Howdy, everyone! This week the Geek does what he does best...answer questions!

Q: My Mac is crashing a lot. What is causing this?
A: Several things can lead to a mac to crash or freeze up often. You should do each of the following. First, make sure your virtual memory is set correctly. This is a very common reason for problems. Second, run disk first-aid to be sure your file system is not damaged. Third, disable unneeded extensions. If you continue to crash, I suggest you continue disabling new, recent, or unused extensions. If your machine crashes, even with all extensions off, consider reinstalling your OS. If after an OS reinstall you still freeze often, you likely have a bad part. Find your local Apple Technician.

Q: My Winamp 3 freezes/crashes often. How do I fix this?
A: Unfortunately, I've not been the only person to observe stability problems in Winamp 3. Brian, an ITEC major, who frequently posts commentary to this column pointed out in last week's column "I know there have been some issues with winamp 3 stability in winxp (unsure if they are in other os's) but thats mainly from installing winamp3 over winamp 2 [( read very bad!)]." Indeed, he is correct that installing Winamp 3 over top of existing plugins of Winamp 2.x causes major problems. Also, Winamp 3 experiences intermittent memory leaks, and other nasty failures which lead to the crash of the program, if not the whole machine. I strongly suggest you return to Winamp 2.x, and stay there at least until Winamp 3.01 is released. Winamp 2.81 is still available at the Nullsoft website.

That's all for this season, folks. My thanks to all of those who asked questions, and made comments on my answers. Please remember to send your questions for next season by e-mailing whim@radford.edu. I'll try to personaly answer your "break time" questions so you don't have to wait for January!