How many of you out there have computers that are old enough to still have Windows 98 on them? Not a lot, I expect. Unfortunately, my mother still does. She wants a new computer; thanks to me, my whole jobless situation, and Walmart's inability to bring back layaway, she can't afford one. Consequently, she has to constantly deal with a chronic plaque of frozen screens and those dreaded "not responding" messages.My eight-year-old nephew, who I have referred to as a video game fanatic in prior blog posts, has to deal with those messages even more. It seems like every game site that he's a member of, from Nick.com to CartoonNetwork.com, has updated their web site so that it only works properly on computers running Adobe Flash Player 10. Guess which Windows system isn't supported by Flash Player 10? You guessed it--Windows 98. I can't even begin to tell you the number of brat fits that he threw over Christmas because of that computer. Of course, I threw my own fair share just trying to update this blog with it. At one point, I swore if the computer froze up just one more time, I was chucking it out the bedroom window.
I didn't chuck the computer, however. I just cussed a lot. The sad thing is that newer computers aren't anymore immune from the "not responding" errors than older ones. For instance, I used to get this ccapp.exe not responding error every time I tried to shut down my computer. It annoyed me to no end. I would go to bed thinking that I had turned my computer off, only to wake up the next morning and find out that it was still on. Now that I'm all grownup and paying my own electricity bill, I know that those few hours that I was asleep and the computer wasn't cost me money, a lesson my sister has yet to learn, but that's a story for a whole other post.
Anyway, I eventually Googled the ccapp.exe error and found that it had something to do with my antivirus program, which at the time was Norton Antivirus. Seeing as I couldn't exactly uninstall the program--only an idiot would run a computer without the protection of an active antivirus program--I just learned to live with the "not responding" shut down error until my subscription ran out. Then I purchased McAfee Internet Security Suite, which caused it's own fair share of errors. Needless to say, I stopped buying antivirus programs and started using free ones like Avast. I've had very little problems with it.
As it turns out, if I had known about a web site called Not-Responding.com, I could have fixed the ccapp.exe error instead of learning to live with it. According to Not-Responding.com, you can either disable the "scan floppy" option in advanced settings or enable live updates. I know for a fact that my live updates were enabled so the former option would have been the better of the two options for me. Nevertheless, Not-Responding.com doesn't recommend this option, as it could expose your computer to infections. Maybe just living with the error wasn't such a bad idea after all.
The site also offers resolutions for several other common "not responding" errors, including those involving iPods, keyboard keys, Photoshop, and Window Vista. I'm hoping the site will add one particular resolution soon--"Yahoo Messenger not responding." That error message has now taken the ccapp.exe error message's place whenever I shut down my computer, and it's making me nuts. I want to solve the problem without getting rid of Yahoo Messenger; I prefer it to the MSN version.
They say that Mac's don't freeze up nearly as much as Window-based PC's. If they're right, the minute I get a job and the money, I'm going to buy a MacBook, hand this Compaq down to my mom, and go through with my promise of chucking her dinosaur out the window. I just have to remember to open the window first.
