Help ! Grape dropping off the Vine...

[snohare]

My computer is playing all sorts of funny tricks on me, or maybe it's the monitor - I don't know.
Anyway, it's not happening this morning for some reason, but the last couple of days, whenever I click the mouse, move the cursor, or more particularly try to watch YouTube etc, my screen goes black. Then after a few moments it gradually shows an enlarged portion of the desktop screen, in very coarse Windows 3.1-ish resolution, which eventually after a further 10 seconds or so will (usually) become a normal screen. Sometimes it will show the normal screen mainly blanked out with the top lines from a second window appearing (I usually have several webpages open at once) until the full screen appears. Listening to music or videos, the sound stutters occasionally, and an Adobe plug-in crashes sometimes.
I've scanned for viruses - none found by Avast. (Which must be working overtime, every time it updates upon boot up it tells me it has done so - twice !)
I know that my Operating System hard drive is almost full, it was pretty small and after several years of running Windows XP plus Service Packs on it it keeps telling me I am running out of disk space. Is all this palaver all to do with my computer basically getting as old and decrepit as me ?

[veggiechicken]

I don't know the answer Sno but have you done a Disk Cleanup recently? Somewhere in Control Panel - Maintenance. Might free-up some space.

[snohare]

Yeah, I tried that Veggie, it said it needed 15% disk free to work, and I only had 5%. I ran it until it was finished anyway, but it made not a blind bit of difference.
I would look at the virtual memory thing again, but I can't remember where to do it. Somewhere in the control panel, but where ?
And of course, it might be my second/umpteenth hand monitor. (I got it through the Recycling charity I volunteer for - this might be why it was donated.)
It's high time I did a reinstall, and I even have a bigger hard drive to do it on, but this is the wrong time of year for me to be doing anything as complex as that. I just can't hold technical details and such like in my mind when I am in winter mode, I'm too scatterbrained - rather like the computer, I lack working memory ! Even finding the Windows disc is unlikely to happen.

[zazen999]

I think you need to get all the large programs or files off [how many photos are on there? That's what usually slows mine up]. In fact you have just jogged my memory as I need to clear mine down soon.

Also - clear out any downloads sat there doing nothing.

[snohare]

The 8GB hard drive that is almost full only has the operating system on it zaz - nothing else. My program installation files and data are saved to another, much larger 128GB drive - which is on long-term-but-not-forever loan from a friend, so I can't really partition it (not that I remember how) or put my OS on it.
Can't complain really I suppose - my computer was built for me gratis by a friend, out of old bits, and has lasted me more than 10 years !

[ancee]

I had an odd prob with mine last month. One of the kids had pressed a load of buttons randomly and the screen went upside down! Well, you can imagine how hard it was to work with, no I didn't turn the monitor on it's side (I wanted to!) Instead I just typed the problem into google and it came up with others with the same problem and the solution! It might help, just google your problems away! It might be something caused by a stray child or, as happened to me last night, a small kitten pounced on the keyboard and randomly typed gobbldygook into hyperspace! Good Luck!

[snohare]

Wow, that's a problem and a half ancee ! Did you find the solution on an Australian website ?
I am exploring the "body swerve" solution - get another computer that works better, and put my data hard drive into that. I'm just about competent to open up the tower and connect the necessary leads...although I usually forget to earth myself first.

[taff]

your hard drive is full and your ram can't cope.

What you can do, depending on what OS you have, is check how much space you've got taken up [if you're running it] by windows recovery.
Also, I'd recommend a program called CCLeaner for all your cleaning needs It's free, small, and very good. Will let you clean your cache, hotfix uninstallers [these take a lot of room too], easily let you alter your start up menus, check your registry, and remove the windows recovery data.

[snohare]

I'll give that a go, Taff - ta !

[PyreneesPlot]

We've just uploaded all our photos to http://www.dropbox.com to free up space. Its free!
My old ebay laptop is still slllllloooooooooowww..... But better