Dave Baker wrote:
"Lobster" wrote in message
...
Was just wondering... my PC is running increasingly badly and crashing
more often, to the extent that I reckon I need to reformat the HD and do a
clean re-install of XP, which no doubt will cure the problem.

However, as a no-risk option I thought it might first be worth trying to
'repair' the existing installation, which is one of the options on my XP
bootable CD.

How would that work, given that my XP disks are (IIRC) SP1, and I'm
currently running SP3? Does that matter or will I screw everything up if
I try?

Crashing is more likely to be a hardware fault than a windows one. XP is
fairly fault tolerant and usually if something goes wrong it will usually
just be an application that stops running rather than the whole system
crashing. First thing I'd do is download CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) which I
recommended on here a year or so ago. It will remove all the unwanted temp
files and cookies that build up over time and slow the pc down. Be sure to
mark any cookies you want to save because they have website preferences set
up in them first in the "Options", "Cookies" section. That will probably
mean ploughing through a listing of hundreds of them to find the ones you
want to keep but once you've done it you can run CCleaner every day in
seconds. The first time I ran it it removed several thousand unwanted files
and even on a daily basis it gets rid of up to 100 mb of crap that websites
have stored on your disk. Also run its Registry Clean option every now and
then.

Second thing to do is run a decent anti-malware program to see if anything
nasty is lurking on the disk. I suggest MalwareBytes AntiMalware (MBAM).
It's completely free, doesn't have any adware or spyware in it and doesn't
hog system resources. It will deal with most viruses, trojans, spyware and
adware but I've just had to manually remove a couple of really nasty trojans
using the Recovery Console that had made themselves undeleteable on both the
disk and in the registry. If you come across anything that tricky then ask
on alt.comp.anti-virus.

Third thing to do is to become better aquainted with the usual running
processes shown in Task Manager so you can spot unwanted ones i.e viruses
more quickly. Type the name of a process you're not familiar with into
Google and you'll find a website somewhere telling you what it is and
whether it's a normal part of Windows or malware. Soon you'll be able to
scan down the list in seconds and tell at a glance if you have something new
and unwanted in there.

It's also a good idea to go into Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and get
rid of anything you no longer want. Be aware though most uninstalls don't
get rid of everything. You still often have to go manually into both
Programme Files and Documents and Settings to delete directories and files
the install created.

If after all that you are still having problems then either it's XP or
hardware. Instructions for a repair from CD are here

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

but you'd be better off with a slipstreamed CD that already has the service
packs on it because the repair will remove them otherwise and you'll have to
download them again.

Just don't rely on system restore. Mine goes through the motions then,
after reboot, it says it wasn't possible, try another date. Same thing
whatever date I choose. Turned the bugger off. I don't know (or care)
what the problem is BTW