There are several things you can try - have you run scandisk
and defrags on the harddrive?  There may be bad sectors,
etc. and drive failure may be imminent.  What is the free
space on the hard drive?  At least 10% free is the minimum
recommended.  Is the drive partitioned?  The 'net needs a
good amount of space for temp files, as does windows;
various settings in windows and your browser allow those
files to be relocated and to adjust the sizes.   I have an
older Gateway w/ P-200 my kids use, with similar symptoms
other than the hd noise, I changed the motherboard settings
from 200 to 166 and all the problems went away.

Paul Jordan wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I am having real problems with my computer. It's got 64 mb ram, Cyrix P200+
> chip plus a 33.6 k modem (internal). 40 gig hdd Seagate I think.
>
> This beast has got slower and slower over the last few months. Most
> especially noticeable on the net. The hdd keeps thrashing and while it is
> doing that nothing else happens. Web pages won't load, applications won't
> open, mouse basically freezes or jerks across the screen. Have tried
> memcache but no appreciable difference. When first started it generally
> shows 11.9 mbytes free ram, Paging file useage 95.5 mbyte. When going
> through the options in memcache it shows (average) physical memory free 10/
> physical memory usage 52/ user resources free 42/ GDI resources free 64.
> Have used memcache wizards to try to get a good optimum but no luck. I
> really think my problems lie in the hdd thrashing so much and don't know how
> to stop it. Any ideas here please?
>
> ta muchly
>
> Paul
>
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>                        Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>

                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
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