Several problems getting worse!

[Guest]

I have a Dell about 3 years old with 145 GB HD and 76% free space. Last year
I had viruses and successfully got rid of them. I have Norton, Ad-Aware and
Defender. I upgraded to IE7 and had XPSP1 but upgraded to XPSP2. I have been
getting the "Blue screen of death" a lot and it is freezing up and I have a
lot of error messages to send the problem to Microsoft. It is also very slow.
Last night my screen saver wouldn't even move. I haven't downloaded or
installed any new hardware or software. Only the automatic updates from
Microsoft (with a slow dial up connection). I have been told I need to
totally wipe out my HD and start over. How do I do this? I have all disks
that came with the computer, all disks for software and all disks for
hardware. I also have everything backed up. I don't want to have to pay
someone to do something I could probably do with a DETAILED (spelled out)
tutorial myself! Please someone help! This problem gets worse everyday. I'm
afraid if I wait too long, I will not even be able to navigate to fix the
problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Peggy

 

[Poprivet]

I have a Dell about 3 years old with 145 GB HD and 76% free space.
Last year I had viruses and successfully got rid of them. I have
Norton, Ad-Aware and Defender. I upgraded to IE7 and had XPSP1 but
upgraded to XPSP2. I have been getting the "Blue screen of death" a
lot and it is freezing up and I have a lot of error messages to send
the problem to Microsoft. It is also very slow. Last night my screen
saver wouldn't even move. I haven't downloaded or installed any new
hardware or software. Only the automatic updates from Microsoft (with
a slow dial up connection). I have been told I need to totally wipe
out my HD and start over. How do I do this? I have all disks that
came with the computer, all disks for software and all disks for
hardware. I also have everything backed up. I don't want to have to
pay someone to do something I could probably do with a DETAILED
(spelled out) tutorial myself! Please someone help! This problem gets
worse everyday. I'm afraid if I wait too long, I will not even be
able to navigate to fix the problem. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Peggy

Yours isn't an unusual situation and you probably have corruption that's
slowly spreading. There are lots of rasons for it and often it's too
complex to ts successfully. It might be fastest and easiest for you to
actually reinstall XP, especially since you have all the CDs and (I assume)
your XP Certificate of Authority (COA), the 25 chatacters.

Check this out for some good info:
http://www.programmerworld.net/win/repair_xp.php
and
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341

Read here for some things to try first:
http://www.help2go.com/Tutorials/Windows/How_To_Repair_XP_and_Avoid_a_Full_Reinstall.html
Ignore the Restore part; your restore points will still have problems in
them since you've had the problem so long. The rest might well help though.

Next would be to try a Repair Install as shown here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx

And if that fails, you'll have to reinstall everything from scratch:
To do that, first be sure to back up any important files you created
because all data is lost when this is done.

Informational:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/is_it_time_to_reinstall_xp.htm

A pretty decent descrip of how to reinstall XP:
http://lifehacker.com/software/wind...nd-install-windows-xp-from-scratch-157578.php

If I were you, with your background, I would start with the last step;
reinstall windows. But if you're the curious type and want to try to do it
without losing any of your data or having to reinstall all the updates etc.,
you can try starting from the top, but any way you look at it, it's a fairly
lengthy process.

HTH
Pop`

 

[Guest]

Yours isn't an unusual situation and you probably have corruption that's
slowly spreading. There are lots of rasons for it and often it's too
complex to ts successfully. It might be fastest and easiest for you to
actually reinstall XP, especially since you have all the CDs and (I assume)
your XP Certificate of Authority (COA), the 25 chatacters.

Check this out for some good info:
http://www.programmerworld.net/win/repair_xp.php
and
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341

Read here for some things to try first:
http://www.help2go.com/Tutorials/Windows/How_To_Repair_XP_and_Avoid_a_Full_Reinstall.html
Ignore the Restore part; your restore points will still have problems in
them since you've had the problem so long. The rest might well help though.

Next would be to try a Repair Install as shown here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx

And if that fails, you'll have to reinstall everything from scratch:
To do that, first be sure to back up any important files you created
because all data is lost when this is done.

Informational:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/is_it_time_to_reinstall_xp.htm

A pretty decent descrip of how to reinstall XP:
http://lifehacker.com/software/wind...nd-install-windows-xp-from-scratch-157578.php

If I were you, with your background, I would start with the last step;
reinstall windows. But if you're the curious type and want to try to do it
without losing any of your data or having to reinstall all the updates etc.,
you can try starting from the top, but any way you look at it, it's a fairly
lengthy process.

HTH
Pop`

Pop,

Thank you so much for the quick response. I will definitely try these this
weekend. I will let you know if any of them worked. My husband and I are
fairly computer literate, I work with Photoshop all day and he had
successfully installed hard drives, memory, etc. So we are not scared to try,
just some of the terminology is confusing and I am more comfortable with step
by step instructions.
Thanks again,
Peggy

 

[Guest]

Pop,

Thank you so much for the quick response. I will definitely try these this
weekend. I will let you know if any of them worked. My husband and I are
fairly computer literate, I work with Photoshop all day and he had
successfully installed hard drives, memory, etc. So we are not scared to try,
just some of the terminology is confusing and I am more comfortable with step
by step instructions.
Thanks again,
Peggy

I tried wiping the HD clean using the instructions on the last website
mentioned. It went through the first 3 steps fine, then when I got to the
page to highlight the existing disk partitions, there were none found!
Everytime I would try to get out of that screen, I got the "blue screen" and
had to shut down. I tried this several times. Then I 'uninstalled' Windows
and tried to reinstall again and it would get to a certain point and then the
'blue screen' again. It stopped at the same place every time. I took the cd
out and it still tries to install with the cd out! I can't get back to my
desktop. When I pressed F-12 for the boot sequence, I forgot which option I
chose, but I found a page to run tests on everything on the computer. I
started doing that yesterday afternoon. The hard drive seems to be ok. The
only problems so far has been the Zip drive. I thought when I'm through
running the tests, I would take it out of the tower. I never use it anymore
anyway. Could this be the problem or do you think I should just buy another
hard drive and start from scratch? By the way, I was wrong on the size, it is
a 160 GB.
Thanks again,
Peggy

 

[Guest]

I tried wiping the HD clean using the instructions on the last website
mentioned. It went through the first 3 steps fine, then when I got to the
page to highlight the existing disk partitions, there were none found!
Everytime I would try to get out of that screen, I got the "blue screen" and
had to shut down. I tried this several times. Then I 'uninstalled' Windows
and tried to reinstall again and it would get to a certain point and then the
'blue screen' again. It stopped at the same place every time. I took the cd
out and it still tries to install with the cd out! I can't get back to my
desktop. When I pressed F-12 for the boot sequence, I forgot which option I
chose, but I found a page to run tests on everything on the computer. I
started doing that yesterday afternoon. The hard drive seems to be ok. The
only problems so far has been the Zip drive. I thought when I'm through
running the tests, I would take it out of the tower. I never use it anymore
anyway. Could this be the problem or do you think I should just buy another
hard drive and start from scratch? By the way, I was wrong on the size, it is
a 160 GB.
Thanks again,
Peggy