R
Rick Altman
My status as an IT expert is being sorely tested by a six-month-old Dell
Dimension 9100 that has me at wit's end. Here is a laundry list of symptoms,
in the hopes that someone's speculation might help shed light on the
problems that I have been having with this system:
- At least 75% of my attempts to shut down the system fail, requiring that
I power cycle the computer. I have powered down this machine more times
in the past month than I would across the 12-month life of a typical
system.
- External media is often not recognized until I reboot (which, 3 out of 4
times
as mentioned above, means a power cycle).
- About 50% of the time, iTunes will not run properly. Launching it places
the executable in Task Manager's list of processes, but the interface
does not appear, and all attempts to end its process fails.
- FileMaker repeatedly informs me that another user is using the software,
when there is no chance of that being true.
- Adobe Acrobat 7 is a disaster, constantly freezing up or informing me
that I must be an administrator to perform an update, even though I am
an administrator and I did not ask for an update.
It's as if there are conditions that become latched on this system and
refuse to release their resources or reset themselves. Nonetheless, I can
take Task Manager processes down to the bare essentials and these symptoms
persist.
- These symptoms become more pronounced the deeper I am into a Windows
session. They rarely show up right after a restart.
- All of these conditions have persisted despite my repartitioning the
drive and installing a fresh copy of XPPro SP2.
- I am using the latest BIOS version from Dell.
If I can get some clear indication that this is a hardware issue, I can take
this up with Dell. But I don't know what to hang a suspicion on -- faulty
RAM? Bad motherboard?
I'm grateful in advance for any commentary on this puzzling situation...
Rick A.
Pleasanton CA
Dimension 9100 that has me at wit's end. Here is a laundry list of symptoms,
in the hopes that someone's speculation might help shed light on the
problems that I have been having with this system:
- At least 75% of my attempts to shut down the system fail, requiring that
I power cycle the computer. I have powered down this machine more times
in the past month than I would across the 12-month life of a typical
system.
- External media is often not recognized until I reboot (which, 3 out of 4
times
as mentioned above, means a power cycle).
- About 50% of the time, iTunes will not run properly. Launching it places
the executable in Task Manager's list of processes, but the interface
does not appear, and all attempts to end its process fails.
- FileMaker repeatedly informs me that another user is using the software,
when there is no chance of that being true.
- Adobe Acrobat 7 is a disaster, constantly freezing up or informing me
that I must be an administrator to perform an update, even though I am
an administrator and I did not ask for an update.
It's as if there are conditions that become latched on this system and
refuse to release their resources or reset themselves. Nonetheless, I can
take Task Manager processes down to the bare essentials and these symptoms
persist.
- These symptoms become more pronounced the deeper I am into a Windows
session. They rarely show up right after a restart.
- All of these conditions have persisted despite my repartitioning the
drive and installing a fresh copy of XPPro SP2.
- I am using the latest BIOS version from Dell.
If I can get some clear indication that this is a hardware issue, I can take
this up with Dell. But I don't know what to hang a suspicion on -- faulty
RAM? Bad motherboard?
I'm grateful in advance for any commentary on this puzzling situation...
Rick A.
Pleasanton CA