Can you help me play trailers better?

It could be caused by something running in the background gobbling up processor time. Press CTRL + ALT + DEL and see what else is running.

Alternatively, it may be Quicktime. Have you tried updating to the latest version, or running trailers in an older version? I've found that sometimes has an effect.

If you running at least Version 4 of QuickTime, there should be an updater to upgrade to the latest version. You may also want to try uninstalling it (uninstall everything, when presented with options), rebooting your PC and trying a fresh install. I used to have trouble with QT on an older PC and one time when I tried this, it fixed the choppy playback problems.

600 mhz is really borderline for trailers the size of the largest version of the new Matrix Trailer.

I'm on an Athlon XP2100 w/512 megs of ram and a geforce 4, and it was still a litle choppy for me at normal size. Popped it down to half size, and it was smooth as silk.

Go to your Control Panel, select Internet Options and under the Temporary Internet Files, click Settings. Change the amount of space used for Temporary Internet files to something between 0-80. I usually set it to 50 or 75. More than likely, it is currently set to 1175 or something. WAY too high!

Before closing your Internet Options tray, click the Advanced tab at the top. Scroll down the list towards the last section (Security) and look for "Empty Temp. Internet Files folder when browser is closed." If there is no check in the box, place one there and apply the changes.

Proceed with Caution (Be careful not to delete any other files than are specified below.)

From your desktop, open Windows Explorer (Shortcut: Windows key+E) and go to the C: drive and click on the Windows folder. In Win98, you should find a folder titled COOKIES. Open this folder, press Ctrl+A to highlight all items and then Shift+Delete. A shift delete bypasses the Recycle Bin. When the prompt to delete all items highlighted pops up, choose YES. If it stops midway into deleting what is probably hundreds of cookies and says it cannot delete a file named Index.dat (if I remember correctly, press Ctrl+A to highlight every file again, but then while holding Ctrl, left click on the INDEX file to unhighlight it. Hold Shift+Delete a second time and it should successfully delete all files in the folder with the exception of the INDEX file.

Next, scroll down through the list of folders in the Windows folder and find the TEMP folder. Press Ctrl+A and Shift+Delete all files in this directory. Do the same for the folder directly below this one titled TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES. Under that folder, there may possibly be another folder titled LOCAL SETTINGS. In that folder, there should several folders with random letter combinations. These are folders the browser creates to store data from the net, but ones that will recreate as needed. Delete them as well.

If you do all of the above successfully, you will have cleaned up some space you probably didn't know was being used.

Good luck!

Also delete all the contents of C:\Windows\Temp this is a folder where lazy programming leaves a lot of that bogs the system down.

To find out what's starting with your system go to Run type in msconfig and that will tell you everything loading up. Most of the entries under the startup tab should point to stuff you installed/need (at least after a bit of cross referencing) if you don't think you need it uncheck...example cd-burning software uncheck for normal day-to-day use re-enable when you need to burn. If your boot up turns wonky you can always re-enable from Safe Mode.

From personal experiance I've never seen a Windows version stay 100% solid more than a year. For now so you don't lose anything re-install Windows. You don't need to re-format, just pop in a Windows start-up disk (can be made from add/remove programs if I'm not mistaken) have your 98 disk in the drive. Only the windows directory will be updated. Once its done reload all updates for Windows and it should be working a hell of a lot better (but not as good as a fresh format). One note some perepherals may require reloading drivers...but only if they screwed with original system files in the first place...something that supposedly went out the window with XP.

For future reference put a second hard drive in as your C: drive. Doesn't have to be big, 10GB would be adequate if you could still find it. Install all Windows, Office, utility software to that drive and everything else to your second drive...this way when need to reformat everthing personnel is left alone.