The Hindu Business Line : `System is slow, hangs frequently'

I am using a system with Windows XP as the operating system. My PC contains two hard disks of 40 GB each, 256 MB RAM and Pentium 4 processor. Of late, I am facing this problem rather frequently.

On every start-up, my PC hangs and I have to restart it. The system is slow and takes a lot of time to open files and folders.

Often, while I'm running a movie on media player, a blue screen appears with this message:, "there was a serious problem and Windows has to shut down the program to prevent damage to your computer." After that I have to restart my computer.

Also, there are visible lines that constantly appear on my monitor. I am using Zone Alarm Security Suite to prevent Internet viruses.

Are these problems occurring because of two hard disks or is there a problem with the motherboard? Please suggest a solution.

Shubhendu Goswami

There is absolutely no issue in using two or more hard disks. Please scan the system for bad sectors.

If your hard disk has developed bad sectors, it will make some parts of your hard disk inaccessible leading to loss of data. If the lost data happens to be that of vital system data, then you will experience system problem and instability.

Please start your Windows XP in safe mode and scan your drives one by one, by right-clicking on it and selecting Property. In the Tools tab, click on "Check Now."

In the dialog box that appears, select the two checkbox and click ok, this will scan and fix any errors in the disk.

The second thing to do is to ensure that you have your bootable hard disk configured as the "Master" drive and the other HDD as "Slave" and not the other way around.

Next, if you have connected both the HDDs onto the same IDE cable (the flat cable connecting the HDD and the motherboard) then do this: connect your bootable HDD to the IDE 0 (the first connector) cable and the other HDD to the IDE 1 (the next IDE controller) using another IDE cable.

Regarding the lines appearing on your monitor, please increase the refresh rate of your monitor.

You can do this by going to the Control Panel and double-clicking on the Display icon. In the Settings tab, click on Advanced button and select the Monitor Tab.

There you should find the refresh rate setting. Change the setting and set it higher than what it is now, 70 or 75.

Normally, the refresh rate setting will hide modes that the monitor cannot support.

In case you happen to select an unsupported refresh rate, you can boot into safe mode and change it back.

Please e-mail us at eworld@thehindu.co.in

if you have queries on computer usage or if you find an interesting way of using a computer.

Solution by G. Rajah

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