Hey guys/gals. My neighbor’s computer has really gone funky on her. She says she logged into AOL, when a Low Virtual Memory box appeared, and then her computer shut off. It progressed to where it local up to the very beginning on the WinXP loadup screen, and stop. Now, it goes to the page where it has Safe mode, etc., and when you click on one, it will freeze up. Her computer REALLY needed an internal cleaning, which I gave it, and the processor temp at the time (via the BIOS) was 114 F, which I think is a little high. I told her to leave it off until tomorrow afternoon, and if that doesn’t work, another question. If I were to take her hard drive (assuming that the prob isn’t in the hard drive), could I hook it up to my computer, and access her personal files so as to save them in the event things take a turn for the worst? Any other ideas? Any healp is appreciated. Next time I’ll be on will be tomorrow afternoon, so thanks for any help.
Ok, here goes.
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"Low Virtual Memory: If your computer doesn’t have enough memory, your computer will use a portion of your hard drive as “virtual memory.” This is meant to be temporary, so you can run a program that your computer wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. It is not a good thing to have to use a lot because it’s slow and taxing on your hard drive. A quick fix to having “low virtual memory” is to allow windows to use more of your hard drive as virtual memory. But, if hard drive is nearly full, this won’t help (because there’s not enough hard drive to go around). In this case, you should go buy more memory and perhaps another hard drive.
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What is an internal cleaning? Does that mean you wiped the hard drive, or does that mean you dusted out the inside of the case? (The computer probably needs both.)
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I do believe 114 degrees is rather high. (But I’m not sure, as it’s been a long while since I needed that information. A quick google should tell you.) Dust inside a case will do that, and so will bad ventilation. Make sure there’s enough fans, and that you’re not missing any of the little metal things that cover unused PCI slots. The overheating would most certainly cause many of the symptoms you mentioned.
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You can most certainly hook a good hard drive up to another computer and save the files you don’t want to lose. I do this a lot.
114 degrees Farenheit is fine for most any processor. A pentium can run up to about 185 degrees. I think you’re in the green, there. 
Hehe…I like to think of myself as knowing a little more about tech. than the average person where I live. I don’t know why it didn’t hit me last night…I guess I was tired. The second I opened up the computer earlier this afternoon, I automatically realized the problem - the CPU is dead. Fan works, but overheated in a matter of seconds (tested by also touching my CPU, and in the span of 5 min, it didn’t nearly reach that temp.. I was able to save all of the personal files on the PC. Any thoughts where I might be able to find a replacement CPU?
