//at the moment I can type a whole post before the words appear on the screen

I don't know if you need to upgrade. It sounds more like you computer is broken. A Pentium II should have no problems keeping up with what you're typing and 64MB is more than enough for just browsing and running Word.

So either your processor isn't running at full speed or there's something on your computer preventing it

Before you do an upgrade check out:
- how much disk space you have left
- how many programs are running when you first start up (in Windows 98/ME hit ctrl-alt-delete and it will give you a task list)
- download and ad-aware and any other spyware catchers you can think of
- I really, really hate recommending people re-install their operating system but with older versions of windows it can help a lot if it actually installs

Heh, cheers everyone and especially Joe for his amazingly helpful analogy. A few salient points for you to agonise over, doctors:

- I've still got 3.5Gigs out of a possible 9.5 free - not a huge amount, but last holidays I uninstalled all my brother's games and still had problems with heaps of free space.

- I've run Ad-aware quite a few times and it seems to have got rid of anything dodgy. There were a couple of .dll files (I think) it brought up in the registry which I didn't delete because I don't want to risk anything. My defrag is weird too. Whenever I've tried to run it it never gets past about 10%. There's nothing apparent running in the background so I don't know what the fuck is up. I've run a thorough ScanDisk as well, which claims everything is fine.

- I'm running Win98. Don't know whether I want to reinstall just yet as I've got heaps of stuff I still want and I can't be fucked making backups of everything.

- //It sounds more like you computer is broken. A Pentium II should have no problems keeping up with what you're typing and 64MB is more than enough for just browsing and running Word.

Just like a Corolla shouldn't have any probs with Lambton Quay but might with Baldwin St. Gotcha.

Also, can someone just explain the difference in 'jobs' between the processor and RAM. It seems kinda vague. Cheers.

I agree with Joe that a re-install is a big step, but if it's an older computer, it really can help. I did my first re-install trying to make an old 486 go better in my flat with precious little knowledge and a book from dunedin public library. There used to be a thing called 98lite, which would deintegrate IE from win98 and reinstall the win95 explorer shell which made it go a hell of a lot faster. However, if IE is your browser choice then it's probably not worth doing.

To the best of my understanding, almost nothing is ever deleted from the registry, so it keeps getting bigger and bigger, eventually slowing the computer down. There will still be registry keys for programs that were uninstalled years ago, and a re-install will wash this all away. In fact, generally the less programs you have installed, the quicker your computer will run. When you install windows fresh it starts really quickly. Then you install office, and it takes another 30 seconds to boot, and it just gets worse from there.

Apart from clearing the internet cache, I'd also reccommend clearing out the windows temp directory, usually C/WIN/TEMP.
Hah, and of course, it would probably help if you can find a way to delete Index.dat. It's a bit skiddly, but it could be in the order of 20MB by now, which would make IE run slow.

//Just like a Corolla shouldn't have any probs with Lambton Quay but might with Baldwin St.
This is a bit tangential, but I did manage to get my '78 Datsun up Baldwin St towing a trailer with a couch on. Incidentally, I don't reccommend taking a trailer up there. It's ... er ... rather difficult to turn round...

[ external link ]

//It sounds more like you computer is broken
jimi-jims don't you have very skinny wire over your side of the city?
and xtra / telecom plays silly buggers with 2ndry ISPs both these factors can make difference to speed, when i had a 2ndry ISP i could play a game of free cell waiting for a page on nzm to load, as soon as I changed to xtra ....... ZOOM.

Fuck you Stefan!!! haha

Hmmm....three months after I got my notebook, the CPU burned out. No amount of whacking, throwing or kicking fixed it - eventually I ended up taking it in to the shop.

//I thought maybe restarting in Safe mode and the refragging might be an idea? Or does this not work? If it does, how the hell do I restart in safe mode?

Two options, one is to CTRL+ALT+DEL and end any random tasks to try and stop stuff running in the background, trying to avoid system processes.
To restart in safe mode, restart the computer and then as it boots try holding CTRL (I think that's the win98 one) and F8 does win2000, so if crtl doesn't work, try other things.

Oh for fuck's sake. I ended all tasks apart from explorer and systimer, but the stupid thing still says something's going and won't defrag properly. I just think my Comp is munted and there's nothing I can do about it. Fuckin hell, I knew I should have bought a reliable Skoda instead of a crappy Corolla.

// I ended all tasks apart from explorer and systimer

kill systimer as well. all you need is explorer. kill that anyway it should come back.

I wouldn't recommend XP. It seems slow as a dog on a P4 (compared to win2000), so I can't imagine it'd be much chop on an older machine. It'll also make a huge hole in the hard-drive compared to an older version of windows.

Fuck I love inciting computer-based mocking.