. Bought it as a demo model from a discount place when the line was discontinued.
Recently it started giving her an error message whenever she tried to launch anything -- a program, Windows Explorer, even My Computer. Got a message -- "not enough free memory, try closing some applications." I got her to open Resource Meter, after rebooting, and it said 88%. Sysmon showed 30-something megs of allocated memory. I wondered what to do to help her. This was a phone call, and I ran out of things to think of trying. I had her check and virtual memory was managed by Windows. Where to go from there? All I could thing of was -- if it's complaining, look at what little I know about indicators of resource usage, and that told me nothing. I suggested this might be a time to reinstall Windows, and it turns out someone else had suggested that and she doesn't think she has any disks that came with it when it was bought. She had asked at the store "BJ's Club", kind of like a low-grade Sam's Club. They weren't helpful at all, of course -- "lady, that was 2 years ago. It was a floor demo model. Sorry."
Any clues? I'd like to be able to help, but I don't know anything more here. I do have a W95 CD of my own, ORS2, which I'd never use again. If I gave it to her to install with, would it accept it, or would in need to be reinstalled from the same CD as originally? I hope to be able to help without getting into it too deep. I suppose she could reformat, but that's a can of worms at this point
Thanks
Felecha
Recently it started giving her an error message whenever she tried to launch anything -- a program, Windows Explorer, even My Computer. Got a message -- "not enough free memory, try closing some applications." I got her to open Resource Meter, after rebooting, and it said 88%. Sysmon showed 30-something megs of allocated memory. I wondered what to do to help her. This was a phone call, and I ran out of things to think of trying. I had her check and virtual memory was managed by Windows. Where to go from there? All I could thing of was -- if it's complaining, look at what little I know about indicators of resource usage, and that told me nothing. I suggested this might be a time to reinstall Windows, and it turns out someone else had suggested that and she doesn't think she has any disks that came with it when it was bought. She had asked at the store "BJ's Club", kind of like a low-grade Sam's Club. They weren't helpful at all, of course -- "lady, that was 2 years ago. It was a floor demo model. Sorry."
Any clues? I'd like to be able to help, but I don't know anything more here. I do have a W95 CD of my own, ORS2, which I'd never use again. If I gave it to her to install with, would it accept it, or would in need to be reinstalled from the same CD as originally? I hope to be able to help without getting into it too deep. I suppose she could reformat, but that's a can of worms at this point
Thanks
Felecha