Windows XP help what have i done!!!

[jase]

Where do i start,well I have just bought this computer off a friend who assured me it was all ok it has a Asus A7V333 motherboard, Creative sound blaster 16pci sound card,Radeon 9600 graphics card,i'm running XP pro with sp2 off a 20GB hard drive with a 60GB as my D drive, i'm running avg anti spy and anti virus and i have got numerous problems :-

1:keep getting an svchost error message that when you click to clear it shut's down the program running reverting back to desktop.

2:keep getting a blue windows error message with multiple error codes with text at the bottom telling me that its dumping physical memory what is that???.

3:the stupid thing keeps restarting itself at any time it does not matter how long it has been on for so don't think its a over heat problem because it starts up again then works ok.

4utlook won't send/receive on startup even though settings are telling it to do so error message appears saying that it could not find the server have checked this all setting appear correct, server is there as i open internet explorer and it goes online then it will send/receive.

I know this is a lot of questions but I am stumped and im getting it in the neck from the wife for buying the thing please can anyone help.
regards
jase

 

[Ian]

I think the easiest thing to do would be to Format the PC and start from scratch with a clean windows XP installation, unless of course it was a fresh install when you first got it?

For problem number 4, how do you connect to the internet on your PC - are you on a dialup modem, broadband with a USB modem or do you have a broadband router? It sounds as if when you load Internet Explorer it is dialing up and actually letting you connect to the net. This should be straight forward to fix once we know how you connect

 

[muckshifter]

I hope the "price" was good ... and you got ALL the CDs needed to "fix" this PC including a real copy of XP.

When you do re-install XP, I would suggest taking out the 20gig HD and use the 60gig, then use the 20 later as a back-up drive.

Hope you are still on talking terms with your friend.

 

[jase]

getting there!!

Thanks very much for your advice it worked,no more blue screen with memory dump message and it's no longer restarting itself.
The internet connects with a broadband usb modem but that is working ok now.
The only problems I have now are :-
1 some jpeg files have converted to sig files and I can't see how to convert them back.

2 we are having a problem with pictures opening, we have for the last 12 months been opening them with microsoft office picture manager 2003, but lately a few won't open, you can view them as thumbnails but when you try to open them the picture manager screen partialy opens then hangs for about 30 seconds then finally open to a totally black picture.
Apart from the previously mentioned faults the only thing to have changed is the camera now a canon A630 we thought it was a glitch with the camera or card because if you take say 10 pic's only 9 will open correctly, but we went back in to view some pics we took 2 yrs ago and some of them won't open.
Have we still got a bug in the system.
any advice would be greatly appreciated as we don't won't to corrupt any more of our pictures.
thanks jase