TheGrandHooHa
Senior member
Here's a toughie.
Yesterday, after installing a program (which had been checked for viruses), my dad rebooted his computer. When it came back up, XP ran it's equivalent of "Scandisk" before starting, but never left the "Scanning of Drive C" complete screen. When attempting to boot in safe mode, the computer locks up after the long list of drives and hardware that XP displays in the "DOS" font.
So I reinstalled Windows XP on a separate partition, just so I could get his data off and on to another machine. However, I played around, and I found an additional problem: whenever he tries to view a webpage (in IE6) or view an email message in Outlook Express 6, the actual webpage or message body will not display. The source code makes it (which you can tell by using the "View Source"/"View Message Source" option), but the page itself will not "render." He also fails to get anything to appear when using System Restore Wizard, NetPassport Wizard, and other built-in functions. The desktop appears correctly, but anything else pretty much fails to "render."
Another one: whenever he double-clicks on his desktop shortcut to dial up to the internet, it will not work. The only way to dial up is to go through Start->Connect To->Show All Connections.
This is some freaky s#(* happening here. Any idea as to what could cause this? Perhaps a virus that is not protected in even the newest virus definitions? Or something else? Perhaps a hardware failure (which I doubt)?
Specs are:
Intel P4 1.6ghz
512mb RAM
Western Digital hard drive (unknown size and model #, will check tomorrow)
If you need additional info, let me know. Are there any cures or suggestions, other than completely reformatting? It is a Dell computer, so my dad called the Dell nuts first, but they were (typically) not productive . No offense to anyone who works at Dell who uses these forums, of course 🙂.
Basically, he's trying to get around spending 10+ hours reinstalling and getting his programs to work and set up as they used to be.
Thanks in advance people.
- TGHH
Yesterday, after installing a program (which had been checked for viruses), my dad rebooted his computer. When it came back up, XP ran it's equivalent of "Scandisk" before starting, but never left the "Scanning of Drive C" complete screen. When attempting to boot in safe mode, the computer locks up after the long list of drives and hardware that XP displays in the "DOS" font.
So I reinstalled Windows XP on a separate partition, just so I could get his data off and on to another machine. However, I played around, and I found an additional problem: whenever he tries to view a webpage (in IE6) or view an email message in Outlook Express 6, the actual webpage or message body will not display. The source code makes it (which you can tell by using the "View Source"/"View Message Source" option), but the page itself will not "render." He also fails to get anything to appear when using System Restore Wizard, NetPassport Wizard, and other built-in functions. The desktop appears correctly, but anything else pretty much fails to "render."
Another one: whenever he double-clicks on his desktop shortcut to dial up to the internet, it will not work. The only way to dial up is to go through Start->Connect To->Show All Connections.
This is some freaky s#(* happening here. Any idea as to what could cause this? Perhaps a virus that is not protected in even the newest virus definitions? Or something else? Perhaps a hardware failure (which I doubt)?
Specs are:
Intel P4 1.6ghz
512mb RAM
Western Digital hard drive (unknown size and model #, will check tomorrow)
If you need additional info, let me know. Are there any cures or suggestions, other than completely reformatting? It is a Dell computer, so my dad called the Dell nuts first, but they were (typically) not productive . No offense to anyone who works at Dell who uses these forums, of course 🙂.
Basically, he's trying to get around spending 10+ hours reinstalling and getting his programs to work and set up as they used to be.
Thanks in advance people.
- TGHH
