August 02, 2004
It's Dead, Jim
Desktop #2 is d-e-a-d. We bought a Dell desktop about two years ago, and it died right after the warranty expired (fried motherboard -- I'm told that's not a good result for a computer). We purchased a replacement Dell desktop in January, when Archi-Sapper was home for R&R. It has recently crashed, as well.
One day I turned it on and it was very, very slow to boot up. Definitely not a good sign. Once it booted up, it wouldn't give me access to files on the hard drive, it wouldn't run Internet Explorer, wouldn't run McAfee and basically wouldn't do anything. Yesterday we put in the boot disc with no success -- it won't run that, either. Archi-Sapper thinks something screwy has happened with the memory, but we're not really sure. The only thing we know is that it is broken, broken, broken.
This is obviously seriously frustrating. I hate throwing good money after bad into compouters that don't work for very long. I'm sure I inadvertantly downloaded some sort of virus, but that also frustrates me since we were running McAfee on the machine and actually ran the program every day. *sigh*
Posted by Kitty at August 2, 2004 09:00 AM
Comments
I told Archi to call me about this. If you want to pay to ship it I'll gladly fix it for you. e-mail or IM me (MSandoval500) and we'll talk about it. Don't let it just sit there
Posted by: bigdaddy at August 2, 2004 01:27 PM
What happens when you try to boot up from your recovery disk? Does it give you an error or does it still boot to windows? If it still boots to windows, try this:
1. Restart your computer.
2. Press F2 to go to setup.
3. Make sure in your boot options that your computer is set to boot from your CD-ROM drive BEFORE your hard drive.
It sounds to me like you just got some kind of virus that slows your computer down. If you don't want to screw with it and don't need to backup any files, just reload Windows. Otherwiise, try this:
1. Restart your computer.
2. Press F8 continuously (not too quickly because your computer will think that it has a keyboard jam).
3. Tell it to boot from Safe Mode with networking support.
4. Try to access all of your programs now. If they work, then you just have a virus because many viruses don't take effect in Safe Mode.
If your programs work in Safe Mode, let me know and I'll tell you how to get rid of viruses and spyware.
Posted by: Vauda at August 2, 2004 04:29 PM
As soon as you get a working machine (either new, or repaired), download an alternate browser -- anything other than IE. IE has serious security flaws (see this article for details: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5250697.html?tag=nl.) Most of the viruses, trojan horses, browser hijackers -- including the one that hit my old computer -- are written for IE, and do not affect other browsers. I now use Mozilla Firefox, and love it. It has pretty much all the functionality of IE, and can be customized to provide a host of additional features.
Posted by: Christoforo at August 2, 2004 07:00 PM
Big Daddy's right. I think we actually went out of town that weekend.
Here's the problem: Whenever it logs in to a user, it can't. It says there's not enough memory and that windows for some reason can not verify the registry.
So, I went into the setup and set it for boot from CDRom and enable OS setup. After I did that, it told me in DOS that the system is only recognizing 256 out of the 512m or RAM. So I ran the diagnostic all the memory tests and they all passed.
But I'm pleased to have Vauda because I couldn't figure out how to get it into Safe Mode. I'll try that tonight. :)
If that doesn't work, then expect a call or IM from me, Big Daddy, because if I can't get this to work before we move, I'm going to have the heaviest trash can on the street.
Posted by: Archi-Sapper at August 3, 2004 05:04 PM
Enjoy your working computer ;)
Posted by: Big Daddy at August 4, 2004 07:43 AM
Yeah, he's still in the loop..
Posted by: pylorns at August 5, 2004 08:24 AM
bravenet.com
I'm with you. I hate, hate, hate computer problems. Unfortunately, people think I'm good at them and I get their problems, too. For what's it's worth, yours sound to me like the lightning strike / power surge variety more so than a computer virus.
Posted by: Rob at August 2, 2004 10:52 AM