Adding Hardware

Recently i have had trouble with my speakers, so i deleted the drivers and that is where my problem occured. When i restarted, and windows started to load it noticed that there was some new pieces of hardware, so it began its journey for the hardware and the device drivers. Well that took an extremely long period of time, close to an hour. But i worked so i am satisfied. Now my digital camera USB connection messed up so i decided to delete the drivers and do that same as for the speakers, and again the computer takes forever to find the hardware and the drivers. What is up with this. How can i get it to do this a lot faster. I took my camera to a buddies house, he has the same computer as i do, and it took about 2min to find the hardware, drivers, and even install the software. So with this i say there is something wrong with my computer. What can i do to speed this up? What could be causing the slowdown. Any help or ideas is greatly appreciated.

Thanks to all that reply.

did you do a virus check?
if you have a virus that would explain it.

something is awfuly fudged. all i could suggest besides virus scan is reformat...

unless you did something weird to it.

just reinstall your OS.. what os do you have

I did run the virus scan and that didnt come up with anything. As far as my OS i am runnig Windows ME. Is there a way to reinstall it and still have all of the stuff that i have in it right now, cause it would be a really big pain to back that up and then put it all back in.

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Originally posted by mrstuff68
I did run the virus scan and that didnt come up with anything. As far as my OS i am runnig Windows ME. Is there a way to reinstall it and still have all of the stuff that i have in it right now, cause it would be a really big pain to back that up and then put it all back in.

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1. all programs must be reinstalled, and documents/data/media backed up (unless you have the docs on a different partition)

2. Windows ME may be the problem :)

When is the last time you defragged your hard disks?

Is your Swap file big enough?

I ran defrangment about 2-3days before i noticed this problem. But i ran it again today and till the same thing. How do i check the size of the swap file? How do i know if it is big enough?

To check Swap file: Click Start, Settings, Control panel. Then double Click System. Click the Performance Tab. click the Virtual Memory Button. Do not let the warning about changing swap file parameters bother you, unless you are the type who clicks and keys without thinking first.

Swap file should be at least as big as your memory. I keep mine at twice the size of my memory, which might be more than I need, but I can spare the disk space.

It does not have much effect, but setting maximum & minimum size for the Swap file is supposed to be more efficient than letting windows change the size dynamically. I think dynamic changes can cause fragmentation in a hurry, but I am not sure of this. If it does, this could be bad.

Perhaps you have some programs running which are eating up resources. A lot of applications are written by arrogant programmers who think that some part of their software should always be running. Part of the install process for these programs causes a program to be started every time the OS loads.

Try holding Ctrl & Alt keys down and then tap Delete key once. Twice and you shut your OS down. At least this is how Windows 9x works. You will get a list of all programs running. If you think you have too many, investigate which should be eliminated. A Google search is a good place to start.

Msconfig comes with most versions of Windows and can be used to prevent startup of programs at OS load time. Msconfig misses some of them. I use Startup, a free utility downloadable from the PC magazine site. Startup is definitely superior to msconfig. It provides better data about each program, and also keeps a record of which you have eliminated. I have 8 running and 11 in the eliminated list.

BTW: If you have a lot of ff*.tmp files with zero bytes, machine debug manager is running. A lot of FF*.ff? files indicate Findfast. neither of these is required.