Abort, Retry, Ignore?

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Common computer problems, what causes them, and what to do about it Misc. Memory problems

• Symptoms:
• Computer will not boot, or will display error messages such as 'Not enough extended memory'. If it works at all, it may run very slowly.
• Cause 1: Sloppy OS'es
• This accounts for 90% of all memory deficiencies. These OS'es, Windows 95 and MacOS in particular, require enormous amounts of RAM, and this will only get worse with each new version. See our conspiracy theory in the Newsroom for more details.
• Cause 2: Old age
• The remaining 10% of problems are caused by golden-ager computers suffering from Alzheimer's disease. While there is no known cure, the computer's useful life can often be extended by feeding it lots of wholesome fruits and veggies.

Tricks and strange phenomena

• Symptoms:
• Computer will not boot, hangs or crashes upon startup, or shuts down or resets itself for no apparent reason. Also may behave in other erratic ways, display strange screens or messages, or complain of a missing Registry or other important files.
• Cause:
• Data gremlins. They sometimes take up residence in your computer and randomly eat, delete, or corrupt your most important system files. While data gremlins can live anywhere, they are especially attracted to particularly powerful or expensive computers. They usually lie dormant inside either the hard drive or the power supply (which is why damage is often accompanied by a power surge or outage.)
• Solution:
• To help protect yourself against the work of data gremlins, it is recommended that you create an emergency DOS disk and Emergency Recovery disk containing the most vital system files, and back-up your machine on a regular basis. Once infested it is too late; they have already begun their dirty work and your only hope is to keep a Recovery disk on-hand and wait for the infestation to run its course.

Random, excessive and pointless hard drive activity

• Symptoms:
• Randomly-occurring flurries of hard drive activity that seem to have no useful purpose. May vary in severity, but symptoms are more or less universal.
• Cause:
• There are two common causes for this problem:
1. The replication activities of a computer virus
2. Microsoft products spying on you in the background
• Solution:
• Hopefully it is neither, but just to be safe you may want to run an antivirus program on the machine in question. Many A/V products will be able to remove a virus without deleting the infected file. Unfortunately, as of yet there is no known way to safely remove snoopy M$ applications from your computer.
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