D
Dennis
Help!
Hardware: Dell Dimension 8250 Series. Pentium 4, 512MB, latest available
BIOS, plenty of HDD space, etc.
History: Computer belangs to a relative. She let it get gunked up with a
lot of malware. I cleaned up the system for her and it was running fine.
Installed Norton Internet Security 2006 OK. Ran Norton Live Update which
could not complete due to problems with "access denied" errors. I followed
Norton instructions for dealing with the error. These involved clearing the
"temp" folder. Couldn't clear due to "access denied" errors. I reset owner
permissions in security and cleared the "temp" folder. Then the system
would not boot!
The problem: XP Home appears to boot but after the MS splash screen it
presents a black screen and after a short pause the mouse pointer appears.
The mouse is active but there is nothing to click. Keyboard keys have no
effect. To shut down I need to either pull the plug or hold the power
switch until it turns off.
This is not the same problem as Article ID 314503
I can boot from the MS CD.
Ran chkdsk from the recovery console - it found and fixed some problem.
Ran repair install which appeared to run Ok but DID NOT fix problem.
Installed a parallel copy in another folder. Boots normally from this copy.
Printed boot log from each copy and can see no significant differences.
I have searched the web, MS Knowledgebase, Dell website, etc. for days and
have found a number of postings related to almost identical problems but no
solutions. None of the posted suggested solutions have worked.
It seems that this is a not uncommon problem which can be corrected only
with a clean install. We really, really don't want to do that but she needs
to get her computer back.
Any help would be appreciated.
Dennis
Hardware: Dell Dimension 8250 Series. Pentium 4, 512MB, latest available
BIOS, plenty of HDD space, etc.
History: Computer belangs to a relative. She let it get gunked up with a
lot of malware. I cleaned up the system for her and it was running fine.
Installed Norton Internet Security 2006 OK. Ran Norton Live Update which
could not complete due to problems with "access denied" errors. I followed
Norton instructions for dealing with the error. These involved clearing the
"temp" folder. Couldn't clear due to "access denied" errors. I reset owner
permissions in security and cleared the "temp" folder. Then the system
would not boot!
The problem: XP Home appears to boot but after the MS splash screen it
presents a black screen and after a short pause the mouse pointer appears.
The mouse is active but there is nothing to click. Keyboard keys have no
effect. To shut down I need to either pull the plug or hold the power
switch until it turns off.
This is not the same problem as Article ID 314503
I can boot from the MS CD.
Ran chkdsk from the recovery console - it found and fixed some problem.
Ran repair install which appeared to run Ok but DID NOT fix problem.
Installed a parallel copy in another folder. Boots normally from this copy.
Printed boot log from each copy and can see no significant differences.
I have searched the web, MS Knowledgebase, Dell website, etc. for days and
have found a number of postings related to almost identical problems but no
solutions. None of the posted suggested solutions have worked.
It seems that this is a not uncommon problem which can be corrected only
with a clean install. We really, really don't want to do that but she needs
to get her computer back.
Any help would be appreciated.
Dennis