Major problems with computers

It should work like this:

To extract files from a zipped compressed folder

Remember that you want to extract these two files into your C:\Windows\system32 folder.

Nick

 

Sorry for taking so long to get back to my point, but I needed to check before I mentioned anything.

The "Advanced Settings" tab SHOULD be on the Primary IDE Channel properties.. if it's not there then that means your harddrive is running in PIO mode, which is not a good thing.. it will cause all sorts of drive errors and major system slowdowns, like you mentioned in the beginning of the thread.

It not being there suggests that the drivers that basically run the harddrive may be corrupted and would need to be reinstalled. You could just uninstall and reinstall the drivers, however with all the other things going on with your computer, I would really recommend a full reinstall of Windows at this point.

Before you do that, however, you will want to go back and do an error check on the harddrive again, this time tick the box that says "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" .. this will check the disk on the next reboot before Windows starts, it should finish all the way regardless.. but there's no sense in spending tons of time fixing your system up if your drive is just going bad, and you want to rule out hardware when you start getting corrupted files.

I wouldn't wait around to do this, if your harddrive is going bad you will want to back up all your data ASAP to ensure it's not lost.. you may want to back things up anyway, just as a precaution.

 

Can you explain about the advanced setting tabs in the Primary IDE Channel properties? One thread explained how to look that up.

It would be major surgery to back up this computer. With 4 people using it, it's filled up to the gills. I'm saving that for a last resort. I don't have the original disks that came with the computer to reinstall it.

Do an error check

 

Go back to post #109 in this thread.

Well don't put off doing the error check. When files like that just start getting corrupted, you want to make sure the drive itself isn't going bad.. if it is, you don't know when it's going to just suddenly stop working. It's not like a battery that will slowly fizzle out, you will probably get some strange errors for a while and then one day you won't be able to start the computer.

I'm not sure that this is what's happening, but either way you are going to want to get everything backed up soon. The Advanced Settings tab not being there for the properties of the Primary IDE channel is not a good sign.. it's absence means that DMA is not supported, which it absolutely should be, meaning the drivers are probably corrupted.. which would explain a lot of your strange problems, possibly including the blue screens you were experiencing in the beginning.

 

I did the check for the bad sectors and it came out ok. I don't have the advance tab. What should I do next

 

I can tell you how to fix that specific problem, but with everything you're experiencing I think you should really spend some time considering reformatting, as I think there are probably some greater issues going on that will probably cause more problems down the road. What I'm almost wondering at this point is if the last format didn't just result in a bad Windows install.. that can happen sometimes, and the only REAL way to fix it is to do it again. I know it's a pain, but consider how much time has been spent troubleshooting already, and consider that there may be even more time doing the same, whereas a few days spent casually backing everything up and another day spent reformatting could potentially solve all the issues in the least amount of time.

The thing is that this would involve copying a good Windows CD to the harddrive, removing the drivers for what controls your harddrive and CD-ROM(s), rebooting, and reinstalling the drivers. Although it's not exactly brain surgery, if something went wrong you could end up having to reformat anyway, or at least spending the same amount of time getting it fixed.. and without the benefit of being able to use your CD ROM. On the other hand, if everything went well, it could be a quick and painless operation. If you weren't experiencing so many odd problems I wouldn't hesitate, but I really think there may be more going on behind the scenes here then what we can determine in an internet forum.

Consider the benefits of each, talk to your husband about it, and get back to us. If you decide that fixing all these things one by one is really the way to go, then I'll gladly help you further

 

I was hoping that wouldn't be a choice. On one of our computers we reinstalled it because it kept crashing. It didn't solve the problem.

Where do you get the software for the computers? I had a disk that we got from the school, it's for Dell. The disk says it is a reinstallation disk. It says "this CD is not for reinstallation of programs or drivers." Where do you get the drivers? The computer we reinstalled has a problem with the graphics device.

As I stated before, the computer with the paging file problem so far is the most reliable. It's secure and doesn't crash all the time. It's just inconvienent for 4 adults and 1 computer.

MRSCT

 

A typical Dell reinstallation disk will say something like "Operating System" or "Drivers and Utilities" at the top of the disk, with detail information (something like "Reinstallation CD Microsoft Windows XP Professional" or Dell Dimension Resource CD for Reinstalling Device Drivers.....") below that.

You will need to have the serial key for the OS handy to perform a complete reinstallation, this is generally available through running Belarc Advisor. Download, run this utility, and printout a hard copy of the results before attempting anything.

Note, that reinstallation disk is for the operating system only. Applications such as Microsoft Office are on a separate CD. You can generally download updated drivers for any of the original subsystems directly from Dell. You should be able to run one of their profiler applications to tally the installed equipment. Naturally, any drivers should be expanded and burned to CD before starting anything.

The key in doing this is to have everything available before you start, and have a backup PC available to download things items that you've missed.

The other thing with these OEM OS disks, they'll typically check the hardware first to verify that it is being installed on the appropriate vendors platform - no mixing and matching possible.

Blue

 

Thanks Blue!
These computers are driving me crazy. I have a CD for the operating system and drivers and utilities. When I loaded the utilities, it didn't have my OptiPlex listed. I have not made any head way since one computer (Sony) was fixed with windsockfix. I just keep plugging away, when I get frustrated with one, I go to another one.

MRSCT

 

Have you been reinstalling Windows on top of the old installation, without formatting first?

 

The first time when my husband did it he reformated it. It still had the same problems. The second time I just reinstalled it again and didn't reformat it. It kept crashing and we barely got it reinstalled. There is something wrong with that computer. It comes up with lots of errors. (fatal system error, graphics device driver, it won't load SP2 and is shakey about updates) Definately can't send any computer to college with my daughter.

 

The one time I experienced anything at all like this (difficult to explain crashes, inability to fix the problem, seemingly everything at one time or another being implicated), it was a pure hardware issue. In my case the CPU fan had failed and it was overheating. There was a warm day/cold day difference that I was very slow to pick up on, but this was a low speed Pentium that didn't generate a whole lot of heat, at least compared to today's CPU's.

Since that time, when faced with these situations again, I typically pop open the case to make sure:

• CPU cooling is active
• The motherboard/other subsystems are not covered with dust (it's a good insulator). If so, I will very cautiously remove it (with a vacuum held reasonably far away from the surface and a liberal application of DustOff)
• All chips/cables/boards are properly seated. I'll generally give chips seated in a DIP a gentle seating push, remove and immediately reseat cables on the motherboard and drive systems, remove and immediately reseat add-on boards.
• Button up the case, reboot, and look for changes

It's a brute force approach done as a last resort. The puzzling thing in your case is that it seems like a disk problem but comes through error checking fine. Notok's suggestion of HDD driver corruption is a reasonable one.

Blue

 

Ouch, yeah this is a tricky one.. when my friend's computer had the driver corruption problem, his BIOS was also corrupted, and I think the two may have been linked.. so it's POSSIBLE that hardware issues could be partially responsible for the corruption as well. To go with Blue's advice, I would also check out the video card, if there's a fan make sure that it's going too.

After dusting I would also give each fan a gentle spin. Ideally they should spin a few rotations on their own after you spin it. An older fan may just rotate once and stop, but it should be obvious if there's some real friction. Then start it up with the case off and listen for any fans that are being especially noisy.

How is the electricity in your house? Do your lights flicker a lot? It's also entirely possible that your power supply is either overworked or going out.

 

My husband actually opened up the case. He's tinkering with the (stuff ) inside the case. Lots of dust. What should we be looking for

 

Actually, aside from getting the dust out, nothing usually is readily visible.

Over time you can develop minor levels of surface corrosion/oxidation which inhibits an electrical connection enough so that good electrical contact is lost. Removing and reseating cables and boards basically presents new contact surfaces between the two pieces and sometimes eliminates a problem.

For cables, sometimes the insertion is partial and physical movement due to many heat/cool cycles can be enough to start working the piece out of the receptacle - so here you are looking for whether there is firm/complete insertion. Same thing with memory sticks.

Blue

 

Hi MRSCT,

Could you post the manufacturer and model number of this computer? Searching the manufacturer's forums and knowledge-base might shed some light on these problems. Hardware drivers and BIOS are often revised many times. The BIOS for the system I built in October have since been revised 5 times. I would not depend on the drivers on the installation CD. The manufacturer's support site should have the latest drivers for all of your hardware.

Nick

 

Hi Nick,
It is a Dell OptiPlex GX110. I think I listed some stats on one of my posts. So you need anyother information?

I like how everyone helps me and how if one knows something they can chim in. The more the merrier.

 

These are all the downloads available for the OptiPlex GX110:

OptiPlex GX110 Downloads

I see that the BIOS are on the 9th revision (1/24/2003). Are you running the original Windows version that came preinstalled (if so what is it?), or have you upgraded to 2000 or XP?

Nick

 

It says it is XP Professional now.

 

From a quick look through Dell support and forums, it looks like the GX110 probably started out as a Windows 98 system but "ready" for Windows 2000 when released. From the forums, Dell does not "officially" support XP on a GX110, but many upgrade with few if any problems. I've upgraded quite a few Windows 98 HPs to XP for friends/family and they never went perfectly but were fixable. All the problems were driver related. Sometimes the HP drivers worked, sometimes the XP-supplied drivers worked, and sometimes neither worked and I had use a manufacturer's driver. Did XP ever work well, or have you always had problems with it?

Nick

 

Yes, they did start out as 98's. The school district upgraded their computers and we got ours for nothing ( My husband worked in the computer lab, self taught) We upgraded shortly after that.

I have had no problem with either Dell computer. I'm not sure how they both even started having problems.

As I stated before one Dell crashes and the other has security problems.

I won't be on as much now, Christmas break is over, time to go back to work. It was a nice 2 weeks off (with pay )

MRSCT

 

Same here. It was a nice run, wasn't it.

Blue

 

I don't work with computers at work, go figure everyone has access to computers except teachers. I think I'm going to PC starved. I've become a internet junky over this break, but it sure was fun
Have a good day Blue,
MRSCT