In my (humble) opinion, I believe the decrease in posts directly relates to user unwillingness to thrust themselves into yet another registration process that ends up feeding them to the spam sharks. <BR>

Techydude says: &quot;Yes, I was one of the one's that pushed for registration.&quot;<BR><BR>Then, you must have been pushing in hushed tones (or perhaps by emails to Danny) because I can't remember ever seeing your nick until your first soothing post. <BR><BR>My recollection is that you became visible AFTER registration had been in place several days and the complaints began to mount. I believe your first post was explaining that any change in a program could complicate other parts ...and would be worked out in the fullness of time, etc. <BR><BR>Anyway, welcome to the board -- diversity of opinion is always welcome. And regarding your field of endeavor ... any tips for a Win98 2nd Edition that frequently freezes whenever a second or third window is opened?<BR>

Who ever said thar controversy and debate on a board is a bad thing. It does liven up the place. Everyone can admit that.

Border Lady. How much RAM do you have? You can find this out by right clicking on the my computer icon and selecting properties. Under general description it should say about the eighth line down RAM and then a number like 32 0r 64 etc... There are many variables that will cause multiple windows opening to cause a crash. The most prevalent is not enough RAM. This is a temporary storage place for your computer to place things so it does not have to constantly revert to the hard drive when you are multi tasking.<BR><BR>Also, you may want to consider upgrading to windows XP. It is only $100 for the upgrade. My wife is not technically proficient, but she is a quick study. Both of us have found this software to be a happy compromise to both our styles.<BR><BR><BR>Ooops is it a lap top or desk top?<BR><BR>And yes I pushed by going to their (Fodor's Publisher) parent company. I find that presenting factual information to upper management can be much more effective than whining. I chose not to participate in the squabbles of some of the more insincere people that frequented this board in the past.<BR><BR>Hope that helps answer your questions on all fronts.

~~~~ Many thanks, Techydude, for your prompt and pleasant reply. And again, welcome to the board. <BR><BR>Currently under System Properties, it says:<BR>Memory: 96.0 of RAM<BR>System Resources: 50% free<BR>File System: 32-bit<BR>Disk Compression: not installed<BR>PC Cards (PCMCIA): no PC Card sockets are installed.<BR><BR>Your system is configured for optimal performance.<BR><BR>Which brings another question: what percent of System Resources should be available? Should one do a reboot when it reaches a given point? I'm not a game player .. surf a lot, but nothing more than web pages. I find my resources down into the 40's quite frequently. (That doesn't seem related to the freezes, though.)<BR><BR>*laughing* I realize this isn't cruise talk .. but I do appreciate your insights into a problem that's mystified me and several local techies.<BR><BR><BR><BR>

No Problem BL. Okay it would be advisable to upgrade your RAM. You can get up to 512k RAM for around $80.00 in current pricing. More than that and they are taking advantage of you. Do you have a computer chain store around you? I ask because if you are unfamiliar with installing it they will usually do it as a free service or maybe around $30.00.<BR><BR>In the meantime until you have some cash available have you ever done a &quot;System Defragmentation&quot; to your computer. I will work under the premise that you haven't. All those out there that have computers this is good for you to and will not damage or lose any data from your computer. For those of you who have never done this it may take a couple of hours the first time for it to go through this process. This essentially organizes all your files in neat piles they way they were meant to be. Thereby making it easier for your computer to access them and make the computer operate faster.<BR><BR>OK here we go. This is done in two parts.<BR><BR>Part I<BR><BR>1. left click on start button<BR><BR>2. left click on all programs<BR><BR>3. find the program at the top or near that says accessories<BR><BR>4. put cursor (arrow) on it (do not click on it) another little bank will show up to the right with more programs. You should see program called system files. Slowly move the cursor over to that now. yOu should now see the final part of our journey. <BR><BR>5. you should see two programs that are important to our procedure. The first is &quot;Disk Cleanup&quot;. Left click on this. When it asks do you want to do this click on the &quot;ok&quot; This may take several minutes or more to clean out old garbage.<BR><BR>Part II<BR><BR>The tedious long winded go out for a movie or Starbucks part.<BR><BR>1. do all steps 1 - 4.<BR><BR>2. Now left click on defragmentation. And click on &quot;OK&quot; to get started. <BR><BR>Remember if you have never done this it may take several hours, but it is well worth it. You will notice a difference when it is done. When it is done it will say that it is finished.<BR><BR>Now Restart you computer. This should help all of you tremendously. This applies to all all windows programs and not just Windows 98 except for NT for you other &quot;Geeks&quot; that may want to correct me.<BR><BR>Ok what does this have to do with Fodors and cruising? Ummmm your on a computer. Right? <BR><BR>Hope I wasn't confusing. BTW I am an broadcast engineer by trade but we all love computers hehe. <BR><BR>For the rest of you if you have technical questions don't be shy I will try to anwer them if they are related to cruising issues. If I don't know I will say I don't know or try to point you in the right direction. <BR><BR>Hope all that helps.<BR>

Hi Techydude ...<BR><BR>What nice simple instructions! Thank you very much. When I post this, I'm going to begin with the Disk Cleanup and then proceed on to Defrag. I'll just go to bed and leave it to its own devices. Hope there's no explosion! <BR><BR>I've verified that the little menu drops down with the choices you promised ... funny, I never paid any attention to those .. about the only thing I ever use on Accessories is WordPad.<BR><BR>More later about that. <BR><BR>Now *koff koff* -- about cruising! We love it and have been lucky to go 4 times in the past 12 months. Coming up, we're booked in June for a QE2 crossing (I'm veddy veddy excited about that!) and a HAL cruise back to the eastern Caribbean in August. <BR><BR>If you have any questions about cruises from Vancouver BC via the Canal to Tampa, the Baltic or east/west/deep Caribbean -- we've done them very recently and would be happy to chat. <BR><BR>I'm off now to begin the computer maintenance. Thanks again! More later ~~ <BR><BR><BR><BR>

Before you all start your maintaince work out it may be a good idea to run &quot;scan disc&quot; between disc cleanup and defrag operations.If you have an error on your disc it will shut down your defrag and you'll need to start all over again.Scan disc can be found listed with the others in accessories.

Thanks Charlie. He is right. I forgot about that procedure.

Thank you, Techydude<BR><BR>I followed your instructions exactly as ordered ... and Charlie was right! ... after just a minute of Disk Cleanup, it said &quot;There are errors ... run ScanDisk&quot;. So I did it, which took a very long time! Afterwards, I did a successful Disk Cleanup and the Defrag. <BR><BR>My computer is definitely running faster this morning .. and so far, no freezes with 4 or 5 windows open. WoooHOOO!<BR><BR>I appreciate your help ... thanks VERY much!

Thanks Charlie. And Glad to be of help BL. See another positive reply (nudge nudge) haha.

Your welcome Techy,glad to be a small measure of help.I know how it feels to sit through 3/4's of a defrag only to start over again.

This site has really slipped. Things have become so bad that now, instead of posts about cruising, there are ones about maintaining computers. While its certainly nice to help fellow posters, it just shows how dead this site has become. Let's face it. Registration sanitized this site, but it also killed it. I really miss the old Fodors, even with all its faults.