mouse and computer seized up

I need help to know where to start.
Yesterday my father's monitor on his Gateway with win 95 stopped working. I brought the monitor to my computer, hooked it up, and it "worked" though I'm not sure it was quite right. I hooked his monitor back up to his computer and the monitor seemed to work right. This may be coincidental or related/unrelated to the following:

Today he called and said while he was doing his taxes, the computer seized up today, he had to shut it off manually (not thru the start button sequence) and when he turned it back on the mouse arrow wouldn't move--seized up. Couldn't get anything to work.

The question is, where do I start looking for the problem. I think we made a "boot disk" when we set the computer up 5-6 years ago but not sure. I haven't looked at the computer yet tonight, probably won't get to it till tomorrow night. Can I do a "safe mode" start like I can do with win 98 and if so how, and what do I do next.

Thanks for any advice.

simonmeridew

 

What type of computer is it? MHz speed? Memory? You say 5 years old so I am going to assume it’s and older 486 or such. This could be a memory failure. Video card, mouse driver, hard drive failure. When is the last time a scan disk or defrag was done? Most likely the drive needs to be formatted and 95 (yuck) re-installed. A system that old is just not worth fixing, so many different things could have happened so I just don’t know where to tell you to start. My advice is to go to a local computer shop and upgrade to a better computer. Have a computer built etc.

 

Intel pentium processor, 233mhz, win 95 was operating system originally installed new.
I guess what I was asking was short of revamping the whole computer, what kind of diagnostics can be performed to see what is wrong. Of course we have all the original software and can do a reinstall but if the mouse doesn't work, this doesn't sound like it would be possible. I think he defragged maybe 6 months ago. BTW, how much computer does an 82 yr old need to do his taxes?
looking for suggestions.
simonmeridew

 

Is this PC also used to surf??
Cleaned out *.tmp/.chk/.dir files? Deleted 'Cookies' and related Internet garbage files?
How much free space is available on the hard drive? If <100 MB, sometimes Winblows doesn't play well and you will need to make space (swap files).

 

well, I just went up to my Father's house, and started the computer; it ran that "Dos'y" looking screen that goes on when you turn it off wrong the time before. Basically I said "yes" when it asked for choices for fixing files and when it got all done, Windows started up and all was well. I went to the "system tools" file in accessories to the defrag program, said yes and it self checked and said it did not need defragging but did I want to do it anyway, no I did not.

Not sure what was wrong, but ok now. Oh yes, I made sure we made a boot disk for future reference.

And Thanks for help and moral support
simonmeridew