Should I be concerned?

[sherwindu]

My Windows 2000 system has been locking up lately in Netscape 4.7, where I am
forced to do a cold boot. Also, it sometimes will not shut down without a cold
shut
down. The error logs show nothing significant. Does this indicate a software
problem, or possibly a hardware issue? Maybe it's time to do another backup,
although I do not trust my Norton Ghost program to do that job.

Sherwin D.

 

[leew [MVP]]

My Windows 2000 system has been locking up lately in Netscape 4.7, where I am
forced to do a cold boot. Also, it sometimes will not shut down without a cold
shut
down. The error logs show nothing significant. Does this indicate a software
problem, or possibly a hardware issue? Maybe it's time to do another backup,
although I do not trust my Norton Ghost program to do that job.

Sherwin D.

I would doubt your problem is caused by Netscape (though anything is
possible). More likely, I would think, would be a problem with the
networking components and when Netscape accessing something or a buffer
fills up, something hangs. I'd try updating and/or rolling back your
networking drivers to see if that helps. Also, I'd ditch Netscape 4.7.
At this point, that's so old, I can't imagine it working well on most
sites. Try Firefox if you don't want to go to IE.

 

[Mistoffolees]

My Windows 2000 system has been locking up lately in Netscape 4.7, where I am
forced to do a cold boot. Also, it sometimes will not shut down without a cold
shut
down. The error logs show nothing significant. Does this indicate a software
problem, or possibly a hardware issue? Maybe it's time to do another backup,
although I do not trust my Norton Ghost program to do that job.

Sherwin D.

Netscape 4.X is somewhat dated and who knows what today's web programmers
are doing to their sites with all the plug-ins designed for IE 6 and later
or Netscape 7.X and later. Nothing wrong with updating to Netscape 4.8 if
one needs 4.X. But not having compatible plug-ins will lock up or may even
crash the system. Netscape 7.1/7.2/8.X are mostly OK.

 

[Frank Booth Snr]

My Windows 2000 system has been locking up lately in Netscape 4.7, where I am
forced to do a cold boot. Also, it sometimes will not shut down without a cold
shut
down. The error logs show nothing significant. Does this indicate a software
problem, or possibly a hardware issue? Maybe it's time to do another backup,
although I do not trust my Norton Ghost program to do that job.

Netscape 4.7 is very old. You should update to Netscape 7.2 at least, or
better still Mozilla/Firefox. The problem may be a corrupt registry, but
is unlikely to to be a hardware issue. First of all boot up into 'Safe
Mode' and see whether you can boot then restart in Safe Mode without a
problem. Note, it takes much longer for Win2k to boot up in Safe Mode so
don't worry if your pc appears to hang in the process.