In message , Micky
writes:
[]
By golly, it will take 2G. This is the second computer for which I've
thought it had as much RAM as it could hold. I will look into what
fits it and what they sell when I get home.

If it's the same as mine (Samsung NC20, though I think the 10 is the
same), 2G is the biggest stick you can fit, and it only has one slot (so
you have to take out the 1G one).

Mike's suggestion of checking the ventilation is worth following: is
there a reasonable draught coming out of it somewhere, or just a gentle
(and hot!) breeze? Worth trying one of the utilities that reports
whatever temperature sensors it can find - I use
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php, but there are plenty of such
utilities. Although if it's responsive enough after booting, that's
probably not the cause (but worth checking anyway; [a] if it gets _too_
hot, it will just shut itself off suddenly to prevent damage, [b] I have
a strong suspicion this is what caused my disc drive to spotweld s
couple of years ago, before I'd realised the fan was failing). If you
_think_ it's responsive enough once booted, see if that still applies
when it has to access the disc: I had a friend whose computer was quite
responsive enough when you were just working with RAM (which covers a
surprising amount of time - e. g. reading emails, even editing a
document most of the time), but crawled when it had to access the disc
(which was failing - took a quarter of an hour to boot, and I think that
was Windows 98!).

Meanwhile, it has occurred to me that just before I started haiving
this startup problem, when shutting down the previous night, it
installed 6 XP updates. Is there any chance one of them has slowed
startup, and is there a place where the Uninstall files for them is
located?

I take it you either have applied the POS hack, or hadn't used it for a
_very_ long time! Even with the POS hack, my latest seems to contain
files dated 2016-6-17, and is (you'll almost certainly have to (Tools,
Folder Options, View) change Hidden files and folders to Show to see
these folders) C:\Windows\$NtUninstallKB3164035$ (one of _many_
$NtUninstall...$ folders there); it has what looks like an uninstall
..exe in a subfolder (as do most of the few I just looked at). But
whether these are safe to run, I have no idea; (a) image before you try
if you can, (b) I'd do them last one first - but I'd wait until someone
more knowledgeable than me (e. g. Paul, VanguardLH, etc.) comes along to
advise on doing this.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Intelligence isn't complete without the full picture and the full picture is
all about doubt. Otherwise, you go the way of George Bush. - baroness Eliza
Manningham-Buller (former head of MI5), Radio Times 3-9 September 2011.