XP SP2 won't reboot, reinstalled once, under warranty

[Guest]

Hi,

I've been through tons of email and phone support with HP. My HP Pavilion
notebook dv4000 running XP Home Edition SP2 (came installed) won't boot. HP
said it was because of a virus because I got a particular error mesage (for
details, I've included a note I posted to public newsgroup below). I run
Norton Internet Security 2005 Antispyware Edition, and update virus def's
daily. I did a complete system scan and Norton found nothing. With HP's
help, I still couldn't get windows setup to attempt restore or anything.
They told me to reinstall the OS. My friend who is an IT pro was able to
save my data to an external hard drive and reinstall XP from the OS install
disc I received with my laptop purchased new August '05.

I loaded Norton again, got updates, did a full system scan...found nothing.
Then I loaded Office 2003, and dragged my Outlook .pst and related files from
the external hard drive to where they usually reside on the laptop's hard
drive, and opened outlook. Aside from my contacts which it couldn't find
(but that's another ugly issue), everything loaded fine. At some point, and
I can't remember when exactly in this process, the computer started to act
up again and finally wouldn't boot up. It exhibited similar symptoms to the
first failure: mouse stops acting correctly, won't recognize USB ports - it
will see the device there and then lose it and start over as if you just
plugged it in, hangs, won't boot up or down...all periodically.

I will have to talk to HP again, and at their advice: have them walk me
through another OS install, but this time follow it up with running their
"Application and Driver Recovery dvd". My friend says I should then begin to
reload things but keep track of exactly when things start to fail. He thinks
perhaps I have a corrupt file or virus, like maybe in the .pst file???

Does anyone have any thoughts? Does Norton effectively scan the .pst for
viruses? Could I have a virus that's not included in Norton's definitions
yet? Could a corrupt file in the .pst cause such system problems?

Nearing my wits end. I'm going to buy a new PC and try not to load my .pst
- which I really need - I'm a musician who runs her entire business from the
calendar, contacts and folders within Outlook. But I'm afraid to load it in
case it is corrupt. My friend thinks I should try to trouble shoot what's
wrong using the HP laptop until I find the problem, before I ruin another
computer.

Thanks
Carmen

Here's my post from last week to: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

In view of the repeated nature of your problem I suspect
a hardware flaw.

I recently dealt with a not too dissimilar case: My client's
machine would reboot out of the blue at random intervals.
After running it on the workbench for three days, forcing
a shutdown/startup sequence once every ten minutes, the
culprit revealed itself: A marginal hard disk. After replacing
the disk the problem disappeared.

Sometimes the hardware problem is temperature-related
and occurs only when the machine is completely cold or
very warm.

In your case you may have to apply pressure to HP to
fix the machine under warranty. This could be difficult:
HP can be quite hard-nosed when it comes to problems
that cannot be readily demonstrated to be caused by
hardware flaws. You could also be without your laptop
for several weeks.

You can easily demonstrate that your .PST file is clean,
by running it for a week or two on a different machine.