STOPPING MR. FREEZE

Q: I am suffering constant freeze ups. I have been toldby some that it is my windows ME, and that it is famous for it. I have plenty ofram (256k, an 80 gig hard drive). I keep everything cleaned up on a regularbasis. Would going to windows XP solve this, or am I looking at moretroubles? Thanks!
Margaret T.
A: Margaret, every yin has its’ yang and every hero has his or her weakness. Achilles had his heel, Superman had kryptonite, the Internet has spam, and windows has freeze ups. Equally uncomforting is the fact that there are a myriad of reasons why a computer freezes up. We will look at as some of the most common reasons. Many people find that their computer freezes up when it goes into hibernation mode. Hibernation mode is some times called sleep mode. Nevertheless, this is when your computer conserves energy when it is not used for extended amounts of time, but it is still powered on. The energy is conserved by limiting or stopping the supply of power to some components. Computers freeze up when the keyboard or mouse is used again and the power is not restored to all of the components.
A way to remedy this type of freeze up is to go to the “Control Panel” from the start menu and go into the “Power Options”. Go to the options that say, “Turn off hard disks” and “System standby”. Ensure that “Never” is selected for both. You need to click the “Apply” button at the bottom of the window. Go to the tab labeled “hibernation” located in the same window. Make sure that the “enable hibernation” option is not checked. Click “Apply”, “OK”, and then you need to restart your system for the changes to take affect.
It may sound odd, but video cards, keyboards, and high fandangled media drives have been known to be the source of many freeze ups. The reason is because they are hogging system resources or missing necessary drivers to operate properly. The drivers for the device should be found on the installation CD or the makers website. Another common freeze up artist are the “critical updates” that Microsoft issues on a seemingly daily basis. I’m not telling you not to download those patches; it would probably be in your best interest to download them. The key is to download one per day, then wait a couple of days before downloading more. Also, upgraded operating systems have a reputation of being more problematic than the full version of an operating system. This is sometimes due to configuration conflicts that lead to, you guessed it, freeze ups.
Unfortunately, when it comes to Windows occasional freeze ups are just the nature of the beast. This is independent of whether you are using Windows ME or XP, but the key word is occasional. I know that this is not what you want to hear but it’s the truth.