long hourglass wait

[Guest]

Hi - hope someone can supply some insight on this.

Definitely had a lightening strike; ruined the DSL modem and the NIC card.
Otherwise all seems ok - install of new NIC card was fine.

But now I am experiencing something new: A typical action will incur a very
long hourglass wait before it completes.

For example: double click to open IE
Pressing the 'Save' icon when in Access

I am not seeing a pattern and obviously have not used every feature of XP
and Office. But definitely it is routine actions that normally would be a
blink of an eye are now a significantly long wait i.e. 20+ seconds.

This is a relatively vanilla Dell machine for business use - home office not
involving a LAN. No games, music or extravagant add-ons. I even
disconnected the flash drive that I usually have on USB just to help
eliminate one more unknown - but it didn't make any difference.

Let me add another event that I am sure is related: once or twice the
machine seemed to be not active - though the cursor would move around - no
clicks did anything.....until some 45+ seconds later (I am a patient guy) - -
and then all the clicks that I had done before were activated one after the
other in a flash.

I know this is a little flaky to explain - and unfortunately I am not real
comfortable in any of the behind the scenes systems stuff of the operating
system. I would very much welcome advice on what I should do in terms of
repair - either myself or via an expert organization. thx

 

[Malke]

Hi - hope someone can supply some insight on this.

Definitely had a lightening strike; ruined the DSL modem and the NIC card.
Otherwise all seems ok - install of new NIC card was fine.

But now I am experiencing something new: A typical action will incur a
very long hourglass wait before it completes.

For example: double click to open IE
Pressing the 'Save' icon when in Access

I am not seeing a pattern and obviously have not used every feature of XP
and Office. But definitely it is routine actions that normally would be a
blink of an eye are now a significantly long wait i.e. 20+ seconds.

This is a relatively vanilla Dell machine for business use - home office
not
involving a LAN. No games, music or extravagant add-ons. I even
disconnected the flash drive that I usually have on USB just to help
eliminate one more unknown - but it didn't make any difference.

Let me add another event that I am sure is related: once or twice the
machine seemed to be not active - though the cursor would move around - no
clicks did anything.....until some 45+ seconds later (I am a patient guy)
- - and then all the clicks that I had done before were activated one
after the other in a flash.

I know this is a little flaky to explain - and unfortunately I am not real
comfortable in any of the behind the scenes systems stuff of the operating
system. I would very much welcome advice on what I should do in terms of
repair - either myself or via an expert organization. thx

Since your "lightning flash" ruined the modem and the nic, did you also test
the hard drive, motherboard, and power supply? Other hardware components
could certainly be damaged also.

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Troubleshooting

Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out suspected parts with
known-good parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are
uncomfortable opening your computer, take the machine to a professional
computer repair shop (not your local equivalent of BigStoreUSA).

For future protection, buy an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). The one
you should get costs roughly $60USD. You shouldn't buy the cheapest (I've
seen them for $36) but you don't need anything fancy either.

Malke