Computer Issue

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   TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years ago

   Need help from some gurus out there.   I use Chrome and MSWorks 9 on Windows 7.  Every so often, MSWorks crashes, even though it was working perfectly before.  This has been an ongoing problem, and I have tried to reinstall, do a dskchk, etc.  It happened again tonight and I cannot get it to work!  I checked for updates and did all of the other stuff, but it freezes when I try to open any part of it and I can't even get it off the screen.  Must shut down , etc.  Any advice?

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      calculus-geometryposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      As a last ditch effort you can do a "system restore" to restore your computer to the exact state it was in at some point in the past.  You need to choose a restore point when MSWorks 9 was working fine.  Here is a tutorial for Win 7, will work even if you computer isn't a Dell:
      http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/4/SLN85604/en
      Your files will be intact, but any software you installed after the chosen restore date will be lost and you'll have to reinstall it.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         When I did a System Restore on my Dell, it warned me that my files would also be lost - and sure enough, they were.
         
         So don't do a System Restore unless you have a full backup of everything!

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            calculus-geometryposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Oh crap!  My files survived thankfully, but newly installed programs were all erased and had to be reinstalled.

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      2. 74

         TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Calculus Geometry:  I have a question:  If you do a system restore, does the computer not eventually "catch up" to where it is now?  I have done one of these in the past and it worked for awhile, but once Microsoft started adding updates. down it went again.  Works did not work at all yesterday, even after I did all of the "stuff"...this morning it is working again.  So aggravating...just can't figure out what the problem is.  This happens every few weeks.

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            calculus-geometryposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            I also had this issue when running Windows 7 and borderline-compatible older programs. The updates it constantly downloaded were incompatible with my old programs and caused them to crash. So I changed to settings to turn off or reject updates and combined with system restore everything went back to normal.  My system restore operation held as long as I didn't allow any new updates.
            
            Some people say it's bad to turn off the updates, but if you have a good antivirus program you should be somewhat protected.  It really depends how attached you are to some of your programs.  I may be wrong, but I think MS Works isn't officially supported past Vista. For me, the benefits of being able to use my old programs outweighed the risks of never updating Windows 7.  I guess you have to decide what's better for you.
            
            If you do decide to retire MS Works, Open Office is a good alternative.

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               TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

               I actually did turn off my updates, and it did help.  I am VERY attached to MS Works, but have begun doing backups using Open Libre and Open Office.  I use Open Libre because it can read MSWorks documents and then save them in Open Office, but it's a lot of work.  You probably are right in that it's no longer supported, but it's a great program that has worked well for me for many years and I'm going to try to keep it as long as I can.  I do have a good anti virus program, but the problem is that I continue to get these aggravating crashes.  Thanks for the good advice you gave.

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                  Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  The crashes are caused by the updates.  Turn off the updates and the problem will go away.

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                     TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

                     Did that...and it still happened, just not as often.  My computer guy told me to do a disk check when this happens, and that seems to fix if for awhile, but I did this yesterday and nothing happened until today.  Very weird!

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