Tuesday, September 12, 2006

878 Computer Problems Again....

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Sometimes I just don't know what to think.

Every once in a while, this machine goes kerflooey, and then, without my doing anything, it all fixes itself. Magically. I don't understand. I never know when to get excited or worried.

About a week ago, things started slowing down again. Seemed to be the connection to the internet. Ok, I figure they're futzing around again out there in Middlefield or wherever they are. It's now back up to its usual plod.

But then my system slowed down. Like when I was not connected, and writing a document, or playing solitaire, it would get really slow. Sometimes. Not always.

Next thing that happened was that both Netscape and Firefox were program checking ("illegal operation"). Often. They'd drop three or four times an hour. I was getting nothing done. I noticed that it seemed to be animated ads that were doing it, but I'm not sure. (Throw in stuff like the one day when Firefox was using tabs, out of the blue, and then it stopped.)

After a few days of dropping, Netscape and Firefox seemed to stay up longer, but over and over, here, there, and everywhere, I'd get a little box that says that a script did something illegal, and I should restart the browser, or that a script is running slowly and could halt my system, should the script be canceled? Of course I always say yes, and now that message is showing up a lot more.

When I do any kind of search, until recently, I had some kind of thingy that would tell me whether sites listed were safe or not, whether they had a lot of popups or not. That's not working all of a sudden.

Yesterday, twice, my cursor got ignored. I could move it around, but clicks were ignored. Ctrl/Alt/Del didn't work, either. I had to push the off button and start over.

This morning, I got a new bug - my AOL password is no longer stored. I have to type it in. And when I ask AOL to store it, AOL doesn't complain, but doesn't store it, either. AOL is my main email address. Other passwords from cookies are working fine.

Just a few minutes ago, I switched from one AOL id to another (to my main id, as a matter of fact), and guess what? My mailbox is empty. Last time I looked, I had 27 "letters" there. I did get a message "Unable to access email at this time - try again later", so maybe they're not completely lost, maybe it's their problem, not mine, but sheesh!

AND, as if that isn't enough, the Kodak photo program breaks half the times I IPL. Not all the time, just half the time. The other half of the time, I get random messages that this module or that module is missing. What's weird is that it's never the same one. If it were really missing, you'd think it would be missing all the time, no? Oh, yeah, almost forgot - Explorer program checked yesterday.

What absolutely blows my mind is that when something weird happens, it happens for one or two days, and then it fixes itself, but then something else goes wrong - for a day or two.

I've been through cycles like this before. Never understood then, either.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

(Throw in stuff like the one day when Firefox was using tabs, out of the blue, and then it stopped.)

Mom- That is normal. The people who put together the webpages you are visiting can program in if it opens in the same window or if it opens a new tab. You can force Firefox to make open a link in a new tab by hoovering over the link, right clicking and selecting "open in new tab"...
-daughter

~~Silk said...

I understand "same window" or "new window/tab". With Firefox, somewhere in the Firefox options, you can specify whether Firefox habitually opens a new copy of itself (shows up as a new window on the lower tool bar) or a tab (shows as a tab in that one window).

You use tabs. I use copies/windows.

So I'm used to seeing multiple Firefox window boxes on the lower tool bar. This one day, it was opening new tabs instead, for all those places that (for me) would normally get new windows.

And then it reverted.